Until the recovery of a dedication from the ruins of a villa in
Lucus Feroniae owned at one point by the
Volusii Saturnini, all that was known of Saturninus beyond his consulate was his presence at one of the ceremonies of the
Arval Brethren in 119. This inscription bore a
cursus honorum for the man. After providing his name with filation, the inscription attests he started his senatorial career likely in his teens as one of the
tresviri monetalis, the most prestigious of the four boards of the
vigintiviri, a minor collegium which young senators served on at the start of their careers. Serving as one of the
tresviri monetales was usually reserved either for members of the
patrician class or young men favored by the emperor; his membership in the
salius Palatinus confirms he was a patrician. Although this office is not mentioned in the inscription, as a patrician Saturninus would have been guaranteed that as
quaestor he would have been assigned to assist the emperor, and as quaestor Saturninus' duties would have included reading the emperor's speeches to the Senate. Another detail that can be inferred from his status as a Patrician is that if he acceded to consul
anno suo, or at the legal age of 32, as many Patricians did, Saturninus most likely was born around the year 60. At this point, the Lucus Feroniae inscription presents problems, due both to damage and to unusual terminology. One line reads
prefecto [...]. In his discussion of this inscription
Werner Eck first proposed the lost word was
fabricum, an uncommon term for an assistant to a
proconsular official; he could only cite two other examples of its usage. However, in a note added to the end of his article just before publication, Eck accepted another restoration of the line, proposed by Joyce Reynolds:
prefecto [fer(iarum) Lat(inarum], or overseer of an old Latin festival observed into the second century AD, which is much better known. The second problem involves the next two lines,
[ce]nturioni eq[uitum] [tu]rmae p[rimae]. At first glance this appears to be a less common form of the title
sevir equitum Romanorum, an official who presided at the annual review of the
equites; although a relatively unimportant function, Birley notes "it was thought worth mentioning by over a hundred senators." However, Eck points out that
centurion is not the usual title for a commander of cavalry, and by comparing this inscription with a near-contemporary one concerning
Lucius Nonius Asprenas (consul in 71 or 72), shows this is not a stone-cutter's mistake:
centurioni equitum turmae primae was an actual title. Having acknowledged the odd language, Eck then argues that the titles were, indeed, identical. == Miscellaneous ==