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Pontidia Gens
The gens Pontidia was an obscure plebeian family at ancient Rome. Members of this gens appear in history during the final century of the Republic, but none of them obtained any of the higher offices of the Roman state. Origin The nomen ''Pontidius'' belongs to a class of gentilicia which were originally derived from cognomina ending in ''-idus''. However, such names were so common that the ending ''-idius'' came to be regarded as a regular gentile-forming suffix, and was applied in cases where there was no morphological justification. This may have been the case with ''Pontidius'', which is probably derived from the Oscan praenomen ''Pompo'' or ''Pomptus'', which also gave rise to several other nomina, including '' Pompilius'', '' Pomponius'', and '' Pontius''. ''Pompo'' was the Oscan cognate of the Latin praenomen ''Quintus'', and thus ''Pontidius'' was equivalent to Latin gentes such as '' Quinctia'' and '' Quinctilia''. Members * Gaius Pontidius, one of the leaders of the a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plebeian
In ancient Rome, the plebeians (also called plebs) were the general body of free Roman citizens who were not patricians, as determined by the census, or in other words "commoners". Both classes were hereditary. Etymology The precise origins of the group and the term are unclear, but may be related to the Greek, ''plēthos'', meaning masses. In Latin, the word is a singular collective noun, and its genitive is . Plebeians were not a monolithic social class. Those who resided in the city and were part of the four urban tribes are sometimes called the , while those who lived in the country and were part of the 31 smaller rural tribes are sometimes differentiated by using the label . ( List of Roman tribes) In ancient Rome In the annalistic tradition of Livy and Dionysius, the distinction between patricians and plebeians was as old as Rome itself, instituted by Romulus' appointment of the first hundred senators, whose descendants became the patriciate. Modern hypotheses d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quinctia Gens
The gens Quinctia, sometimes written Quintia, was a patrician family at ancient Rome. Throughout the history of the Republic, its members often held the highest offices of the state, and it produced some men of importance even during the imperial period. For the first forty years after the expulsion of the kings the Quinctii are not mentioned, and the first of the gens who obtained the consulship was Titus Quinctius Capitolinus Barbatus in 471 BC; but from that year their name constantly appears in the Fasti consulares.''Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology'', vol. III, pp. 633, 634 (" Quintia Gens"). As with other patrician families, in later times there were also plebeian Quinctii. Some of these may have been the descendants of freedmen of the gens, or of patrician Quinctii who had voluntarily gone over to the plebs. There may also have been unrelated persons who happened to share the same nomen. Pliny the Elder relates that it was the custom in the Quin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 pages. It is a classic work of 19th-century lexicography. The work is a companion to Smith's '' Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities'' and ''Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography''. Authors and scope The work lists thirty-five authors in addition to the editor, who was also the author of the unsigned articles. The other authors were classical scholars, primarily from Oxford, Cambridge, Rugby School, and the University of Bonn, but some were from other institutions. Many of the mythological entries were the work of the German expatriate Leonhard Schmitz, who helped to popularise German classical scholarship in Britain. With respect to biographies, Smith intended to be comprehensive. In the preface, he writes: Much of the v ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marcus Velleius Paterculus
Marcus Velleius Paterculus (; c. 19 BC – c. AD 31) was a Roman historian, soldier and senator. His Roman history, written in a highly rhetorical style, covered the period from the end of the Trojan War to AD 30, but is most useful for the period from the death of Caesar in 44 BC to the death of Augustus in AD 14. Biography Few details of Velleius' life are known with certainty; even his praenomen is uncertain. Priscian, the only ancient author to mention it, calls him "Marcus", but the title page of the '' editio princeps'', printed in 1520, calls him "Publius", probably due to confusion with a Publius Velleius mentioned in Tacitus. Elsewhere, the same volume calls him ''Gaius''. Some modern writers use the latter name, based on an inscription found on a milestone at El Harrouch in Algeria, once part of Roman Numidia;''Encyclopædia Britannica'', 1911 ed., vol. 27, p. 979 ("Velleius Paterculus, Marcus"). but the inscription identifies this Gaius Velleius Paterculus as '' l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epistulae Ad Atticum
''Epistulae ad Atticum'' (Latin for "Letters to Atticus") is a collection of letters from Roman politician and orator Marcus Tullius Cicero to his close friend Titus Pomponius Atticus. The letters in this collection, together with Cicero's other letters, are considered the most reliable sources of information for the period leading up to the fall of the Roman Republic. The letters to Atticus are special among Cicero's works in that they provide a candid view into his personal character — containing confession, frank self-revelation, and a record of his moods from day to day, without alteration. Traditionally spanning 16 books, the collection features letters from 68 to 44 BCE. A notable absence of early references to these particular letters suggest that they may not have been published until the middle of the first century CE, significantly later than Cicero's other letters and quite some time after the deaths of both Cicero (43 BCE) and Atticus (32 BCE). A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brutus (Cicero)
Cicero's ''Brutus'' (also known as ''De claris oratoribus'') is a history of Roman oratory. It is written in the form of a dialogue, in which Brutus and Atticus ask Cicero to describe the qualities of all the leading Roman orators up to their time. Cicero then attempts to propose a reconstruction of Roman history. Although it is written in the form of a dialogue, the majority of the talking is done by Cicero with occasional intervention by Brutus and Atticus. The work was probably composed in 46 BC, with the purpose of defending Cicero's own oratory. He begins with an introductory section on Greek oratory of the Attic, Asiatic, and Rhodian schools, before discussing Roman orators, beginning with Lucius Junius Brutus, "The Liberator", though becoming more specific from the time of Marcus Cornelius Cethegus. Characters * Cicero – He is the main figure of the work. He strengthens the idea that after the civil war, many of the "good" orators have either left or fled Rome. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 Roman history.'' Harper's Dictionary of Classical Literature and Antiquities'', Second Edition, Harry Thurston Peck, Editor (1897)''Oxford Classical Dictionary'', 2nd Ed. (1970) The distinguishing characteristic of a gens was the , or ''gentile name''. Every member of a gens, whether by birth or adoption, bore this name. All nomina were based on other nouns, such as personal names, occupations, physical characteristics or behaviors, or locations. Consequently, most of them ended with the adjectival termination ''-ius'' (''-ia'' in the feminine form). Nomina ending in , , , and are typical of Latin families. Faliscan gentes frequently had nomina ending in ''-ios'', while Samnite and other Oscan-speaking peoples of southern Italy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arpino
Arpino (Southern Latian dialect: ) is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the province of Frosinone, in the Latin Valley, region of Lazio in central Italy, about 100 km SE of Rome. Its Roman name was Arpinum. The town produced two consuls of the Roman republic: Gaius Marius and Marcus Tullius Cicero. History The ancient city of Arpinum dates back to at least the 7th century BC. Connected with the Pelasgi, the Volsci and Samnite people, it was captured by the Romans and granted '' civitas sine suffragio'' in 305 BC. The city received voting rights in Roman elections in 188 BC and the status of a ''municipium'' in 90 BC after the Social War. The town produced both Gaius Marius and Marcus Tullius Cicero, who were '' homines novi'' (people from new families who were elected to the Roman senate, usually referring to those who had reached the office of consul). Cicero, in speeches before the courts in Rome, would later praise his hometown's contributions to the republic when att ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the establishment of the Roman Empire. His extensive writings include treatises on rhetoric, philosophy and politics, and he is considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the Roman equestrian order, and served as consul in 63 BC. His influence on the Latin language was immense. He wrote more than three-quarters of extant Latin literature that is known to have existed in his lifetime, and it has been said that subsequent prose was either a reaction against or a return to his style, not only in Latin but in European languages up to the 19th century. Cicero introduced into Latin the arguments of the chief schools of Hellenistic philosophy and created a Latin philosophical voc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tullia (daughter Of Cicero)
Tullia (5 August 79 or 78 BC – February 45 BC), sometimes referred to affectionately as Tulliola ("little Tullia"), was the first child and only daughter of Roman orator and politician Marcus Tullius Cicero, by his first marriage to Terentia. She was the sister of Marcus Tullius Cicero Minor, born in 65 BC, and who became consul in 30 BC. Life What is known of Tullia's life is from Plutarch's account of Cicero and the letters that Cicero wrote to others, particularly to her mother, and to his friend, the eques Titus Pomponius Atticus. In 66 BC, Tullia was betrothed to Gaius Calpurnius Piso Frugi. They were married in 63, when Tullia was fifteen or sixteen, and Piso not much older. He embarked on the ''cursus honorum'', the course of a Roman political career, serving as quaestor in 58 BC, but he died the following year. In 56, Tullia married Furius Crassipes. By all accounts they had a happy marriage, but nonetheless divorced in 51 BC, for reasons that remain obscure. Duri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Appian
Appian of Alexandria (; grc-gre, Ἀππιανὸς Ἀλεξανδρεύς ''Appianòs Alexandreús''; la, Appianus Alexandrinus; ) was a Ancient Greeks, Greek historian with Ancient Rome, Roman citizenship who flourished during the reigns of Roman Emperor, Emperors of Rome Trajan, Hadrian, and Antoninus Pius. He was born c. 95 in Alexandria. After holding the senior offices in the Roman province, province of Aegyptus Province, Aegyptus (Egypt), he went to Rome c. 120, where he practised as an advocate, pleading cases before the emperors (probably as ''advocatus fisci'', an important official of the imperial treasury). It was in 147 at the earliest that he was appointed to the office of procurator (Roman), procurator, probably in Egypt, on the recommendation of his friend Marcus Cornelius Fronto, an influential rhetorician and advocate. Because the position of procurator was open only to members of the equestrian (Roman), equestrian order (the "knightly" class), his possession ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vestini
() were an Italic tribe who occupied the area of the modern Abruzzo (central Italy), included between the Gran Sasso and the northern bank of the Aterno river. Their main centres were ''Pitinum ''(near modern L'Aquila), ''Aufinum ''( Ofena), ''Peltuinum'' (Prata d'Ansidonia), ''Pinna ''( Penne) and ''Aternum ''( Pescara, shared with the Marrucini). Historical geography Writing at about 100 years after the end of the Social War, a failed last attempt of the italic tribes to form a union, Italy, that would compete with Rome in power and influence, the Roman geographer, Strabo, placed the location of the Vestini as he knew it to be as follows. The southern border was the Aternus River (modern Aterno-Pescara). Aternum (modern Pescara), then on the southern bank of the mouth of the river, was on the Marrucinian side. Both the Peligni upstream on the southern bank and the Marrucini downstream shared the port with the Vestini. Strabo has little else to say about the country of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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