Virius Lupus was a imperial Roman

Roman Empire

The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....

 politician who served as consul

Roman consul

A consul served in the highest elected political office of the Roman Republic.Each year, two consuls were elected together, to serve for a one-year term. Each consul was given veto power over his colleague and the officials would alternate each month...

 in 278

278

Year 278 was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Probus and Lupus...

 AD.

Career

Possibly the son of Lucius Virius Lupus Iulianus, consul in 232 AD, Lupus had a sufficiently distinguished career for him to be consul suffectus sometime before 275 AD. After this he was appointed Consularis

Consularis

Consularis is a Latin word, derived from consulo, "take counsel".-Roman history:Originally it was simple and adjective meaning "consular", but more interestingly it has also become a substantive, used in technical meanings.* Any former consul...

 of Caelimontium, one of the 14 regions of ancient Rome. He was also appointed curator

Curator

A curator is a manager or overseer. Traditionally, a curator or keeper of a cultural heritage institution is a content specialist responsible for an institution's collections and involved with the interpretation of heritage material...

 of Laurentum

Laurentum

Laurentum was an ancient Roman city of Latium situated between Ostia and Lavinium, on the west coast of the Italian Peninsula southwest of Rome. Roman writers regarded it as the original capital of the Latins, before Lavinium assumed that role after the death of King Latinus...

.

During the reign of the emperor

Roman Emperor

The Roman emperor was the ruler of the Roman State during the imperial period . The Romans had no single term for the office although at any given time, a given title was associated with the emperor...

 Gallienus

Gallienus

Gallienus was Roman Emperor with his father Valerian from 253 to 260, and alone from 260 to 268. He took control of the Empire at a time when it was undergoing great crisis...

 Lupus was appointed the senatorial Praeses

Praeses

Praeses , is a Latin word meaning "Seated in front of, i.e. at the head ", has both ancient and modern uses.-Roman imperial use:...

 (governor) of Arabia Petraea

Arabia Petraea

Arabia Petraea, also called Provincia Arabia or simply Arabia, was a frontier province of the Roman Empire beginning in the 2nd century; it consisted of the former Nabataean kingdom in modern Jordan, southern modern Syria, the Sinai Peninsula and northwestern Saudi Arabia. Its capital was Petra...

 (a position he held before 259 AD). During his term the rhetorician
Callinicus of Petra

Petra

Petra is a historical and archaeological city in the Jordanian governorate of Ma'an that is famous for its rock cut architecture and water conduits system. Established sometime around the 6th century BC as the capital city of the Nabataeans, it is a symbol of Jordan as well as its most visited...

 dedicated a work to Lupus, titled On Rhetorical Mannerism.

Following this, during the 260s, Lupus was appointed to the governorship of Syria Coele

Syria (Roman province)

Syria was a Roman province, annexed in 64 BC by Pompey, as a consequence of his military presence after pursuing victory in the Third Mithridatic War. It remained under Roman, and subsequently Byzantine, rule for seven centuries, until 637 when it fell to the Islamic conquests.- Principate :The...

, which, although nominally subject to Gallienus, placed him under the authority of Odaenathus

Odaenathus

Lucius Septimius Odaenathus, Odenathus or Odenatus , the Latinized form of the Syriac Odainath, was a ruler of Palmyra, Syria and later of the short lived Palmyrene Empire, in the second half of the 3rd century, who succeeded in recovering the Roman East from the Persians and restoring it to the...

. During 271-272, he was serving as governor of Asia, this time his allegiance shifted from Zenobia

Zenobia

Zenobia was a 3rd-century Queen of the Palmyrene Empire in Roman Syria. She led a famous revolt against the Roman Empire. The second wife of King Septimius Odaenathus, Zenobia became queen of the Palmyrene Empire following Odaenathus' death in 267...

 to the emperor Aurelian

Aurelian

Aurelian , was Roman Emperor from 270 to 275. During his reign, he defeated the Alamanni after a devastating war. He also defeated the Goths, Vandals, Juthungi, Sarmatians, and Carpi. Aurelian restored the Empire's eastern provinces after his conquest of the Palmyrene Empire in 273. The following...

. He was heavily involved in Aurelian's restructure of Zenobian Syria following the emperor's subjugation of the east. During this time, he was also iudici sacrarum cognition of Egypt and the east. This was followed by his appointment as pontifex

Pontifex

PONTIFEX was a mid-1980s project that introduced a novel approach to complex aircraft fleet scheduling, partially funded by the European Commission’s Strategic Programme for R&D in Information Technology.Since the mathematical problems stemming from non trivial fleet scheduling easily become...

 dei solis

Sol Invictus

Sol Invictus was the official sun god of the later Roman empire. In 274 Aurelian made it an official cult alongside the traditional Roman cults. Scholars disagree whether the new deity was a refoundation of the ancient Latin cult of Sol, a revival of the cult of Elagabalus or completely new...

, one of the earliest appointments made by Aurelian to his new college of priests serving Sol Invictus.

While in the east, he sided with Probus after Probus was proclaimed emperor in 276. As a reward, Lupus was then made consul for the second time in 278

278

Year 278 was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Probus and Lupus...

 AD alongside Probus. After his term in office the emperor appointed him Urban prefect

Praefectus urbi

The praefectus urbanus or praefectus urbi, in English the urban prefect, was prefect of the city of Rome, and later also of Constantinople. The office originated under the Roman kings, continued during the Republic and Empire, and held high importance in late Antiquity...

 of Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

, a position he held from 278 to 280 AD.

Sources

• Jones, A. H. M., Martindale, J. R., Morris, J., The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, Vol. I (1971).
• Potter, David Stone, The Roman Empire at Bay, AD 180-395 (2004).
• Watson, Alaric, Aurelian and the Third Century (1999).