Talk:Acilia gens

Latest comment: 7 years ago by Llywrch in topic Some notes

Some notes edit

  • I've divided up the list of members into their stirpes mostly for my own convenience: I was getting confused trying to trace the line of the Acilii Glabriones in my half-serious quest to see if their lineage from the 2nd century BC to the 4th century AD could be reconstructed. (Since it's not trivial to document it between the last known member in the Republic & the next member in the Flavian dynasty -- when the materials are more abundant than in later periods -- I'm not encouraged that this reconstruction could be performed properly.)
  • I've also added most of the names from the List of Roman consuls; there are still a few that could be added. However, since I'm still wrestling with that list, I've left those to be added later.
  • One name currently on the list I have an issue with is the M'. Acilius Rufus, suffectus ex Kal. Jul. in AD 102. Having carefully researched the recorded consuls for the first four decades of the second century I'm wondering if that might be a phantom: his existence is based on a 19th century reference, written when knowledge of the suffect consuls was far less complete than it is now. If he did exist, I'd identify him with the suffect consul of 107, L. Acilius Rufus, & add him to the "Other" category.
  • There is one Republican Acilius missing from this list: L. Acilius, praetor in 197 BC & father of M'. Acilius Balbus, consul in 150 BC. (I learned of his existence thru E. Badian's "The Consuls, 179-49 BC", Chiron 20 (1990), pp. 371-413.) I would add this name, but I suspect someone with access to Broughton's Magistrates of the Roman Republic could provide better information.

FWIW, archaeologists have not only identified a mausoleum used by the Acilii Glabriones in either the 2nd or 3rd century, they have also located where the domus Acilii Glabriones stood in Rome. I've found footnotes that provide citations of this discovery, but I have not seen the publications themselves; I think they are in Italian, which means I'd need to leave that material to be added by someone else. Would this information be relevant to this article? (Knowledge of the traditional homes of many of the gentes probably exists, but would require a careful review of the secondary literature to find & add to the respective articles.) -- llywrch (talk) 17:36, 2 November 2016 (UTC)Reply

Broughton gives the name of the praetor in 197 BC as Lucius Atilius, not Acilius. However, the filiation of the Manius who was consul in 150 does indicate that his father was named Lucius. I saw a couple of small corrections to make to the list, but I'm still glad you decided to do this. I was beginning to wonder if I shouldn't do it, and why it wasn't done before. P Aculeius (talk) 21:00, 2 November 2016 (UTC)Reply
I took another look at Badian, & his note states "Balbus [consul of 150 BC] must be a son of the eminent legal scholar L. Acilius, pr. 197, long buried by emenders of Livy but recently retrieved. (See BICS Suppl. 51 [1988] 11f.)" It appears that a recent edition of Pliny must have determined that L. Atilius was an error for L. Acilius -- which is understandable, since a "t" can be confused with "c" depending on the script & the handwriting. But I'd like to know how this reading was determined before adding this praetor to the list.

On another instance, are you certain that the suffect consul of 33 BC was Manius Acilius Aviola & not Manius Acilius Glabrio? I was alerted to this possibility while reading thru the list of Acilii in the Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft on de.wikisource, & found that the primary source called the suffect "M'. Acilius", & in the 19th century it was assumed his cognomen was "Aviola"; however in a supplement, the Realencyclopädie then stated he was possibly identical with the Proconsul of Africa in 25 BC, M'. Acilius Glabrio. According to the Wikipedia article on that proconsul, this is an identification accepted by Broughton in vol 2 of his Magistrates of the Roman Republic -- as well as by Ronald Syme in his book The Augustinian Aristocracy. Of course, even if I'm right about M'. Acilius being a Glabrio & not an Aviola, the fact experts at different times assigned him different cognomina should be documented in the article. (Which inevitably means more research...)

As a last note, I did manage to find a genealogical link between M'. Acilius Glabrio (cos. 91) & the late Republic M'. Acilii Glabiones -- but it is so shaky that had it been indicated by any other authority than the Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft it'd be frankly dismissed as wild hypothetizing. Let's just say it should remain in the article on the consul of 91 as one of those theories some Classical experts have suggested. -- llywrch (talk) 06:52, 3 November 2016 (UTC)Reply

Ah, there was an edit conflict yesterday when I was cleaning up some of the changes. I accepted your move of the consul of 33 BC from the Aviolae to the Glabriones, but forgot to delete his entry under Aviola. Checked my sources (not in-depth) and saw he was listed in the Chronological Tables of Roman History as "M'. Acilius (Aviola)", and so listed him as "M'. Acilius (Glabrio?)", then went to his article, under Marcus, and decided the best way to address the uncertainty would be to footnote his name and mention the uncertainty as to both praenomen and cognomen. After doing that, I returned here and took it back to "M. Acilius Glabrio", on the assumption that anyone clicking on him would find the note. Hope that resolves this for now! P Aculeius (talk) 14:17, 3 November 2016 (UTC)Reply
Love them edit conflicts. They make improving articles much more challenging! ;-) -- llywrch (talk) 17:26, 3 November 2016 (UTC)Reply