It looks like you are thinking of Stockbridge in Hampshire rather than Stockwell. [1]

Gaius Nipius Ascanius was a prominent Roman businessman and mining contractor whose name is stamped on a famous 75.3 kg Roman lead ingot (or "pig") found in Stockbridge. He was involved with this location because it sat along a major Roman transport and trade route. [1, 2]

The Purpose of the Ingot

The lead ingot was stamped with the name of the reigning Emperor Nero and dated to the second half of AD 60. Ascanius acted as an imperial agent or private lessee managing the lucrative "lead-silver works" (ex argentariis). [1, 2, 3]

Why Stockbridge?

• Transport Logistics: The lead was mined in the Mendip Hills (Somerset). [1, 2]
• The Route: To export the heavy metal across the Roman Empire, it was hauled along the Roman road from the mines toward the Solent coast. [1]
• The River Crossing: Stockbridge was the vital point where this Roman road crossed the River Test. [1]
• The Accident: The heavy ingot was likely lost or dropped in transit at this river crossing, where it sat buried until its rediscovery in 1857. It is now housed in the British Museum. [1, 2]

Later in his career, Ascanius moved his operations north to take up private mining leases in Flintshire, North Wales. [1]

Are you looking into the Roman mining trade in Britain, or would you like to know more about the inscriptions on this specific ingot? [1, 2]

 In his famous lampoon, Gnaeus Naevius could have had either one or two specific members of the family in mind, though he purposefully used the plural "Metelli" to target the entire noble clan. [1, 2, 3]

The consul Quintus Caecilius Metellus replied to the insult. [1, 2]

The Context and the Numbers

Naevius attacked the powerful gens Caecilia with a clever, double-meaning line: [1]

"Fato Metelli Romae fiunt consules."
(By fate/misfortune, the Metelli are made consuls at Rome.) [1, 2]

Historically, the phrase points to a specific window of time (around 206 BC): [1]

• One Metellus: If Naevius was strictly referring to the immediate political situation, he had Quintus Caecilius Metellus in mind, who was elected consul for 206 BC. [1, 2]
• Two Metelli: If he was looking at the living family's immediate track record, he likely had two in mind. Quintus's father, Lucius Caecilius Metellus, had also been a highly prominent consul (in 251 and 247 BC) and Pontifex Maximus. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

By framing the line in the plural ("Metelli"), Naevius generalized his attack to mock the entire family's recurring political dominance as a stroke of mere luck (or a curse to the city), rather than personal merit. [1, 2]

The Reply

According to ancient commentary preserved by Pseudo-Asconius, the newly elected consul Quintus Caecilius Metellus fired back an angry threat in the same traditional Saturnian meter: [1, 2, 3]

"Dabunt malum Metelli Naevio poetae."
(The Metelli will make the poet Naevius rue it / give Naevius a whipping.) [1, 2]

Following this literary feud, the Metelli used their political influence to have Naevius imprisoned and eventually exiled. [1, 2]

If you are analyzing this for a classical literature or Latin text course, let me know if you need help looking into the poetic meter used (Saturnian verse), or the linguistic double-meanings of the word fato. [1, 2]

L'AI può commettere errori, quindi verifica le risposte 

and before father OTHER metelli?

Yes, before the famous father (Lucius) and son (Quintus) duo, there was only one other Metellus who had reached the consulship. [1, 2]

His name was Lucius Caecilius Metellus Denter, and he was the very first member of the gens Caecilia to ever become consul, serving in 284 BC. [1, 2]

The Lineage of Consuls Before Naevius's Lampoon (206 BC)

When Naevius wrote "Fato Metelli Romae fiunt consules," the family was not yet the massive political dynasty it would become later in the Republic. Up to that exact moment in 206 BC, only three Metelli in Roman history had ever held the consulship: [1, 2, 3]

Lucius Caecilius Metellus Denter (Consul in 284 BC): The grandfather of the family's greatness. He was killed in battle against the Gauls at Arretium shortly after his consulship. [1]

---

Lucius Caecilius Metellus (Consul in 251 and 247 BC): The father. He was a celebrated hero of the First Punic War who captured Carthage's war elephants. [1, 2, 3, 4]

---

Quintus Caecilius Metellus (Consul in 206 BC): The son. His election was the immediate trigger for Naevius's joke. [1, 2]

Did Naevius have the grandfather in mind?

It is highly unlikely. By 206 BC, the grandfather Denter had been dead for nearly 80 years, and his singular consulship was a distant historical event. [1]

Naevius's joke relied on the immediate, frustrating reality of a single household passing supreme power from father to son. Calling them "the Metelli" (plural) was a sarcastic exaggeration—mocking them as if they were an unstoppable, sweeping dynasty, even though they were actually just getting started. [1, 2, 3]

If you want to trace how this family actually did become a massive dynasty right after Naevius, I can show you how Quintus’s own children and grandchildren took over the Roman Senate. [1, 2, 3]

L'AI può commettere errori, quindi verifica le risposte 

and under what law quintus exercised power to exile the poet?

Quintus Caecilius Metellus did not use a specific, newly passed statute to target Naevius. Instead, he invoked the most sacred foundation of Roman law: The Law of the Twelve Tables (specifically Table VIII, which governed civil wrongs and injuries). [1, 2]

Because Rome did not yet have specialized courts for libel or freedom of speech, the consul relied on two legal mechanisms to punish and ultimately exile the poet:

1. The Twelve Tables (Defamation as a Capital Crime)

Under the ancient laws of the Twelve Tables (compiled around 450 BC), defamation was treated with extreme severity. The specific provision outlawed occentare (singing or publishing insulting, defamatory verses against another citizen). [1, 2]

• The Penalty: The original law actually prescribed capital punishment (often death by clubbing or public flogging) for anyone who composed verses that brought infamy or disgrace upon another person.[1]
• The Application: While Metellus did not execute Naevius, he used this severe legal provision to justify having the poet arrested by the triumviri capitales (the magistrates in charge of prisons and executions) and thrown into jail. [1, 2, 3, 4]

2. Imperium and Extrajudicial Political Pressure (The Exile)

Strictly speaking, early Roman law did not allow a consul to unilaterally decree an official "sentence of exile" onto a citizen without a public trial. Instead, Naevius’s exile was achieved through the exercise of magisterial imperium (supreme executive power) combined with raw aristocratic pressure: [1]

• The First Arrest: After his initial imprisonment, Naevius was actually released when the Tribunes of the Plebs intervened on his behalf. [1, 2]
• The Practical Exile: When Naevius continued his satirical attacks, the Metelli and their noble allies used their political clout to make life in Rome legally and physically impossible for him. They effectively forced him into exilium—a voluntary departure to avoid harsher legal prosecution or physical harm under the Twelve Tables. Naevius fled the Italian peninsula and spent his final days in Utica (modern-day Tunisia).[1, 2, 3]

If you are writing a paper on this, I can help you look at how later Roman writers like Cicero or Horacecommented on these strict slander laws, or how Plautus references Naevius's imprisonment in his own plays.[1]

L'AI può commettere errori, quindi verifica le risposte 

but didn’t commentators noted the vacuity of “fato” — is this an dxemplum of rigidity of mos naiorum?

Yes, classical commentators and modern philologists have deeply analyzed the deliberate "vacuity" or semantic blankness of the word fato in Naevius's line. This structural ambiguity—and the severe reaction it provoked—serves as a textbook exemplum of the absolute rigidity of the mos maiorum (the unwritten customs of the ancestors). [1, 2, 3, 4]

1. The Commentators and the "Vacuity" of Fato

Naevius’s line is a masterpiece of passive-aggressive wordplay because fato acts as a linguistic blank check. Ancient grammarians and modern scholars (such as H.B. Mattingly) point out that the word has no fixed moral valence on its own: [1, 2, 4]

• The Favorable Meaning (OLD fatum 5): It can mean "by divine destiny". To a traditional Roman, saying someone is elected fato could be a grand compliment, implying the gods decreed their rule.
• The Pejorative Meaning (OLD fatum 6): It can mean "by ill omen," "by a stroke of bad luck," or "to the misfortune of Rome". [1, 2, 3]

By leaning on the generic "vacuity" of the word, Naevius left himself plausible deniability. If confronted, he could claim he was merely praising the family’s divine right to rule. However, in the context of Roman political comedy, the audience knew exactly what he meant: the Metelli didn't win office through merito (personal merit or talent), but through blind chance or, worse, a curse upon the state. [, 2]

2. An Exemplum of the Rigidity of Mos Maiorum

The Metelli's furious reaction demonstrates just how rigidly the Roman elite protected the mos maiorum. In the early Republic, aristocratic power relied entirely on unwritten social codes like dignitas (prestige) and auctoritas (social influence). [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

This incident exposes the rigidity of that system in three ways:

• The Monopoly on Praise: Under the mos maiorum, public speech regarding the ruling class was strictly transactional. Nobility was maintained by public funeral orations and monumental inscriptions that praised an elite family's virtues (virtus, fides). Naevius broke this by introducing Greek-style maledicentia (open political satire) onto the Roman stage. The elite viewed this not as mere "artistic expression," but as a direct existential threat to the social hierarchy. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
• Guilty Until Proven Innocent: The fact that the Metelli arrested Naevius over a line that was technicallyambiguous shows that the ruling class did not care about legal nuance or literal meanings. Under the cultural code of the mos, if an aristocrat felt insulted, the insult had occurred. The social order mattered more than the objective truth of the text.
• The Suppression of Individual Critique: The mos maiorum demanded an elite consensus. Naevius was a plebeian and a playwright trying to use public comedy as a platform for political critique. By crushing him, the Metelli sent a rigid, unyielding message to the rest of the Roman populace: the theater is a place for Greek adaptations, not for questioning the political legitimacy of Roman magistrates. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

If you are examining the intersection of literature and Roman law, I can provide more details on how Plautus implicitly references Naevius's imprisonment in his play Miles Gloriosus, or how Cicero later lamentedthe strictness of these early Roman censorship rules. [1]