CAECILIUS METELLUS AND THE FIRE OF 241 B.C.: NOBLE MEMORY OR CIVIC MEMORY?

The paper investigates the creation of the historical tradition on the legendary rescue of Vesta's temple cult objects by the pontifex maximus L. Caecilius Metellus during the fire of 241 B.C. While modern studies focused on the reasons behind L. Metellus's blindness, this paper emphasizes the importance of the different views between the family tradition of the Caecilii Metelli, recorded in the laudatio funebris of 221, and the Roman annalistic and antiquarian tradition: the first does not mention the episode; the second, on the contrary, emphasizes it and preserves historically reliable information based on a civic memory.