He was suffect consul for the nundinium September to December AD 88 as the colleague of Marcus Otacilius Catulus.
[1] Since the recovery of a military diploma bearing his name,[2] Julius Sparsus has been often identified as the man to whom Pliny the Younger wrote two letters on literary matters,[3] and as the recipient of one of Martial's poems.
[4] Experts did not seriously question this identification as his cognomen "Sparsus" is, as Ronald Syme wrote in an article published in the Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, "preternaturally rare".
He was only able to find it in the names of three provincials — one living in Nemausus and two in Tarraconensis — and two Romans, a rhetor frequently cited by Seneca the Elder, and Gaius Lusius Sparsus, suffect consul in 157;[5] the existence of a third Roman with this cognomen, Gaius Pomponius Rufus Acilius Priscus Coelius Sparsus, consul in 98, was learned of after Syme wrote his paper.
Michel Christol has published a fragmentary inscription from Uthina in modern Tunisia of which two lines are readable.