Manlius, the name of a Roman gens, chiefly patrician, but containing plebeian families also.
I. Marcus Manlius Capitolinus, a patrician, Consul 392 B.C. According to tradition, when in 390 B.C. the besieging Gauls were attempting to scale the Capitol, he was roused by the cackling of the sacred geese, rushed to the spot and threw down the foremost assailants (Livy v. 47; Plutarch, Camillus, 27).
Several years after, seeing a centurion led to prison for debt, he freed him with his own money, and even sold his estate to relieve other poor debtors, while he accused the senate of embezzling public money. He was charged with aspiring to kingly power, and condemned by the comitia, but not until the assembly had adjourned to a place without the walls, where they could no longer see the Capitol which he had saved. His house on the Capitol (the origin of his surname) was razed, and the Manlii resolved that henceforth no patrician Manlius should bear the name of Marcus. According to Mommsen, the story of the saving of the Capitol was a later invention to explain his surname, and his attempt to relieve the debtors a fiction of the times of Cinna.
Livy vi. 14-20; Plutarch, Camillus, 36; Cicero, De domo, 38.
2. Titus Manlius Imperiosus Torquatus, twice dictator (353, 349 B.C.) and three times consul (347, 344, 340). When his father, L. Manlius Imperiosus (dictator 363), was brought to trial by the tribune M. Pomponius for abusing his office of dictator, he forced Pomponius to drop the accusation by threatening his life (Livy vii. 3-5). In 360, during a war with the Gauls, he slew one of the enemy, a man of gigantic stature, in single combat, and took from him a torques (neck-ornament), whence his surname. When the Latins demanded an equal share in the government of the confederacy, Manlius" vowed to kill with his own hand the first Latin he saw in the senatehouse. The Latins and Campanians revolted, and Manlius, consul for the third time, marched into Campania and gained two great victories, near Vesuvius, where P. Decius Mus, his colleague, " devoted " himself in order to gain the day, and at Trifanum. In this campaign Manlius executed his own son, who had killed an enemy in single combat, and thus disobeyed the express command of the consuls.
Livy vii. 4, to, 27, viii. 3; Cicero, De off. iii. 31.
3. Titus Manlius Torquatus, Consul 235 B.C. and 224, censor 231, dictator 208. In his first consulship he subjugated Sardinia, recently acquired from the Carthaginians, when the temple of Janus was shut for the second time in Roman history (Livy i. i 9). In 216 he opposed the ransoming of the Romans taken prisoners at Cannae; and in 21 5 he was sent to Sardinia and defeated a Carthaginian attempt to regain possession of the island.
Livy xxiii. 34; Polybius ii. 31.
4. Gnaeus Manlius Vulso, praetor 195, Consul 189. He was sent to Asia to conclude peace with Antiochus III., king of Syria. He marched into Pamphylia, defeated the Celts of Galatia on Mt Olympus and drove them back across the Halys. In the winter, assisted by ten delegates sent from Rome, he settled the terms of peace with Antiochus, and in 187 received the honour of a triumph.
Polybius xxii. 16-25; Livy xxxviii. 12-28, 37-50; xxxix. 6.
