Maenius
1.
Gaius. Consul B.C. 338, with L. Furius Camillus.
The two consuls completed the subjugation of Latium; they were both rewarded with a triumph,
and equestrian statues were erected to their honour in the Forum. The statue of Maenius was
placed upon a column, called Columna Maenia, which appears to have stood near the end of the
Forum, on the Capitoline. Maenius, in his censorship (B.C. 318), allowed balconies to be
added to the various buildings surrounding the Forum, in order that the spectators might
obtain more room for beholding the games which were exhibited there: these balconies were
called after him Maeniāna (sc.
aedificia).
2.
The proposer of a 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.
3.
A contemporary of Lucilius. He was a great spendthrift, who squandered all his property,
and afterwards supported himself by playing the buffoon. He possessed a house in the Forum,
which Cato in his censorship (184 B.C.) purchased of him for the purpose of building the
Basilica Porcia. Some of the scholiasts on Horace relate that when Maenius sold his house, he
reserved for himself one column, the Columna Maenia, from which he built a balcony that he
might thence witness the games. The true origin of the Columna Maenia and of the balconies
called Maeniana has been explained above.
