Insteia (gens)

The gens Insteia was a minor family at Rome. None of its members held any of the curule magistracies under the Republic, but several served as military commanders under Rome's leading generals during the first century BC and in Imperial times, and by the second century the family was important enough to obtain the consulship.

Members

• Gaius Insteius, a cavalry commander under Quintus Sertorius in BC 76, sent to the country of the Vaccaei in order to obtain fresh horses.^[1]
• Marcus Insteius, one of the commanders of Marcus Antonius at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC. Insteius and Marcus Octavius commanded the center of the Antonian fleet.^[2]
• Insteius Capito, a centurion under the general Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo in the east. He received hostages given by Vologases following a defeat. The Insteius Capito whom Corbulo installed as Praefectus castrorum over a number of small fortifications in Armenia is probably the same man.^[3]
• Marcus Insteius Bithynicus, consul suffectus in AD 162.
• Lucius Insteius Tertullus, Sodalis Augustalis in AD 214.
• Attius Insteius Tertullus, a statesman of the late third and early fourth centuries. He was consul suffectus in an uncertain year, after which he served as proconsul of Africa. He was praefectus urbi from AD 307 to 308.^[4]
• Attius Insteius Tertullus Populonius, governor of the province of Apulia and Calabria.

See also

List of Roman gentes

References

1. Livy, fragmentum 91.
2. Plutarch, "The Life of Antonius", 65, 66.
3. Tacitus, Annales xiii. 9, 39.
4. PLRE, vol. I, "Tertullus" no. 6.

Bibliography

• Titus Livius (Livy), Ab Urbe Condita (History of Rome).
• Publius Cornelius Tacitus, Annales.
• Plutarchus, Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans.
• Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, William Smith, ed., Little, Brown and Company, Boston (1849).
• A. H. M. Jones & J. R. Martindale, The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire (PLRE), vol I, AD 260–395 (1971–1980).