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Cognomina, Supernomina and CIL x 1729

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 May 2015

P.R.C. Weaver
P.R.C. Weaver*
Affiliation:
University of Tasmania
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Extract

Much of the primary material for the social history of the early Roman empire is inscriptional and an uncomfortably high proportion of this material consists of just names. Names of persons are what we have in abundance and the study of nomenclature at all levels of society is bound to be a most important key to the interpretation of that society.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antichthon , Volume 5 , 1971 , pp. 77 - 84
Copyright
Copyright © Australasian Society for Classical Studies 1971

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References

1 Cf. the characteristically expressed warning of Syme, JRS lviii (1968), 145.

2 Kajanto, I., Supernomina: a Study in Latin Epigraphy (Helsinki, 1966), p. 16.Google Scholar

3 SeeThylander, H., Etude sur I’epigraphie latine (Lund, 1952), pp. 102f.Google Scholar

4 For the basic bibliography, both on epigraphic and literary sources, see Thylander, op. cit., pp. 54–6.

5 For a good recent critique of results, seeChantraine, H., Freigelassene und Sklaven im Dienst der römischen Kaiser (Wiesbaden, 1967), pp. 132f.Google Scholar

6 Kajanto, , Onomastic Studies in the Early Christian Inscriptions of Rome and Carthage (Helsinki, 1963), PP. 31f.Google Scholar prefers the term agnomina for the attached forms, except those with signo, which he calls ‘signa proper’, while at the same time also using the term signa for the detached forms, which he calls ‘detached signa’. As the term agnomen is best reserved for its normal meaning of second cognomen, usually in -ianus (e.g. vi 19926: C. Iulius divi Aug. 1. Delphus Maecenatianus), and as the form with signo can be regarded as just a later variation of the attached form (Kajanto, Onom. Stud. p. 48; cf. M. Lambertz, Glotta iv [1913], 86f.), I have preferred to use just the two categories of ‘attached’ and ‘detached’ supernomina/signa based on the formal epigraphic criteria. Wuilleumier, H., ‘Etude historique sur l’emploi et la signification des signa’, Mémoires présentés par divers savants à l’ Académic des Inscriptions 18 (1932), 559–696, at 569fGoogle Scholar. treats acclamations and detached signa as separate categories. Kajanto (Supernomina, p. 59; Onom. Stud., pp. 3gf.) argues that detached signa originated as nicknames modelled on acclamations, such as gregori = (‘be watchful’), which were then regarded as vocatives of names in -ius, e.g. Gregori = voc. of Gregorius.

7 Kajanto, Supernomina, p. 57; Onom. Stud., pp. 34–5; Wuilleumier, op. cit., pp. 58of.

8 Cf.Duncan-Jones, R.P., Class. Phil, 64 (1969), 230.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Kajanto (Supernomina, p. 57; Onom. Stud., p. 34) gives vi 180 = D 3703 (quoted above), dated to A.D. 202, as the earliest detached signum.

9 Kajanto, Supernomina, p. 58; Onom. Stud., p. 32.

10 Kajanto, Supernomina, p. 59; Onom. Stud., p. 34; Chantraine, op. cit., pp. 382f. References to earlier discussions since Mommsen and Diehl could be multiplied, but unnecessarily.

11 Kajanto does not list it in his exhaustive work, The Latin Cognomina (Helsinki, 1965).

12 Gregori (Gk. ) direct acclamation or vocative:

v 855, 1624, 2044 = IG xiv 2387; vi 19611; xi 863 = D 6665; xiii 1924, 2621; D 9442 (Ravenna): Glegori; vi 26555: Gregor […] (not 2655, as Kajanto, Onom. Stud., p. 47).

Gregorius: xiv 3553 = D 3418.

Gregorio: xiii 531.

For further details, see the list in Wuilleumier, op. cit., pp. 656–9. See also Moretti, L., RFIC 93 (1965), 179–85;Google ScholarEgger, R., Römische Antike und frühes Christentum 2 (Klagenfurt, 1963). PP. 124f.Google Scholar

13 Chantraine, op. cit., p. 382, reads ‘prox(imo)’ in line 3, taking the occupational title ‘prox. comm. ann.’ to be in apposition with ‘Gregorio’ (dative) and not with the immediately adjacent ‘M.Ulp. Nicephori Aug.lib.’ (genitive).

14 Op. cit., p. 384.

15 Cf. Thylander, op. cit., pp. 5of.

16 Chantraine ignores the case of ‘Nicephori’ and, presumably, also of ‘lib(erti)’, and continues with the reading ‘prox(imo)’ in apposition to ‘Gregorio’, as if ‘Nicephori’ stood for ‘Nicephoro’.

17 Kajanto, Onom. Stud., p. 34, n.2, claims that this is an exceptional case, as the father was ‘obviously a slave’ and the mother a free woman. The son, on being manumitted (not by Trajan, but presumably by a Severan emperor) took the nomen not of his Imperial patron but of his mother Ulpia Profutura (!). This is desperation. Correctly by Egger, op. cit., p. 126, except that an early Hadrianic date is equally probable.

18 See Diz. Epig. i, p. 420 s.v. Allectio III. 6.

19 For the functions of this personnel, see now Boulvert, G., Esclaves et Affranchis sous le Haut-Empire romain (Naples, 1970), pp. 419f.Google Scholar

20 Mommsen (CIL vi ad loc.) actually conjectures that Martialis belonged to the bureau a rationibus itself, and for the occupational terminology quotes vi 1115 (dedicated to the emperor Carinus, A.D. 284/5): [Chre]simus tabul(arius) [su]mmarum rationum [cum] proximis et adiu[tori]b(us). Though belonging to the late third century, this inscription reflects a distinction between clerical proximi and adiutores that goes back to at least the early third century (as vi 10233 shows) and possibly to the late second century (vi 8505 = D 1646), quite apart from any consideration of x 1729, which would take the use of the title for clerical proximi back to the early second century.

21 Omitted in FRS lviii (1968), 116.

22 E.g. vi 4228: M. Ulpius Aug. lib. Menophilus adiutor proc(uratoris) ab ornamentis (son, manumitted by Trajan), P. Aelius Aug. lib. Menophilus (father, manumitted by Hadrian, with no occupational title); vi 8580 = D 1497: T. Flavius Aug. lib. Cerialis, tabul(arius) reg(ionis) Picen(tinae) (son), Phoenix Caes.n.ser. (father).

23 Cf. Boulvert, op. cit., pp. 255, 431.

24 See Weaver, FRS lviii (1968), 111f.

25 See above, p. 78. Chantraine, op. cit., pp. 382, 383 n. 120, includes in his list of signa the first century A.D. vi 33966 = D 5182: C. Iulio Aug. lib. Actio priori pantomimo Cucumae (cucumae ?), but with justifiable hesitation.

26 vi 8432 = D 1526: Ulpia sive Aelia Aug. lib. Apate (husband: P. Aelius Aug. lib. Florus), is an instance of an extra nomen gentilicium (not signum) sometimes taken over by a woman from her husband; cf. iii 2074: C. Albucius Cf. Trom. Menippus (husband) = Liguria Procilla quae et Albucia (wife). See: Kajanto, , Supernomina, p. 38; Chantraine, op. cit. pp. 8gf.Google Scholar

27 Cf. also vi 1963 = 5180 = D 1948; AE 1946, 99; vi 4923; x 4142; vi 29245; x 6571; vi 778; vi 8514 = D 1570; xiv 3909 = D 3892; iii 729; viii 12613 = D 1680.

28 Supernomina, p. 16.