Aufidia (gens)

The gens Aufidia was a plebeian family at Rome, which is not known until the later times of the Republic. The first member to obtain the consulship was Gnaeus Aufidius Orestes, in 71 BC.[1]

Ancient Roman coin in the National Roman Museum

Praenomina

In Republican times, the Aufidii used the praenomina Gnaeus, Titus, Marcus, and Sextus. Lucius and Gaius are not found prior to the second century AD. The character Tullus Aufidius in Shakespeare's play Coriolanus predates the earliest historical mention of the gens by some three hundred years, and is identified as Attius Tullius in Livy; there is no other evidence that the praenomen Tullus was used by the Aufidii.[1]

Branches and cognomina

The cognomina of the Aufidii under the Republic are Lurco and Orestes. Gnaeus Aufidius Orestes was descended from the Aurelii Orestides, but was adopted by the historian Gnaeus Aufidius in his old age.[1][2]

Members

This list includes abbreviated praenomina. For an explanation of this practice, see filiation.

• Gnaeus Aufidius, tribune of the plebs in 170 BC.[3]
• Gnaeus Aufidius Cn. f., praetor circa 107 BC and propraetor in Asia the following year. Cicero tells that he also wrote a History of Rome in Greek despite being blind. He adopted at a very old age Gnaeus Aufidius Orestes, the consul of 71.[4][5][6]
• Gnaeus Aufidius T. f., a praetor in the late 2nd century BC in Sicily.[7][8]
• Titus Aufidius, a jurist, quaestor in 84 BC, and afterwards praetor of Asia.
• Gnaeus Aufidius Cn. f. Cn. n. Orestes, consul in 71 BC.[9][10]
• Marcus Aufidius Lurco, tribunus plebis in 61 BC, grandfather of the Empress Livia Drusilla.
• Aufidia M. f., wife of Marcus Livius Drusus Claudianus, and mother of Livia Drusilla.
• Aufidius Namusa, a pupil of the jurist Servius Sulpicius Rufus, who compiled a work based on the books of Sulpicius' various students.[11]
• Sextus Aufidius, warmly recommended by Cicero to Quintus Cornificius, proconsul of Africa in 43 BC.[12]
• Titus Aufidius, a physician and native of Sicilia, who probably lived during the 1st century BC
• (Publius) Aufidius Bassus, an orator and historian, who lived under Augustus and Tiberius.
• Publius Juventius Celsus Titus Aufidius Hoenius Severianus, influential jurist of the late 1st century and early 2nd century, suffect consul in 115 and consul in 129.
• Lucius Aufidius Pantera, praefectus of the fleet at Britannia, in the early 2nd century,[13] known for an altar he dedicated now at Lympne, Kent, England[14]
• Titus Aufidius, consul in AD 129, perhaps the same man as the jurist Aufidius Chius.[15][16]
• Gaius Aufidius Victorinus, consul suffectus in AD 155, was praefectus urbi circa 179–183, and consul ordinarius in 183.
• Marcus Aufidius C. f. Fronto, consul in AD 199.
• Marcus Aufidius M. f. C. n. Fronto, son of the consul of AD 199.[17]
• Gaius Aufidius Victorinus, consul in AD 200.[1]
• Gaius Aufidius Marcellus, consul in AD 226.

Aufidii in literature

• Tullus Aufidius, general of the Volscian army in The Tragedy of Coriolanus by William Shakespeare.[18]
• Aufidius Victorinus, governor of Germania superior in Romanike (2006-2014) by Codex Regius.

See also

• List of Roman gentes

References

1. Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, William Smith, Editor.
2. Marcus Tullius Cicero, Pro Domo Sua 13.
3. Livy, Ab Urbe Condita xliii. 10.
4. IG 12.5.722
5. Cicero, Tusculanae Disputationes, v, 38 or 112.
6. Broughton, vol. 1, pp. 551-553.
7. SIG, 715.
8. Brennan, 2000, pp., 756, 930, 931 (note 511).
9. Cicero, De Officiis ii. 17, Pro Domo Sua 13, Pro Plancio 21.
10. Eutropius, Breviarium historiae Romanae vi. 8.
11. Digesta seu Pandectae 13. tit. 6. s. 5. § 7, 35. tit. 1. s. 40. § 3, 39. tit. 3. s. 2. § 6.
12. Cicero, Epistulae ad Familiares xii. 26, 27.
13. R.G. Collingwood and R.P. Wright, The Roman Inscriptions of Britain (1965).
14. Portus Lemanis, Roman-Britain.org
15. Digesta seu Pandectae 5. tit. 3. s. 20 [22]. § 6.
16. ’’Fragmenta Vaticana’’ § 77.
17. Johann Caspar von Orelli, Inscriptionum Latinarum Selectarum Collectio n. 1176.
18. William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Coriolanus.

Bibliography

• Marcus Tullius Cicero, Tusculanae Disputationes.
• Wilhelm Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum (Collection of Greek Inscriptions, abbreviated SIG), Leipzig (1883).
• Inscriptiones Graecae XII,5. Inscriptiones Cycladum (Greek Inscriptions, abbreviated IG), ed. Friedrich Hiller von Gaertringen. 2 vols. Berlin 1903-1909.
• T. Robert S. Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic, American Philological Association (1952).
• T. Corey Brennan, The Praetorship in the Roman Republic, 2 volumes, Oxford, 2000.

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Smith, William, ed. (1870). "^{article name needed}". Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology.