A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

3. C.Poetelius, C. F. C. N., LIBO VISOLUS, son of No. 2, is distinguished in the early legislation of the republic by two important laws which he proposed. He was tribune of the plebs B. C. 358, in which year he proposed the first law enacted at Rome against bribery. (Liv. 7.12.) He was consul for the first time in B. C. 346, with M. Valerius Corvus; and it was in this year that the ludi saeculares were celebrated a second time. (Liv. 7.27; Diod. 16.72; Censorin. de Die Nat. 17.) His second consulship is assigned by Pighius (Annal. vol. i. p. 329) to the year B. C. 333, though not on sufficient grounds; the consuls of this year it is impossible to ascertain. He was, however, undoubtedly consul again in B. C. 326, with L. Papirius Mugillanus, and dictator thirteen years afterwards, B. C. 313, when he gained some advantages over the Samnites, though some annalists gave the credit of these victories to the consul C. Junius Bubulcus Brutus. (Liv. 8.23, 9.28; Diod. 17.113.) Libo was the proposer of the Poetelia lex, which abolished imprisonment for debt in the case of the nexi. (Dict. of Ant. s. v. Nexum.) Livy places (8.28) this law in the last consulship of Poetelius, B. C. 326; but Niebuhr thinks (Rom. Hist. vol. iii. pp. 155, &c., 293) it more probable that it was brought forward in his dictatorship; and his opinion, which receives support from a corrupt passage of Varro (L. L. 7.105, ed. Muller), is adopted also by K. O. Muller (ad Varr. l.c.).