K. Publius Cornelius Lentulus Spinther, tr. pl. 69

Despite the obvious and inescapable implication of Diodorus 40.1.2 that Lentulus Spinther blocked peace with Crete in 69 by means of a tribunician veto (

), F. Münzer could not accept that the man ever held the tribunate because of his firm conviction that the Cornelii Lentuli were all patrician.^[120] Prosopographical work has since shown that the doctrine is false,^[121] and it is high time Spinther's tribunate was reinstated in the fasti; so also that of L. Cornelius Lentulus Crus (cos. 49), indirectly attested by Plutarch in 61 (Caes . 10.3; see Schol. Bob . 85, 89 Stangl; Val. Max. 4.2.5) but equally suppressed by Münzer (above, n. 120). Spinther and Crus were probably brothers.^[122] The attested tribunates of two brothers are hard to reject solely on the grounds of a dubious principle.

[120] RE 4 (1894) 1394; cf. 1382, 1302.

[121] Cf. D. R. Shackleton Bailey, "The Roman Nobility in the Second Civil War," CQ n.s. 10 (1960) 258-59 n. 3 (rejecting, however, the view that Spinther was plebeian), and Two Studies , 18-20; Syme, Roman Papers , 2:559-60; Sumner, Orators , 126, 133-34. Note that P. Cornelius Dolabella (tr. pl. 47) had become a plebeian, and thus eligible for the tribunate, through adoption by a Lentulus.

[122] Sumner, Orators , 140-41, with the review of T. P. Wiseman, JRS 65 (1975) 198.

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