Talk:Junia gens

Patrician?

The whole idea that Lucius Brutus & Marcus Brutus were not related is rather circular. The *only* evidence that the former was a patrician is that he is said to have been consul. But it is not at all clear that the consulship was limited to patricians only at that early date (see the article on "Roman Consul", which mentions that some 30% of the early consuls were plebeian).

Cf. The Oxford Classical Dictionary s.v. Iunius Brutus, Lucius: "The plebeian status of the later Iunii has raised doubts about the authenticity of his [sc. Lucius Brutus'] consulship or the alleged early patrician monopoly of the office."

So there is no reason to rule out the idea that the two were, in fact, related as the Romans thought. 66.31.47.139 02:56, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Proposed reversion of last edit

An anonymous editor has removed the clause from the introductory paragraph stating that most members of the Junia gens in the later Republic were Plebeians. I would like to revert this edit, but in case the editor would like to make a case for keeping or modifying it instead, I thought it might be taken up here.

I can see why the editor might have felt it redundant; if the gens was "originally" patrician, that seems to imply that its later members were plebeian. But I can certainly see people arriving at this page without knowing that, and this seems to be the most logical place for a link to plebeian, juxtaposed with the link to patrician where this question is originally raised. I note that no links to plebeian were added elsewhere in the article, nor any to Roman Republic, which was also removed in this edit.

I also point out that, while most references state either that the gens was plebeian, or that it was plebeian in later times, the Junii Silani appear to have been patricians. I was somewhat surprised to discover this while working on this article, but I ran across at least two or three different references to them that made clear that this family was patrician, and while I can't remember them all off the top of my head, one of them was appointed flamen, and his office was not open to the plebeians. As the article explains further down, this may have come about because some, or perhaps all but the earliest Silani were descendants of one of the Manlii Torquati, who had been adopted into the Junia gens. It looks as if his descendants were reckoned patricians, even though they bore the name Junius.

Since the Junii Silani were not plebeian, the assertion that the later Junii were plebeian needs to be qualified, and I don't think that can be done by inference alone. Without the clause just deleted from the first paragraph, the implication is that none of the later Junii were patricians, and the later statement to the contrary appears to be inconsistent with the description of the gens in the first paragraph.

Thus, I think that the introductory paragraph is better with the language in question than without it; it qualifies what would otherwise be a false impression given by the preceding clause; it provides necessary links to two related subjects, and places them in the most logical position in the article; and it would make the paragraph easier to understand for readers unfamiliar with the distinction between patricians and plebeians. P Aculeius (talk) 22:11, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

...the agnomen Scaeva...

Do any of the sources actually go out of their way to talk about the handedness of Decimus or his son?

(a) Given that they "emerged from obscurity" at this point, there's no actual evidence that it wasn't already a cognomen ("surname") at this point, is there?

(b) Given that he handed it off to his son on the basis of his own awesomeness, it was no longer an agnomen by that point if it ever was one. What's the basis of that statement? or was someone just trying to link to another term? — LlywelynII 11:35, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

The fact that only two individuals are known to have borne the name suggests that it was a personal cognomen that came to be applied to the son as well, probably to distinguish him from other Junii. This is, of course, exactly how most cognomina came into being—personal surnames that sometimes were passed down for several generations in order to distinguish different branches of a family. Rarely will the circumstances that led to the original bestowing of the name be mentioned in literature, or have applied to every member of every generation to bear the name. Not all of the Domitii Ahenobarbi had bronze beards, not all of the Claudii Pulchri were beautiful. We don't know if Scaeva was called that because he was left-handed, although that's the most literal interpretation; he could also have been unlucky (left-handedness was considered synonymous with bad luck), either personally or to other people around him. Maybe he had a poor sense of direction. Or it could even have been given him in irony—maybe he didn't use his left hand, or was considered very lucky.

We have no idea who bestowed the name on him—it probably wasn't his parents, he probably didn't come up with it himself and get people to call him that, and there's no reason to believe that he decided to give the name to his son in order to gratify his ego. There was no hospital clerk standing by at the birth to ask, "what are you going to name him?", and he didn't go down to the courthouse to register his son's full name. Cognomina, particularly during the Republic, were whatever most people were willing to call you, which is why they were only regarded as semi-official names. Only in imperial times, when they frequently served the function of recording one's illustrious ancestry for generations, did cognomina come to be regarded in the same light as gentilicia.

Which brings us to the word "agnomen", which the late (imperial) grammarians used to distinguish personal surnames from long-standing family names. The distinction was not a very sharp one, since of course all cognomina had begun as personal surnames. We have relatively few examples of the term's usage by the Romans themselves; it's mostly modern scholars who use it, and they also use it a bit inconsistently, since it was always applied to names arising from different circumstances—among which was the cognomen ex virtute. When I saw this post, I assumed it was language I'd copied over from the DGRBM when I developed this article from a stub in 2010. But on further checking, it's not there. Here it's used to mean "an additional cognomen borne by only one (or two) individuals (i.e. a personal surname) within a branch of the gens already distinguished by one or more long-standing hereditary cognomina". Its use here is imprecise, because the term is a bit imprecise to begin with—but it's not a huge deal to reword it, if it bothers you. I think it's fine, but I'm not going to expend the energy to fight about it if you feel strongly that it's wrong. P Aculeius (talk) 23:21, 4 August 2023 (UTC)