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 of the gens

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]

Praenomina used by the gens

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 1st century.^[1]

Branches and cognomina of the gens

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 of the gens

• Gnaeus Acerronius, mentioned as a vir optimus by Marcus Tullius Cicero in his oration, Pro Tullio (71 BC)
• Gnaeus Acerronius Proculus, consul in AD 37
• Acerronia Polla (d. AD 59), 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.

See also

List of Roman gentes

References

This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology by William Smith (1870).