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]

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 1st 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 (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

1. Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, William Smith, Editor
2. G. Camodeca, in Epografia e ordine senatorio (1982) ii. 151.

 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.