Laeca

• a Roman surname; e. g. M. Porcius Laeca, one of Catiline's fellowconspirators, Sall. C. 17: fuisti apud Laecam illa nocte, Catilina, Cic. Cat. 1, 4, 9.

1. was tribune of the plebs B. C. 199, and by his veto prevented Manlius Acidinus on his return from Spain from entering the city in an ovation, which had been granted him by the senate. [Acidinus, No. 1.] Laeca was appointed in B. C. 196 one of the triumviri epulones, who were first created in that year (see Dict. of Ant. s. v. Epulones); and in the following year, B. C. 195. he was one of the praetors, and was stationed with an army in the district of Pisae in Etruria, that he might co-operate with the consul Valerius Flaccus, who was carrying on war in Northern Italy against the Gauls and Ligurians. (Liv. 32.7, 33.42, 43.) The name of Laeca occurs on coins of the Porcia gens, of which a specimen is given below. On the obverse is the head of Pallas, with the legend P. LAECA, ROMA and x: the reverse represents three figures, the centre one is a man clad in the paludamentum, laying his right hand on the head of a citizen wearing a toga, and behind him stands a lictor; beneath these figures there is on most coins the legend PROVOCO, which, however, is wanting in the one figured below. This evidently refers to the lex Porcia de Provocatione (Liv. 10.9; Cic. de Rep. 2.31, pro Rabir. 3, 4); and as the name of P. Laeca occurs on the coin, it is supposed that the law may have been proposed by the above-mentioned P. Laeca in his tribunate in B. C. 199. There is nothing improbable in this supposition; but the name of the proposer of the law is not mentioned by any ancient writer. (Eckhel, vol. v. p. 286; Pighius, Ann. Rom. vol. ii. p. 255, &c.)

2. a senator and a leading member of the Catilinarian conspiracy. It was at his house that the conspirators met in November, B. C. 63. (Sal. Cat. 17, 37; Cic. in Cat. 1.4, 2.16, pro Sull. 2, 18; Flor. 4.1.3.)