Gens Herennuleia

Abstract

The aim of our article was to write, using prosopographical methods, a kind of socioeconomic collective biography. We studied the case of Auli Herennuleii – a group distinguished by a rare nomen gentilicium (we know around 80 people who had this name), which is documented in chronologically similar period and has a limited geographical reach. Taking into consideration the only sources that mention them –inscriptions – Auli Herennuleii were mostly active in the 1st and 2nd centuries CE in the Augustan regio I, more precisely in Pompeii, Rome and Ostia. We analysed the cases of all known Auli Herennuleii and we tried to date their activity and to find the connections between them. As a result we prepared the biography of the so-called “middle class” gens from the Principate period. It is worth noting that quite a lot of Auli Herennuleii were involved in economic activities and almost none of them made a political career. This is probably the reason why they are rarely mentioned by historians. We think that such situation cannot be justified. A small history of Auli Herennuleii becomes a good illustration of the grand socioeconomic processes that took place in central Italy in the end of the 1st and the beginning of the 2nd centuries.