Scribonia gens
Roman gens
The gens Scribonia was a plebeian family of ancient Rome. Members of this gens first appear in history at the time of the Second Punic War, but the first of the Scribonii to obtain the consulship was Gaius Scribonius Curio in 76 BC.
Origin
The nomen Scribonius belongs to a large class of gentilicia derived from cognomina ending in -o, most of which were of plebeian origin. The root of the name is scribo, a writer.
Praenomina
The only praenomina known to have been used by the main families of the Scribonii are Lucius, used by the Scribonii Libones, and Gaius, used by the Curiones. Other praenomina are practically non-existent among the Scribonii appearing in history; the only exception is Marcus, found among one or two of the later Libones, who seem to have adopted it from the Livii.
Branches and cognomina
The two main families of the Scribonii under the Republic bore the cognomina Libo and Curio. Other surnames are found under the Empire.
Libo, the only surname of the Scribonii to occur on coins, is apparently derived from libere, to sprinkle or pour, and was probably given to an ancestor of the family who poured libations. The Scribonii Libones were long associated with a sacred structure in the forum known as the Pueal Scribonianum or Puteal Libonis, frequently depicted on their coins. So called because it resembled a puteal, or wellhead, the structure enclosed a "bidental", a place that had been struck by lightning, or in one tradition the spot where the whetstone of the augur Attius Navius had stood, in the time of Lucius Tarquinius Priscus.
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This entry incorporates text from “Scribonia 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.