Arpineia gens

The gens Arpineia or Arpinia was an obscure plebeian family at ancient Rome. It is known chiefly from a single individual, Gaius Arpineius, an eques in Caesar's army during the Gallic Wars. ^[1]

Origin

The nomen Arpineius belongs to a class of gentilicia formed using the suffix -eius, typically formed from words or names ending in -as. The root of the nomen is the cognomen Arpinas, a surname indicating a relationship to the city of Arpinum in southern Latium, whence the ancestor of this family probably came. ^[2]

Members

• Gaius Arpineius, an eques, and a friend of Quintus Titurius Sabinus, who was sent to confer with Ambiorix in 54 BC. ^[3]
• Publius Arpinius, a potter whose maker's mark appears on pottery from Leontopolis in Egypt. ^[4]

See also

• List of Roman gentes

References

1. Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. I, p. 349 ("Gaius Arpineius").
2. Chase, p. 120.
3. Caesar, De Bello Gallico, v. 27.
4. CIL III, 13585.

Bibliography

• Gaius Julius Caesar, Commentarii de Bello Gallico (Commentaries on the Gallic War).
• Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology , William Smith, ed., Little, Brown and Company, Boston (1849).
• Theodor Mommsen et alii, Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (The Body of Latin Inscriptions, abbreviated CIL), Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften (1853–present).
• George Davis Chase, "The Origin of Roman Praenomina", in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. VIII, pp. 103–184 (1897).