Cornelius Labeo

Who is Cornelius Labeo?

Cornelius Labeo was an ancient Roman theologian and antiquarian who wrote on such topics as the Roman calendar and the teachings of Etruscan religion. His works survive only in fragments and testimonia. He has been dated "plausibly but not provably" to the 3rd century AD. Labeo has been called "the most important Roman theologian" after Varro, whose work seems to have influenced him strongly. He is usually considered a Neoplatonist.

Labeo and Censorinus are the only authors with demonstrable interests in writing about Roman religion during a time of "military anarchy" between the death of Caracalla and the accession of Diocletian when scholarship seems mostly to have ground to a halt. Because religious and civil law in ancient Rome may overlap, the fragments of this Labeo are sometimes confused with those of the jurists Quintus Antistius Labeo and Marcus Antistius Labeo.