Gallia gens

The gens Gallia was a plebeian family at ancient Rome. Several members of this gens are mentioned during the first century BC.^[1]

Origin

The nomen Gallius might be derived from Gallus, a common surname that can refer either to a cock or someone of Gallic origin.

Praenomina

Among the Gallii we find the praenomina Quintus, Marcus, and Gaius, all of which were common throughout Roman history.^[1]

Branches and cognomina

The Gallii do not appear to have been divided into distinct families, and none of those known during the late Republic bore any surnames.

Members

This list includes abbreviated praenomina. For an explanation of this practice, see filiation.

• Quintus Gallius, praetor urbanus in 63 BC, had been accused of ambitus by Marcus Calidius the previous year, and was successfully defended by Cicero. As praetor he presided over the trial of Gaius Cornelius, one of Catiline's conspirators.^[2][3][4][5]
• Marcus Gallius, the adoptive father of Axianus, and possibly a brother of Quintus Gallius, the praetor urbanus.^[6]
• Marcus Gallius M. f. Axianus, adopted from the Axia gens.^[7]
• Marcus Gallius Q. f., praetor in an uncertain year, and a supporter of Marcus Antonius. He adopted the future emperor Tiberius in his youth, and left him a considerable legacy.^[8][9]
• Quintus Gallius Q. f., officer under the proconsul Quintus Marcius Philippus in 47–46 BC. Praetor in 43 BC, he was arrested and put to death by Octavian on the apparently false suspicion of intending to murder him, although Octavian later claimed that Gallius had merely been commended into the care of his brother, and disappeared.^[10][11][12]
• Gallia Polla, the proprietor of a first-century ousia^[i] in Egypt that later passed to the imperial freedman Marcus Antonius Pallas, and after him to Lucius Septimius Severus, (an ancestor of the emperor). She may have been related to Tiberius' adoptive father.^[13][14][15]
• Gaius Gallius, a person mentioned by Valerius Maximus as having been scourged to death by Sempronius Musca, who caught him in the act of adultery.^[16]
• Gaius Gallius C. f. Lupercus, minted copper sestertii in 15 BC.^[17]
• Gaius Gallius, the father of Gallia Tertulla.^[18]
• Gallia C. f. Tertulla, named in an inscription found at Ravenna, dating to the reigns of Augustus or Tiberius.^[18]
• Quintus Gallius Pulcher, archiereus of the Koinon in Ankyra in 35 AD. He probably came from a family that had been granted citizenship by Quintus Gallius the quaestor of Cicily.^[19]

See also

• List of Roman gentes

Notes

1. Literally, "property"; here an estate that had once belonged to a member of the imperial family.