Drusus8. M.LiviusDrususLibo was probably aedile about B. C.
28, shortly before the completion of the Pantheon, and may be the person who is
mentioned by Pliny (Plin. Nat. 36.15. s. 24) as having
given games at Rome when the theatre was covered by Valerius, the architect of Ostium. He was
consul in B. C. 15. As his name denotes, he was originally a
Scribonius Libo, and was adopted by a Livius Drusus. Hence he is supposed to
have been adopted by Livius Drusus Claudianus [No. 7], whose name, date, want of male
children, and political associations with the party opposed to Caesar, favour the conjecture.
He is also supposed to have been the father of the Libo Drusus, or Drusus Libo [No. 10], who
conspired against Tiberius. As Pompey the Great would appear from Tacitus (Tac. Ann. 2.27) to have been the proavus of the conspirator,
Scribonia his amita, and the young Caesars (Caius and Lucius) his consobrini, Drusus Libo, the
father, is supposed to have marrried a granddaughter of Pompey. Still there are difficulties
in the pedigree, which have perplexed Lipsius, Gronovius, Ryckius, and other learned
commentators on the cited passage in Tacitus. M. de la Nauze thinks that the father was a
younger brother of Scribonia, the wife of Augustus, and that he married his grandniece, the
daughter of Sextus Pompeius. According to this explanation, he was about 26 years younger than
his elder brother, L. Scribonius Libo, who was consul B. C. 34, and
whose daughter was married to Sextus Pompeius. (D. C. 48.16 ;
Appian, App. BC 5.139.)
There is extant a rare silver coin of M. Drusus Libo, bearing on the obverse a naked head,
supposed by some to be the head of his natural, by others of his adoptive, father. On the
reverse is a sella curulis, between cornucopiae and branches of olive, with the legend M. LIVI
DRUSUS
LIBO, L. F., headed by the words Ex. S.C. It may be doubted whether
the letters L. F. do not denote that Lucius was the praenomen of the adoptive father. (Morell.
Thes. Num. ii. p. 586; Drumann's Rom. iv. p. 591,
n. 63; De la Nauze, in Mémoires de l'Académie des
Inscriptions, xxxv. p. 600.)