Ahala

Ahala was a cognomen used by a branch of the patrician gens Servilia. There were also several persons of this gens with the name of Structus Ahala, who may have formed a different family from the Ahalae; but as the Ahalae and Structi Ahalae are frequently confounded, all known persons of these names are given here.[1]

• Gaius Servilius Structus Ahala, consul in 478 BC, died in his year of office, as appears from the Fasti Capitolini.[2]
• Gaius Servilius Structus Ahala, legendary Roman hero of the 5th century BC
• Gaius Servilius Q. f. C. n. Structus Ahala, consul in 427 BC.[3]
• Gaius Servilius P. f. Q. n. Structus Ahala, consular tribune in 408 BC, and magister equitum in the same year; which latter dignity he obtained in consequence of supporting the senate against his colleagues, who did not wish a dictator to be appointed. For the same reason he was elected consular tribune a second time in the following year, 407. He was consular tribune a third time in 402, when he assisted the senate in compelling his colleagues who had been defeated by the enemy to resign.[4]
• Gaius Servilius Ahala, magister equitum in 389 BC, when Camillus was appointed dictator for a third time.[5] Ahala is spoken of as magister equitum in 385 BC, on occasion of the trial of Marcus Manlius Capitolinus. Manlius summoned him to bear witness in his favor, as one of those whose lives he had saved in battle; but Ahala did not appear.[6] Pliny, who mentions this circumstance, calls Ahala "Publius Servilius".[7]
• Quintus Servilius Q. f. Q. n. Ahala, consul in 365 BC, and again in 362, in the latter of which years he appointed Appius Claudius dictator, after his plebeian colleague Lucius Genucius Aventinensis had been slain in battle. In 360 he was himself appointed dictator in consequence of a Gallic tumultus and defeated the Gauls near the Colline gate. He held the comitia as interrex in 355.[8]
• Quintus Servilius Q. f. Q. n. Ahala, magister equitum in 351 BC, when Marcus Fabius Ambustus was appointed dictator to frustrate the Lex Licinia Sextia, and consul in 342, at the beginning of the First Samnite War. He remained in the city; his colleague had the charge of the war.[9]

References

1. Smith, William (1867), "Ahala", in Smith, William (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, 1, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, p. 83
2. Livy, ii. 49
3. Livy, iv. 30
4. Livy, iv. 56, 57, v. 8, 9
5. Livy, vi. 2
6. Livy, iv. 20
7. Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia vii. 39
8. Livy, vii. 1, 4, 6, 11,17
9. Livy, vii. 22, 38

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Smith, William, ed. (1870). "Ahala". Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. 1. p. 83.