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.

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.

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[ReferenceA-1] Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, William Smith, Editor

[2] G. Camodeca, in Epografia e ordine senatorio (1982) ii. 151.

[:0-3] 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.