Volscius

• the name of a Roman gens: Volscius Fictor, Liv. 3, 13; 3, 24; 3, 29.

who had been previously tribune of the plebs, came forward in B. C. 461 to bear witness against K. Quintius, the son of L. Cincinnatus, and declared that soon after the plague he and his elder brother fell in with a party of patrician youths who came rushing through the Subura, when their leader Kaeso knocked down his brother, who was still feeble from the sickness he had just got over, and injured him so much that he died shortly afterwards. Dionysius makes Volscius tribune of the plebs in this year. In consequence of this testimony Kacsso was condemned. The patricians in revenge charged Volscius with falsehood ; and in B. C. 459 the quaestors accused him before the comitia of the curiae or the centuries, of having borne false witness against Kaeso, but the tribunes prevented them from prosecuting the charge. In the following year, B. C. 458, L. Cincinnatus, the father of Kaeso, was appointed dictator, and presided in the comitia for the trial of Volscius. The tribunes dared not offer any further opposition, and Volscius was obliged to go into exile. (Liv. 3.13, 24, 25, 29 ; Dionys. A. R. 10.7; Niebuhr, Hist. of Rome, vol. ii. pp. 289, 298.)