Annaea gens
Roman gens
The gens Annaea was a plebeian family at Rome during the first century BC, and the early centuries of the Empire. Members of this gens were distinguished for their love of literary pursuits. Several members of the family fell victim to the various plots and intrigues of the court of Nero, including the conspiracy of Gaius Calpurnius Piso.
Origin
Lucius Annaeus Seneca, the first of the gens of whom we have definite knowledge, was a native of Corduba in the province of Hispania Ulterior. However, his name and those of his descendants are clearly of Roman character, arguing that the family was descended from Roman colonists, and not native to Spain. Chase classifies the nomen among those originally derived from names ending in -aes, chiefly of Umbrian or Paelignian origin. The Paeligni were an Oscan people of central Italy. The Umbrians spoke a separate, but closely related language. Statius Annaeus, a friend of the family at Rome, may well have been a kinsman, and his praenomen supports the theory that the Annaei were of Oscan or Umbrian origin.
Praenomina
The only praenomina associated with the Annaei are Lucius, Marcus, Gaius, and Statius.
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This entry incorporates text from “Annaea gens” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.