Political Career?
Based on a "hopelessly corrupt" reading of one of Cicero's speeches against Mark Antony, Volusenus was sometimes identified by 19th-century scholars as a tribune of the plebs in 43 BC. The passage, and Volusenus's documented loyalty to Caesar, was thus interpreted to mean that he was a supporter of Mark Antony, but two other manuscripts indicate that the proper noun is in fact a verb (voluissent) and neither Cicero nor any other source mentions Volusenus among Antony's followers. T.R.S. Broughton does not record a plebeian tribunate for Volusenus in The Magistrates of the Roman Republic, confirming only that Volusenus was a military tribune in 56 and held the rank of praefectus equitum in 52–51 and again in 48.
Read more about this topic: Gaius Volusenus
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