Manius Acilius Glabrio

Manius Acilius Glabrio was a plebeian Roman politician and general during the Republican. He served as consul in while Rome was at war with the Seleucid Empire. He defeated Emperor Antiochus the Great at Thermopylae, helping establish Roman unipolar control over the Mediterranean, and was awarded a triumph. Credible accusations that he had embezzled spoils from his conquests in Greece while consul caused him to withdraw from his attempt to run for censor, after which he largely retired from public life. He and his sonwho later served as suffect consulwere responsible for the construction of Rome's Temple of Piety beside the Forum Olitorium. One of its decorations was a gilt statue of Acilius Glabrio, the first such golden statue of a citizen in Rome. The branch of the gens Acilia founded by Manius has been described as the very longest lived in Roman politics, giving its name to the frazione Acilia in modern Rome. Name Manius was a less common praenomen of both patricians and plebeians, abbreviated at first as ꟿ and then as M'. The cognomen Glabrioapparently first ascribed to this figurederived from the Latin adjective ("smooth, slick") and presumably indicated baldness, although it has been suggested it may have intended effeminately hairless instead. Life