Abstract:

The aim of this paper is to investigate family connections between Tusculum and its three neighbouring cities (Praeneste, Nemi and Gabii) on basis of epigraphic evidence. To achieve this, various approaches are taken. For Praeneste, an examination of families mentioned in the mid-republican inscriptions from the Colombella necropolis was the starting point, allowing to highlight the most ancient gentes that it shared with Tusculum (the Decemii), and to connect members of the Tusculan and Praenestinian late Republican nobility, who had become socially and politically linked with each other through marriage (the Praenestini Eppulei e Saufeii e i tusculani Caelii). Connections between Nemi and Tusculum go even back to the Archaic period. At the former settlement, the federal shrine of Diana Nemorensis and its myth-historical foundation by the Greek hero Orestes is key to understand the public gallery of viri illustres attested in Tusculum. The gallery is composed of a series of pedestals with the names of mythic and historic characters: the Greek Telegonus and his brother Telemachus besides the founder of Nemi Orestes and his friend Pylades; the highest Roman Republican magistrates (consules, imperator) and priests (flamen Dialis) are placed beside the archaic Latin dictator. All are associated with the rituals that were carried out at the Feriae Latinae in the shrine of Iuppiter Latiaris, symbolizing the Roman fusion with the nomen Latinum. An inscription, which may be interpreted as proof of the presence of an accensus velatus in Tusculum, a sacred function linked to the ceremony, shows how the ancient cities of Latium preserved the memory of this arcanum imperii. Another accensus velatus, a very rich freedman from Gabii, displays the intimate connection between the Gabini and Tusculani through the gens Plutia, a wealthy family that had settled in both cities and who managed the Tusculana sacra for a while.