Manius Acilius Glabrio Gnaeus Cornelius Severus

In short, he has multiple names—"Manius Acilius Glabrio" and "Gnaeus Cornelius Severus"—which is baffling to anyone more familiar with the tria nomina of the Late Republic and Early Empire.

This polyonomy can be explained one of three ways: Each of these possible interpretations have their advocates: Monique Dondin-Payre has argued that he was the natural son of Cornelius Severus;[3] on the other hand, Ronald Syme advocates the interpretation his mother was the daughter of the consul, giving her a hypothetical but unattested name Cornelia Severa;[4] although Olli Salomies endorses Syme's choice, he points out that the daughter of the consul of 112 is known to have been named Cornelia Manliola, and that there were two "Acilia Manliola": one he identifies as Acilius Glabrio's daughter, the other as his great-granddaughter.

It records a cursus honorum that Edward Champlin considered unusual for a patrician,[6] and Ronald Syme wrote "presents abnormal features" and elaborates: "The patrician senator never sees an army; he accedes to the fasces at the age of thirty two or soon after; and he may not bother to leave the shores of Italy until the sortition (discretely managed) awards Asia or Africa fourteen or fifteen years later.

"[7] His career as a senator began in a predictable fashion, as a triumvir monetalis, about which Syme notes, "No patrician in this epoch held any of the other three minor magistracies."

He notes that in 137 (the year Syme concludes Acilius Glabrio served with the Legio XV Apollinaris) the governor of the province that the legion was stationed in was Flavius Arrianus, who dedicated his Tacitica to the current emperor, Hadrian; Syme also notes that 137 was an unsettled year towards the end of Hadrian's reign, when intrigue surrounded his selection of a successor.

His second is that, "[i]f Glabrio had married a cousin or a niece of Marcus, it is strange that, surviving his consulate by a quarter of a century, he was able to avoid a second tenure of the fasces.