Acerronia (gens)
The gens Acerronia was a plebeian family at Rome during the late Republic and early Empire. The most distinguished member of the gens was Gnaeus Acerronius Proculus, consul in AD 37.[1]
Origin
The Acerronii may have come from Lucania, where Gnaeus Acerronius Proculus had lived before becoming consul. However, the family was known to Cicero at least a century earlier.[2] An excavated sanctuary building built in the first century BC included a fragment of an architrave with a dedicatory inscription to Mefitis.[3] Archaeologists believe that the family was behind the building activity and identified Proculus or his grandfather as the person mentioned in the inscription.[3]
Praenomina
The only praenomen known to have been used by the family is Gnaeus. However, the Acerronii may once have used the name Proculus, which they later bore as a cognomen. They probably also used the feminine praenomen Paulla, which appears as a personal cognomen in the first century.[1]
Branches and cognomina
Two cognomina are associated with the Acerronii; Proculus, which was a common surname in imperial times, and Polla (the feminine form of Paullus), which was probably a personal name and may have been an inverted praenomen.
Members
- Gnaeus Acerronius, mentioned as a vir optimus by Marcus Tullius Cicero in his oration, Pro Tullio, BC 71.
- Gnaeus Acerronius Proculus, consul in AD 37.
- Acerronia Polla, perhaps the daughter of the consul of AD 37, a friend of Agrippina the Younger, murdered during the attempted assassination of Agrippina by her son, the emperor Nero, in AD 59.
See also
References
- Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, William Smith, Editor
- G. Camodeca, in Epografia e ordine senatorio (1982) ii. 151.
- Battiloro, Ilaria (2017). The Archaeology of Lucanian Cult Places: Fourth Century BC to the Early Imperial Age. Oxon: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-10311-0.