Talk:Catia gens

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Imperial Catii

The Roman consuls list has the following (all dating A.D. 68 and later):

Ti. Catius Asconius Silius Italicus
Ti. Catius Caesius Fronto
C. Catius Marcellus
P. Catius Sabinus
Sex. Catius Clementinus Priscillianus

Since the gens pages were also originally intended to serve as lists or indexes to help readers find the particular person of that name they're looking for, I wondered whether these consuls ought to be listed (some of them are suffecti of very brief duration, and perhaps unlikely ever to get an independent article). Cynwolfe (talk) 15:26, 14 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I would add them if I had a better idea where these names come from. A lot of the names in the list of Roman consuls look suspect to me, and given the amount of dubious (if not demonstrably inaccurate) material about Roman families of imperial times from descent from antiquity materials, I'm rather cautious about adding names that occur in no other sources. I'm not saying that these people don't belong in the article; just that they need some source other than the "list of Roman consuls". If you do find sources, the format I've been following is to abbreviate praenomina only in the filiation, and not in the full name or text.

My main source for verifying consuls is the Fasti given in the appendix of the DGRBM, which I realize is incomplete for many years in imperial times. But when somebody occurs with only a single name (i.e. "Severus") with an ellipsis in front of it, indicating that the rest of the person's name is (or was) unknown or uncertain, I'm wary of adding a bunch of names with no known source. Especially when the names look more like two separate people jammed together (i.e. Gaius Claudius Proculus Marcus Julius Severus), or when it's impossible to tell from someone's name what his nomen was (i.e. Gaius Marcus Umbilicus Servilius Manlius Balventius Proculus Aristoteles Pius Mordax).

I wish I could get hold of some of the Fasti for imperial times and see what names are listed, or look them up in PW. All I have of PW is an index of names, which sometimes verifies that a person with a particular group of names existed, but sometimes doesn't. So unless I can find some source in say, the Augustan History, or Cassius Dio, or my index to PW, or an article or occurrence in the DGRBM fasti, I don't usually add people who appear only in the article "list of Roman consuls". Really that article should be overhauled with specific sources for individual names. P Aculeius (talk) 03:48, 15 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Shouldn't be too hard to Google Book-search these guys, but I probably shouldn't get sidetracked into the Empire at the moment. Catius Asconius Silius Italicus is the Silius Italicus, however, so he needs to be in there. See Michael von Albrecht's literary history here, A Companion to Ancient Epic here, the sober John D. Grainger here, Taplin's survey of Greek and Roman lit here, Epigraphic Evidence here,. full search results here. Not sure what the source is for his nomenclature in the actual article; don't know when the inscription was discovered, and the article seems not to have been updated from a public domain Britannica. Cynwolfe (talk) 16:09, 15 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I grew curious:

Ti. Catius Caesius Fronto, search results here
C. Catius Marcellus, no hits
P. Catius Sabinus, here, especially Lily Ross Taylor here
Sex. Catius Clementinus Priscillianus here. Cynwolfe (talk) 16:19, 15 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]