Curiatius

• a Roman proper name: Curiatius Maternus, v. Maternus.

1. P. Curiatius, tribune of the people in B. C. 401. The college of tribunes in that year laboured under great unpopularity, as two of them had been appointed by the co-optation of the college under the influence of the patricians. P. Curiatius and two of his colleagues, M. Metilius and M. Minucius, endeavoured to counteract the unpopularity and turn the hatred of the people against the patricians by bringing a charge against Sergius and Virginius, two military tribunes of the year previous, whom they declared to be the authors of all the mischief and the cause of the people's sufferings. Both the accused were condemned to pay a heavy fine, and the tribunes of the people soon after brought forward an agrarian law, and prevented the tribute for the maintenance of the armies being levied from the plebeians. (Liv. 5.11, 12.)

2. C. Curiatius, tribune of the people in B. C. 138, is characterised by Cicero (de Leg. 3.9) as a homo infimus. He caused the consuls of the year, P. Cornelius Scipio Nasica (whom he nicknamed Serapio) and D. Junius Brutus to be thrown into prison for the severity with which they proceeded in levying fresh troops, and for their disregard to the privilege of the tribunes to exempt certain persons from military service. (Liv. Epit. 55; V. Max. 3.7.3.)

There are extant several coins, on which we read C. Cur. Trige. or C. Cur. F., and which may belong to this tribune or a son of his; but it is just as probable that they belonged to some patrician C. Curiatius, about whom history furnishes no information. (Eckhel, v. p. 199, &c.) One C. Scaevius Curiatius, who lived in the early period of the empire, is mentioned in an inscription in Orelli (No. 4046) as duumvir in the municipium of Veii. [L.S]

[Maternus.]