Talk:Lucius Volusius Maecianus

Cryptic acclesiastical abbreviation
What is a praef ann? -- Chetvorno TALK 05:55, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Sometimes EB 1911 is just plain wrong
This line has long puzzled me: "While governor of Alexandria he was slain by the soldiers, as having participated in the rebellion of Avidius Cassius in 175.[citation needed] (Cassius was his son-in-law by marriage to his daughter Volusia Vettia or Volusia Maeciana (c. 135 – aft. 175), the name of his wife being unknown.)"

This doesn't make sense because by 175 Maecianus was a Senator, & Senators were pointedly excluded from Roman Egypt. Further, there was no position known as "governor of Alexandria" -- there was a governor of Egypt, who was an eques, & again Maecianus by that point was no longer an eques.

I finally had the time & resources in place last night to try to figure this out. First I discovered the source for this puzzling claim was the original EB 1911 article. Odd, but back then their knowledge of Roman Egypt was not as complete as ours is today; maybe the fact that Maecianus had been adlected into the Senate was not known then. I looked at the primary source citations in that EB 1911 article, which pointed to the Historia Augustiae. In Anthony Birley's translation Volusius Maecianus is mentioned twice -- neither time in connection with Alexandria or Egypt -- but in the essays on Marcus Aurelius & Avidius Cassius a Maecianus is mentioned, & we are told that he was murdered in Alexandria after the defeat of Cassius. I figured out what the author of that article had done because I made the same mistake: I assumed the second Maecianus was Voluius Maecianus, when he should be correctly identified with Avidius Maecianus son of Cassius & grandson of Volusius Maecianus! (Other sources, such as Birley's Marcus Aurelius, identifies the Maecianus whom soldiers murdered in Alexandria as the son of Cassius.)

This is why I removed deleted this part of the article. -- llywrch (talk) 17:23, 27 February 2020 (UTC)