The gens Fufia was first mentioned in the middle of the seventh century AUC (91 BCE) and disappeared from the records only 200 years later. Even though they are listed as an entirely plebeian gens, the last recorded Fufius held a religious office only available to patricians, that of an arvale.

Though it cannot be verified, it is most likely that the Fufii originated from Campania where, according to Pauly, at least the stirps Calenus owned considerable amounts of land. According to the same source, the cognomen Calenus derives from the Campanian municipium of Cales, and a coin, probably issued by the son of the first Fufius Calenus, commemorates his father’s achievements during the Social War (bellum sociale, 662 to 665), the conflict of Rome with her Italian allies.

Even if the Fufii’s appearance in the limelight of the (surviving) historical records was only a comparably brief one, we can still roughly follow their traces when it comes to political and personal alignments. Below you will find a list of all the recorded Fufii (i.e. who I was able to track down) in hopefully chronological order. Please note that all dates mentioned in this article are stated in AUC. In order to jump directly to the stories of the two best known Fufii, simply click on the respective name:

• Q. Fufius Q. f. C. n. Calenus, Cicero’s enemy
• C. Fufius Geminus, Tiberius’ imperial pain in the neck

Lucius Fufius

In 655 Lucius Fufius accused Manius Aquillius, a loyal follower of Marius, of maladministration in Sicily; even though there was strong proof of Aquillius’s guilt, he was acquitted because of his bravery in war.

Q. Fufius Calenus

In his eighth oration against M. Antonius, who was defended by the younger Q. Fufius Calenus (see below), Cicero mentions the older Calenus’s attitude towards the slayer of Tiberius Gracchus:

“Your father, indeed, with whom I as a youth was acquainted, when he was an old man — a man of rigid virtue and wisdom — used to give the greatest praise of all citizens who had ever lived to Publius Nasica, who slew Tiberius Gracchus.”

Q. Fufius Q. f. C. n. Calenus (d. 713)

Tribunus plebeis in 692 • praetor in 694 • consul ordinarius in 706 • military commander under Caesar and M. Antonius

There was certainly no love lost between Cicero and the younger Q. Fufius Calenus, the best known member of this gens. Even though Cicero repeatedly called him “friend” in his orations, he found other words in his letters:

“Here also Quintus Fufius, a brave and energetic man, and a friend of mine...”
(Orations against M. Antonius)

“... and found that the greatest trouble was to make Fufius the tribune...”

“... that most insignificant of tribunes, Fufius,...”

“... he [Piso] is lazy, sleepy, unbusiness-like, an utter fainéant ... a taste for a profligate policy and a profligate party ... But he has nobody among the magistrates like himself, with the single exception of the tribune Fufius.”
(Letters to P. Sesticus and Atticus)

Small wonder. Cicero and Calenus disagreed on nearly everything. Q. Fufius had apparently sympathised with Catilina, though not actively, and had also been a friend of the notorious Publius Clodius Pulcher, like Catilina and Calenus himself a red rag to Cicero. It had been due to Fufius’s intervention — a law introduced by him concerning the choice of judges — that Clodius finally had been acquitted in the Bona Dea affair, something nobody had really expected.

Later, as a praetor, Fufius favoured the Clodians after Milo’s murder of Clodius. At that time he was already allied with (and most likely supported by) Caesar and, according to Pauly, attracted a good deal of wrath the then-consul Casesar had aroused among the loyalists to his person. Cicero notes in a letter to Atticus:

“... Fufius is pursued with shouts, jeers, and hisses.”

Fufius became a legate for Caesar in Gaul in 703. After the the Civil War had already broken out, he visited Cicero in his Formianum, blaming the crimes of Pompey and the stupidity of the senate for it. He continued as Caesar’s legate in Spain, later he followed him to Epirus together with M. Antonius. Back in Rome, he and P. Vatinius were made consuls by Caesar in 707. In 710 he defended his friend Marcus Antonius against Cicero.

In 711, according to Appian, the Roman famous scholar and writer M. Terentius Varro, also known as Varro Reatinus, was saved by a Fufius from the proscriptions, but it is not entirely clear if Varro’s surviving “letter to Fufius” was addressed to Q. Fufius Calenus (which Pauly thinks most likely) or another member of the family.

Again Fufius acted as legate, this time for Antonius who had given him command over the legions in Italia. After the Perusine War was lost, Octavian’s main objective was to gain control over Fufius’s army located at the foot of the alps. The death of Calenus in 713 came as a windfall to Octavian, since his terrified son, according to Appian still “half a child”, surrendered at once, without striking a single blow.

M. Fufius M. f. Strigo

Strigo is validated as the only quindecimvir sacris faciundis of the secular games in 736 and was also magister of the college in the same year. A senatorial career leading to praetorship is assumed but cannot be verified.

Q. Fufius Q. l. Epaphroditus

Epaphroditus, a freedman (libertus), is registered in the fasti of the college at the Via Memorata as vicomagister in the sixth year (751/752). This college donated an altar to Apollo and outfitted their schola with many inscriptions including calendars, lists of consuls, censors and magistri.

The magistracy of the vicus offered urban freedmen — at least those who were wealthy but nevertheless socially disadvantaged — a unique chance for a political career, usually not accessible for freedmen in the first generation. As vicomagistri they wore a ceremonial dress and were granted two lictors — a privilege often proudly displayed on altars they erected — and their names were annually recorded on the fasti, just like those of other (freeborn or even patrician) officials.

Fufius Geminus

Another member of the family, Fufius Geminus, is briefly mentioned by Cassius Dio as one of Caesar’s commanders in Pannonia, most likely the same who was appointed consular suffectus in 751:

“After this he [Caesar] left Fufius Geminus there with a small force and himself returned to Rome... when some of the newly-conquered people and Dalmatians along with them rose in revolt. Geminus, although expelled from Siscia, nevertheless recovered Pannonia by a few battles...”

From that time on, the Fufii seemed to have lost their taste for military adventures, and their members are only mentioned in religious or political context. However, the fate of another Fufius Geminus captured the historians’ attention nevertheless:

C. Fufius Geminus (d. 782)

According to the fasti sacerdotum, C. Fufius Geminus, son of the homonymous consular suffectus of 751, had already been an epulo while he was designated tribunus plebeis; in 773 he served as quaestor, and in 782 as consul ordinarius.

This obviously quite sharp-tongued Fufius had been in the good graces of Livia Drusilla, the mother of the emperor Tiberius. Right after her death, Tiberius took offence at Geminus’s mockeries and — here the sources disagree — either had him executed or driven to suicide; his mother Vitia was executed because she had mourned her son’s fate. Mutilia Prisca, Gemnius’s wife, publicly committed suicide in the senate after having been accused of adultery with Iulius Posthumus.

“...he [Tiberius] berated her [Livia’s] womanly friendships, a glancing blow at the consul Fufius. (The latter had flourished by Augusta’s favor, adept as he was at attracting female sympathy, while being at the same time glib and accustomed to deride Tiberius in accerbic witticisms, for which the powerful have a long memory.)
...
Not even females were exempt from danger, who, because they could not be charged with taking over the state, were indicted for their tears: the aged Vitia, mother of Fufius Geminus, was executed on the grounds that she had wept at the execution of her son.”
(Tacitus, Annals)

“While matters were going thus with Sejanus, many of the other prominent men perished, among them Gaius Fufius Geminus. This man, having been accused of maiestas against Tiberius, took his will into the senate-chamber and read it, showing that he had left his inheritance in equal portions to his children and to the emperor. Upon being charged with cowardice, he went home before a vote was taken; then, when he learned that the quaestor had arrived to look after his execution, he wounded himself, and showing the wound to the official, exclaimed: ‘Report to the senate that it is thus one dies who is a man.’ Likewise his wife, Mutilia Prisca, against whom some complaint had been lodged, entered the senate chamber and there stabbed herself with a dagger, which she had brought in secretly.”
(Cassius Dio, Roman History)

“He [Tiberius] further disregarded the provisions of her [Livia’s] will, and within a short time caused the downfall of all her friends and intimates, even of those to whom she had on her deathbed entrusted the care of her obsequies, actually condemning one of them, and that a man of equestrian rank, to the treadmill.”
(Suetonius, Life of Tiberius)

C. Fufius Iunius Tadius Meftianus

The last of the recorded Fufii held the rank of an arvale. From 834 on he was magister of the college. Members of the fratres arvales, one of the most important colleges, were chosen for life and didn’t lose their status even in exile.

Meftianus’ appointment to the rank of an arvale, let alone master of the college, is quite surprising since this office was only open to patricians. If there ever was patrician branch of the Fufii, which the presence of Meftianus among the fratres arvales suggests, no evidence has survived.

Another Fufius is mentioned by Pliny the Older in his “Natural History” — on an entirely different subject, that of physical prowess:

“Fufius Salvius having two hundred pound weights at his feet, and as many in his hands, and twise as much upon his shoulders, went withall up a paire of staires or a ladder.”

• Text by Manius Fufius Pavo •