Quale Tubero è questo? Nota a Sen. contr. 2,1,8

The aim of this study is to identify the Q. Aelius Tubero quoted at Sen. contr. 2, 1, 8: in the II century b.C. there were indeed two homonymous characters with this name, father and son, both famous for their parsimony. As it emerges from passages found in Cicero, Valerius Maximus, and most of all Seneca the Younger, they showed their sobriety in different ways: the father refused rich gifts from foreign people, and this was a typical Roman behaviour; on the contrary, the son offered a public banquet which was so poor and miserable, that the Romans get indignant with him, and he was defeated at the elections. The paupertas of Tubero jr. was thus radical and self-defeating, so that it perfectly fits the paradoxical behaviour of the protagonist of the Controversia.