Talk:Laecania gens

Deletion of two names

I've removed the persons Gaius Lecanius, consul in AD 65, & almost deleted Quintus Lecanius Bassus. Starting with C. Lecanius. First, the Fasti Capitolini only extends to AD 14. And the cite to Tacitus is worthless: does "Annals, 3" refer to a book, or a chapter in Tacitus' work? Book III of the Annals covers the years AD 20-22; the portion of the Annals that covers AD 65, XV.48-XVI.13, does not mention a Lecanius. Checking my usual references, no C. Lecanius is listed for that year; checking the relevant lists of consuls, no Lecanius has ever been attested as consul.

As for Q. Lecanius Bassus, I happen to own a copy of the Loeb edition of Natural History so I was able to check that reference. It took me some digging (& I had to alter my first draft of this comment), & found him mentioned at xxvi.5 -- but spells his gentilicum Laecanius. (Pliny discusses Carbuncles in paragraphs 5 & 6 of that book.) The Loeb edition dates his consulship to AD 62; the other consular mentioned in the passage is dated to the year 65, so maybe whoever wrote this entry copied the wrong date. (The list of consuls lists two: a suffect consul in AD 40, & a C. Laecanius Bassus Caecina Paetus in AD 70; considering that Pliny states he died "the same year as I compose my work", I suspect he refers to the consul of AD 70.) However, I'm not certain that "Laecanius" is another way to spell "Lecanius", or they are different people. -- llywrch (talk) 19:37, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

I think we can fairly assume they're different orthographies, and looking at PIR now, as well as noting the common surname in what looks like a single family of the Laecanii, I think it's clear that they must be in this case, at least. The Tacitus citation was missing its middle parts; the book and half of the chapter. It should have said "xv. 33", not just "3". Checked DGRBM and found the citation, although I think it gave "xv. 3", so probably a combination of its typo and mine. The "Fasti" referred to seems to have been an inscription, which I misinterpreted as the Capitolini, since they weren't clearly designated, and when this article was written I didn't have much understanding of the different inscriptions frequently identified without qualifier as "fasti". That's why I've got the Capitolini cited so often when it should be the Ostienses or one of the minor fasti. Since that time I've spent quite a lot of time with the various fasti, and eventually will make some individual articles with transcriptions, since I think that would be useful on Wikipedia. Anyway, gone over this article with PIR and the CS database, adding individuals and correcting citations. P Aculeius (talk) 21:25, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Having reviewed your changes & your comments, it appears that I was a bit hasty -- or sloppy -- in deleting that entry. But in my defense, the material was screwy & needed sorting out. Plus it appears there are three consuls in this family. But I've noticed a couple of small errors -- C. Laecania was consul in AD 64, not 65; Pliny does not provide a praenomen for the consular who died from puncturing his carbuncle; & I corrected the citation to Natural History. -- llywrch (talk) 00:50, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

No worries. We're both trying to figure out the same stuff, and ultimately we both want our work to be accurate! But when I can't figure out a citation, I just return to the source, or else try to locate it independently. It didn't appear out of thin air, so it's probably out there somewhere. Perseus has a nice search feature for their contents, if you can find it! I checked on the praenomen, and it looks like some manuscripts of Pliny do give the praenomen Quintus. The one on Perseus does, and so does the Latin in this French version I found on Archive.org. So it might be a difference between manuscripts, or else a typo in the Loeb version at Lacus Curtius. I almost put in a footnote about this, but I'm not sure, and there isn't any other praenomen in the ones I've managed to check.

The citation in Pliny was to the chapter number; the Loeb version gives both chapter and paragraph numbers, and you cited to the paragraph numbers, but the chapter numbers are more likely to be found across different versions. Thank you for correcting the year to 64. I meant to do that and somehow failed! Also, if Quintus is the same as one of the consuls, the one of 64 or the one of 70, it has to be the one of 64 (the one the DGRBM meant, anyway). We can be sure it wasn't the one of 70, because he was governor of Asia in 80, after Pliny was dead! There are no Quinti among the Laecanii in known inscriptions, but that doesn't really tell us that the name has to be wrong, since a high percentage of Romans aren't mentioned in any inscriptions at all. I saw a couple of Lucii, a Publius, and a couple of Sexti, but didn't have the patience to add all of the Laecanii from inscriptions tonight. Might do that later. P Aculeius (talk) 01:44, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

M. V. Martialis

In V,43 Martialis mentions Laecania, maybe in relation to the L. family. --Eisfisch (talk) 21:42, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

Added this Laecania, citing Martial. P Aculeius (talk) 22:50, 14 April 2023 (UTC)