The gens Propertia was a minor
plebeian family at
ancient Rome
In modern historiography, ancient Rome refers to Roman civilisation from the founding of the city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. It encompasses the Roman Kingdom (753–509 BC ...
. Few members of this
gens are mentioned in history, and none of them ever obtained the
consulship
A consul held the highest elected political office of the Roman Republic ( to 27 BC), and ancient Romans considered the consulship the second-highest level of the ''cursus honorum'' (an ascending sequence of public offices to which politic ...
, but a few of them held other
magistracies in
imperial times. The most famous of the Propertii was
Sextus Propertius
Sextus Propertius was a Latin elegiac poet of the Augustan age. He was born around 50–45 BC in Assisium and died shortly after 15 BC.
Propertius' surviving work comprises four books of ''Elegies'' ('). He was a friend of the poets Gallus a ...
, a celebrated poet of the
Augustan age. Many other Propertii are known from inscriptions.
[''Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology'', vol. III, pp. 545–548 ("Sextus Aurelius Propertius", "Propertius Celer").]
Origin
The poet Propertius wrote that he was born in
Umbria
it, Umbro (man) it, Umbra (woman)
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, ...
, near the border with
Etruria.
The Propertii were
homines novi, a family just beginning to make its mark in Roman society, and modern scholars suppose that they were probably of
Umbri
The Umbri were an Italic people of ancient Italy. A region called Umbria still exists and is now occupied by Italian speakers. It is somewhat smaller than the ancient Umbria.
Most ancient Umbrian cities were settled in the 9th-4th centuries BC on ...
an extraction. An Umbrian inscription from
Asisium mentions a certain ''Nerie Propartie'', or "Nerius Propertius".
[.]
Members
* Nerius Propertius, named in an inscription from Asisium, dating to the end of the second century BC, or the beginning of the first.
* Titus Propertius, grandfather of Gaius Propertius Postumus, the proconsul.
[.]
* Quintus Propertius T. f., father of the proconsul Gaius Propertius Postumus.
* Quintus Propertius Q. f. (T. n.), probably the elder brother of Gaius Propertius Postumus, named in the same sepulchral inscription from Rome.
* Gaius Propertius Q. f. T. n. Postumus, held a number of magistracies, including those of
quaestor,
praetor
Praetor ( , ), also pretor, was the title granted by the government of Ancient Rome to a man acting in one of two official capacities: (i) the commander of an army, and (ii) as an elected '' magistratus'' (magistrate), assigned to discharge vari ...
, and
proconsul
A proconsul was an official of ancient Rome who acted on behalf of a consul. A proconsul was typically a former consul. The term is also used in recent history for officials with delegated authority.
In the Roman Republic, military command, or ...
of an uncertain province during the time of
Augustus
Caesar Augustus (born Gaius Octavius; 23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14), also known as Octavian, was the first Roman emperor; he reigned from 27 BC until his death in AD 14. He is known for being the founder of the Roman Pr ...
.
[''PIR'', vol. III, p. 104.]
*
Sextus Propertius
Sextus Propertius was a Latin elegiac poet of the Augustan age. He was born around 50–45 BC in Assisium and died shortly after 15 BC.
Propertius' surviving work comprises four books of ''Elegies'' ('). He was a friend of the poets Gallus a ...
, the poet, variously known as Sextus Aurelius Propertius, or Sextus Propertius Nauta, was born in Umbria about the middle of the first century BC, and wrote his
elegies
An elegy is a poem of serious reflection, and in English literature usually a lament for the dead. However, according to ''The Oxford Handbook of the Elegy'', "for all of its pervasiveness ... the 'elegy' remains remarkably ill defined: sometime ...
between about 31 and 16 BC.
* Propertius Celer, had been praetor, but in AD 15, he asked to be degraded in the hopes of being relieved of the financial burdens of his rank. The emperor
Tiberius
Tiberius Julius Caesar Augustus (; 16 November 42 BC – 16 March AD 37) was the second Roman emperor. He reigned from AD 14 until 37, succeeding his stepfather, the first Roman emperor Augustus. Tiberius was born in Rome in 42 BC. His father ...
instead sent him a million
sestertii
The ''sestertius'' (plural ''sestertii''), or sesterce (plural sesterces), was an ancient Roman coin. During the Roman Republic it was a small, silver coin issued only on rare occasions. During the Roman Empire it was a large brass coin.
The n ...
in order to maintain his household.
[Tacitus, ''Annales'', i. 75.]
See also
*
List of Roman gentes
The gens (plural gentes) was a Roman family, of Italic or Etruscan origins, consisting of all those individuals who shared the same '' nomen'' and claimed descent from a common ancestor. It was an important social and legal structure in early ...
References
Bibliography
*
Publius Cornelius Tacitus
Publius Cornelius Tacitus, known simply as Tacitus ( , ; – ), was a Roman historian and politician. Tacitus is widely regarded as one of the greatest Roman historians by modern scholars.
The surviving portions of his two major works—the ...
, ''
Annales
Annals are a concise form of historical writing which record events chronologically, year by year. The equivalent word in Latin and French is ''annales'', which is used untranslated in English in various contexts.
List of works with titles contai ...
''.
* ''
Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology
The ''Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology'' (1849, originally published 1844 under a slightly different title) is an encyclopedia/biographical dictionary. Edited by William Smith, the dictionary spans three volumes and 3,700 ...
'',
William Smith, ed., Little, Brown and Company, Boston (1849).
*
Theodor Mommsen
Christian Matthias Theodor Mommsen (; 30 November 1817 – 1 November 1903) was a German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician and archaeologist. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest classicists of the 19th centu ...
''et alii'', ''
Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum'' (The Body of Latin Inscriptions, abbreviated ''CIL''), Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften (1853–present).
* George Davis Chase, "The Origin of Roman Praenomina", in ''Harvard Studies in Classical Philology'', vol. VIII (1897).
*
Paul von Rohden,
Elimar Klebs, &
Hermann Dessau, ''
Prosopographia Imperii Romani
The ', abbreviated ''PIR'', is a collective historical work to establish the prosopography of high-profile people from the Roman empire. The time period covered extends from the Battle of Actium in 31 BC to the reign of Diocletian. The final vol ...
'' (The Prosopography of the Roman Empire, abbreviated ''PIR''), Berlin (1898).
{{DEFAULTSORT:Propertia gens
Roman gentes