Publius Cornelius Cethegus, was a member of the gens

Gens

In ancient Rome, a gens , plural gentes, referred to a family, consisting of all those individuals who shared the same nomen and claimed descent from a common ancestor. A branch of a gens was called a stirps . The gens was an important social structure at Rome and throughout Italy during the...

 Cornelia of the branch with the cognomen Cethegus

Cethegus

Cethegus is the name of a Roman patrician family of the Cornelian gens. Like the younger Cato its members kept up the old Roman fashion of dispensing with the tunic and leaving the arms bare . The following individuals are of some importance:*Marcus Cornelius Cethegus, curule aedile, 213 BC...

.

Cethegus was first a supporter of Gaius Marius

Gaius Marius

Gaius Marius was a Roman general and statesman. He was elected consul an unprecedented seven times during his career. He was also noted for his dramatic reforms of Roman armies, authorizing recruitment of landless citizens, eliminating the manipular military formations, and reorganizing the...

 but when Lucius Cornelius Sulla

Lucius Cornelius Sulla

Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix , known commonly as Sulla, was a Roman general and statesman. He had the rare distinction of holding the office of consul twice, as well as that of dictator...

 returned from the East after having beaten Mithridates Eupator, Cethegus deserted the cause of the populares

Populares

Populares were aristocratic leaders in the late Roman Republic who relied on the people's assemblies and tribunate to acquire political power. They are regarded in modern scholarship as in opposition to the optimates, who are identified with the conservative interests of a senatorial elite...

 and joined Sulla. (Appian, B. C. i. 60 62, 80.)

Cethegus was known for a notorious bad life and for untrustworthiness but nonetheless he managed to accumulate great power and influence after Sulla's death, to the amount that even Lucius Licinius Lucullus

Lucius Licinius Lucullus

This article is on the Consul of 151 BC. For the descendent see Lucullus, and for others of this name see Licinia .Lucius Licinius Lucullus was a novus homo who became Consul in 151 BC. He was imprisoned by the Tribunes for attempting to enforce a troop levy too harshly...

was forced to sue Cethegus' concubine to use her interest in his favour, when he sought the command against Mithridates. (Cic. Parad. v. 3; Plut. Lucull. 5, 6 ; comp. Cic. pro Cluent. 31.)