the name of a noble family of the Cæcilian gens. Of this family the following are the most notable members:

Quintus Cæcilius Metellus Macedonicus, who was appointed praetor in 148 B.C. Having received Macedonia as his province, he routed and captured Andriscus, the pretended king of that country. He then turned his arms against the Achaeans, and encountering their praetor Critolaus near Thermopylae, gave him a severe defeat. After gaining a victory over the Arcadians near Charonea, he returned to Rome in 146 B.C., and was honoured with a triumph and with the surname of Macedonicus. Elected to the consulship in 143 B.C., Metellus was intrusted with the war against the Celtiberians in nearer Spain. During the two years of this command he maintained with a steady hand the severest discipline among his soldiers, and the most skilful tactics against the enemy. His censorship in 131 B.C. was rendered notable by his proposing that every Roman should be forced by law to marry. The speech with which he introduced this motion was long afterwards read by Augustus in the senate, and has been partly preserved by A. Gellius in his *Noctes Atticae*. Metellus lived to be universally respected, and to see his four sons enjoy the highest honours and the highest offices in the state. He died in 115 B.C., after exhibiting in his life a picture of human felicity which ancient writers have considered remarkable and almost unexampled.

Quintus Cæcilius Metellus Numidicus, who became consul in 109 B.C., and was sent into Numidia to carry on the war against Jugurtha. No sooner had he assumed the command than the Roman cause, which was formerly on the descendant, began forthwith to prosper. He routed the enemy near the River Mathal, ravaged the country without opposition, and by an artful system of intrigues kept the Numidian king in a restless terror for his life. In the following year, however, he was forced by the wary strategy of Jugurtha to protract the war. This delay was employed by his lieutenant, the ambitious Marius, to ruin his military reputation. The consequence was, that in a short time the low-born Marius superseded the aristocratic Metellus in the consulship and the command of the army. On his arrival at Rome in 107 B.C. Metellus was received with great applause, and was honoured with a triumph and with the title of Numidicus. During his censorship in 102 B.C. his zeal for the aristocracy led him to attempt to expel from the senate two inveterate plebeians Servilius Glanecia and Appuleius Saturninus. In 100 B.C. the latter obtaining the tribunate, returned the blow of Metellus, and by the aid of Marius, who was then consul, succeeded not only in depriving him of his seat in the senate, but in effecting his banishment. With cheerful resignation Metellus set out to Rhodes, carrying along with him his friend Cælius Praconinus, the rhetorician, and bent upon burying all gloomy thoughts in the deep problems of philosophy. He was roused, however, from his studies in the following year by the news that the popular party had suffered a severe check by the death of Saturninus, and that his own banishment was repealed. Not long after his return to Rome, Metellus is supposed to have been poisoned.

Quintus Cæcilius Metellus Pius, who received the surname of Pius from his affectionate endeavours to effect the recall of his father Numidicus from banishment. He was elected praetor in 89 B.C., and gained his first distinction as one of the leaders of the Marsic war. From carrying on hostilities against the Samnites he was summoned in 87 B.C. to defend Rome from Marius, who had returned from exile, and was marching towards the city to wreak vengeance on his enemies. Deeming it imprudent to dare so redoubtable a foe, Metellus repaired to Africa, and did not return to Italy till 84 B.C. He was among the first to greet Sulla on his landing at Brundusium in 83 B.C., and was one of the most effective lieutenants of that general in his protracted struggle with the Marian party. In 82 B.C. he gained three successive victories over the forces of Carbo; and in 79 B.C. he was sent as proconsul into Spain to check the victorious career of Sertorius. His ignorance, however, of that country, and the increasing infirmities of age, rendered him unfit to cope with the alert movements and guerrilla strategy of his enemy. Only after a campaign of seven years was his military reputation redeemed by a victory over Sertorius. He returned to Rome in the following year to celebrate a triumph. Metellus Pius had been consul along with Sulla in 80 B.C., and he had also been appointed pontifex maximus. He died about 63 B.C.

Quintus Cæcilius Metellus Celer, who was elected to the praetorship in 63 B.C. In this capacity he was intrusted with the command of the three legions that guarded the Picentine and Senonian districts during the Catilinarian conspiracy. Anticipating the attempt of the rebel army to escape into Gaul, he threw himself into the passes of the Apennines, and thus compelled Catiline to turn back upon his pursuers, and to hazard that battle which issued in his defeat and death. In 60 B.C. Metellus was elected to the consulship, and exerted the entire power of his office in opposing the measures of Pompey, who was at that time considered the deadliest foe of the aristocracy. So determined, indeed, was his opposition, that he chose to be dragged to prison by order of the tribune rather than sanction an agrarian law for the provision of Pompey's soldiers. With the same unflinching resistance did he meet the agrarian law of Caesar in 59 B.C. His death happened in the same year, not without raising suspicions that he had been poisoned by his wife Clodia, the profligate sister of Clodius.

Quintus Cæcilius Metellus Pius Scipio, who was the adopted son of Metellus Pius, and became tribune of the people in 69 B.C. In 52 B.C. Pompey took his daughter Cornelia in marriage, and chose himself as his colleague in the consulship. Metellus now became a puppet in the hands of his ambitious son-in-law. In 49 B.C. he proposed in the senate that Caesar should be commanded to disband his troops, on pain of being treated as a public enemy. On the outbreak of the civil war which followed the execution of this proposal, the command in Syria was allotted to Metellus. No sooner had he taken possession of his province than his vicious character and his inability to govern burst forth into strong manifestation. The most exorbitant taxes were wrung from the people; the country was overrun by swarms of pillaging soldiers, and the blackest crimes passed unchallenged. From this scene of ruthless oppression he was summoned in 48 B.C. to play a part in the impending struggle between Pompey and Caesar. He joined his son-in-law shortly after the skirmish at Dyrrhachium, and commencing forthwith to portion out the honours which the coming victory would leave at the disposal of his party, he became involved in a hot quarrel with some of his comrades touching his own claims to succeed Caesar in the office of pontifex maximus. On the fatal day of Pharsalus he led the centre of the Pompeian army, and after he had seen his ambitious hopes scattered in the rout of his flying squadrons, he repaired to Africa to seek the aid of Juba, King of Numidia. The partizans of Pompey in that country placed him at their head. He was engaged in using his prerogative in his old practice of pillaging and oppressing when Caesar arrived, towards the close of the year 47 B.C.

In the following year Metellus was completely defeated at Thapsus. Escaping on board of a small fleet, he was intercepted by a squadron under P. Sittius, and was on the point of being captured when he stabbed himself; and then flung himself into the sea.