Talk:Calpurnia gens

Correction as to Father of Calpurnius Galerianus

The list asserts that "Calpurnius Galerianus, son of Licinianus, murdered by Gaius Licinius Mucianus, the praefectus of Vespasian.[19]" The citation is to Tacitus, 'Histories', Book IV, section 11, wherein it is ~ not ~ stated that Galerianus was the son of a "Lucius Piso," but of "Caius Piso," who could only be the conspirator under Nero and consul of 41. According to Tacitus, "The murder of Calpurnius Galerianus caused the utmost consternation. He was a son of Caius Piso and had done nothing..." Pelagius1 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 18:34, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Of note, Wikipedia's own article on Lucius Calpurnius Piso Licinianus, Galba's heir, correctly asserts that "it appears" he and his wife "had no children."Pelagius1 (talk)

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Re: L. Calpurnius Longus

This addition is more of a place-holder than how I expect it to look for good. Longus is part of a scholarly mess that I am still trying to untangle, where it appears that evidence about least 4 men were inadvertently considered to apply to the same person, 4 different scholars writing in 4 different languages have tried to clean it up, but more recent evidence requires the best explanation to be modified to some degree. (Sometimes I really hate the no original research rule.) -- llywrch (talk) 22:34, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

I think it's fine insofar as it's the best available evidence. If it gets cleared up, the entry can be changed. I'll separate the father and son, though, as these articles generally use one entry per person. If the father is known only from the filiation, it would be okay not to mention him at all, but that's done in a few instances, particularly in the old patrician families of the early Republic. P Aculeius (talk) 23:03, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

Actually, it's more complicated than even that. The names of the men (best as I can distinguish) them are:
M. Calpurnius [...]
M. Calpurnius M.f. Coll. Rufus
L. Calpurnius Longus
Calpurnius Rufus
L. Marcius Celer M. Calpurnius Longus
I think that's everyone, ignoring a few surmised individuals. My challenge is figuring out how to set forth all of this information, especially as I suspect one of these is a duplicate. (Or I can just pick one expert, present his interpretation as RECEIVED TRUTH & label the rest as fringe views. ;-) -- llywrch (talk) 23:29, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

Lucius Calpurnius Piso, consul in AD 175

"Lucius Calpurnius Piso, consul in AD 175, during the reign of Commodus."

Ahem..... Commodus only became emperor in 177. Surely Marcus Aurelius is the correct connection, or is it that the date is in error? 175 is consistent with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_consuls

Freuchie (talk) 08:30, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

It's likely that the time reference in the article was based on an earlier reconstruction of the consular fasti. Dates have been revised repeatedly with new epigraphy coming to light over the last couple of centuries. The List of Roman consuls is usually pretty up-to-date with the latest research, so I'd say this just needs to be corrected to Marcus Aurelius. An easy fix! P Aculeius (talk) 08:38, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Mystery solved: the reference was "The Life of Commodus", which doesn't give a year; the consulship of Piso is mentioned because of an event in Commodus' life that was commemorated with one of his creative new month names. He may well have done so, although the name wasn't yet in use when the original event occurred. But without a more exact date, one would naturally infer from the context in which he's mentioned that Piso was consul at some point after Commodus was named emperor. Now we do have the year (probably), so I've made the correction. P Aculeius (talk) 08:46, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Others: St Patrick's father

No argument is given - and I think there is no basis - for including St Patrick's father as a member of the Gens Calpurnia. Agreed he had that name, but it means "chalice" and as such would be a perfect name for his father, as a Christian priest, to have given him. Despite Patrick being a Roman Citizen (not that it had any meaning or relevance by the time he was born) by no means implies any Italian blood.

While it may well have been considered infra dig to give your son the name of a gens, even a plebeian one, in Italy, I think that such a subtlety would be altogether lost in the environs of Hadrian's Wall a generation after the Legions had left.

It would be helpful if the section(s) could be reorganised into two: (a) those with a plausible case for membership of the gens (b) others who happen to have the name Calpurni-us/a. Freuchie (talk) 15:18, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

A lot to unpack here. First of all, we know next to nothing about Calpurnius, the father of St. Patrick, except that he is described as a senator or other official of a Roman city in Britain. That's not enough to tell us whether or not he was descended from Roman colonists, and came by his name that way, or whether he or one of his presumably British ancestors received citizenship from a Calpurnius. But in either case, Roman citizens (which he certainly would have been) didn't normally pick and choose random gentilicia for their prestige; there were traditional practices involved in acquiring a nomen, either by descent or adoption or manumission, most of which would have given a colourable claim to belong to the Calpurnian gens. And it's far from certain that he wasn't a Calpurnius by descent from old Roman stock; a quick check of epigraphic sources shows a number of inscriptions of Calpurnii in Britain, some of whom were ordinary soldiers who might well have settled there. And of course there was the second-century Roman governor, Sextus Calpurnius Agricola, who might have manumitted slaves or enrolled new citizens under his name.

The Calpurnii were an old family, which means that by imperial times they were also quite a large family, with lots of obscure and unimportant branches; anyone who lived two or three hundred years ago and has living descendants likely has hundreds, if not thousands living today, and the Calpurnii were a lot older than that by the fourth century. The C-S Datenbank has over 1,400 inscriptions for persons named Calpurnius, and that probably constitutes a small fraction of the number there were over the centuries. So there would be nothing remarkable in finding descendants of this family in Britain. And since we don't know or have any way of knowing whether most people were descended from old Roman stock, or descended from newly-enrolled citizens of subsequent centuries—and the Romans themselves would have had no way of knowing after a few generations—any notable Calpurnii—or even semi-notable ones—are collected here without comment as to their Romanitas. Patrick's father was a Roman citizen and a local aristocrat; there's no reason to suppose that he wasn't entitled to his name.

As for the argument that his name meant "chalice" and that it was chosen by his father, a priest, a couple of generations after the Romans left, and in the vicinity of Hadrian's wall, that depends on a very narrow set of conclusions that aren't strongly supported by evidence, and one that's clearly wrong: "Calpurnius" doesn't mean "chalice"; that claim comes out of thin air. Words for a cup or chalice would have included paculum, scyphus, or calix, the word from which "chalice" is descended. The notion that Patrick's grandfather chose to name his son "Calpurnius" because he was a priest, and priests use chalices, is at best a wild folk etymology with no basis whatever in fact.

We don't know where in Britain Patrick was born—various arguments have been made for places in England, Wales, or Scotland—much less exactly when. He's reported to have died in the middle or late fifth century at an advanced age, which means that if he wasn't born in the fourth century, his father almost certainly was. But the last legions weren't withdrawn from Britain until 410, and the Germanic conquests didn't occur for another generation or two after that, so Britain was still fairly romanized until the latter part of the fifth century. So that's hardly a basis for claiming that Patrick's grandfather wanted to appropriate a Roman name because nobody would care so long after the departure of the Romans—for that to make sense, his grandfather would have to have been considerably younger than Patrick himself was.

This brings us back to where we started. We know that Patrick's father was a Calpurnius. We don't know how he came to be one. There were Roman colonists in Britain dating to the first century. There were probably new citizens enrolled under Calpurnius Agricola in the second century. There were almost certainly manumitted Calpurnii, perhaps adopted Calpurnii, in Britain over the centuries. By the time Patrick's father was born, he may not have known how his family acquired the name. We don't know his full nomenclature, or that of any of his father, or any of his ancestors. Just that he was a Calpurnius. And since, as in 99% of all cases, we cannot tell how people's ancestors acquired their nomina, he is included here, along with all other Calpurnii of the Roman era. P Aculeius (talk) 17:52, 26 June 2024 (UTC)