A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

7. MAENIUS, the proposer of the law, about B. C. 286, which required the patres to give their sanction to the election of the magistrates before they had been elected, or in other words to confer, or agree to confer, the imperium on the person whom the comitia should elect. (Cic. Brut. 14.) Pighius and Freinsheim supposed that this Maenius was a tribune of the plebs; but Niebuhr conjectures (Hist. of Rome, vol. iii. p. 421) that he may have been the same as the C. Maenius above-mentioned [No. 6], and that the high character and venerable age of the latter may have had some influence in procuring the enactment of the law.