Procilia gens


The gens Procilia, sometimes written Procillia, was a minor plebeian family at ancient Rome. Members of this gens are first mentioned during the final century of the Republic, but few of them obtained any position of importance in the Roman state, and they are best known as a result of the historian Procillius, a contemporary of Cicero, whose work has been lost, but who was cited as a source by the Roman antiquarians.

Origin

The Procilii may have come from Lanuvium, an ancient city of Latium. A coin issued by the Procilii appears to allude to such an origin, depicting Juno Sospita, whose worship was centered on Lanuvium. The nomen Procilius, sometimes spelled with a double 'l', belongs to a common class of gentilicia derived from names ending in the diminutive suffix '-ulus'. In this case, the name is a patronymic surname derived from the old praenomen Proculus, which Festus reported was originally given to a child born when his father was far from home, although the name has the appearance of a diminutive of some other word or name, such as procus, a suitor, or perhaps more likely procer, a prince. Proca, another possibility, was the name of one of the legendary Kings of Alba Longa, Rome's mother city in story and song, and may be the root form of the name, perhaps with the same meaning as procer. In later times, Proculus was widely used as a surname, and gave rise to the diminutive cognomen Procillus, with which Procilius is easily confused.

Members