Glabrio's own father, whose existence is alluded to by Juvenal as an old man still alive at his son's death,[3] is inferred to have been a suffect consul during the reign of Nero.
According to Suetonius, Domitian ordered several senators and ex-consuls, including Glabrio, to be executed quasi molitores rerum novarum, "as contrivers of new things".
Some writers afterwards interpreted the charge of impiety against Acilius Glabrio as evidence that he belonged to the Christian religion, although others believe it more likely he might have converted to Judaism or just not have been loyal enough to emperor Domitian.
Although the inscriptions from the tomb mentioning the family were inscribed in a script used generations later than this Manius Acilius Glabrio and his wife Priscilla, at the time numerous experts eagerly cited this archaeological find as certain proof of the story.
[9] It was in 1931 when P. Styger was able to show the stone inscriptions did not properly belong to the chamber, but had been part of a sepulchre that was demolished in the construction of the Basilica of San Silvester after the fourth century.