Quinctia gens

Denarius of Titus Quinctius Flamininus, 126 BC. On the obverse is the head of Roma, with the apex of the Flamen Dialis behind, alluding to his cognomen. The reverse shows the Dioscuri riding right, with a Macedonian shield below, which is a reference to the Battle of Cynoscephalae won by his great-grandfather in 197 BC.[1]

The gens Quinctia, sometimes written Quintia, was a patrician family at ancient Rome. Throughout the history of the Republic, its members often held the highest offices of the state, and it produced some men of importance even during the imperial period. For the first forty years after the expulsion of the kings the Quinctii are not mentioned, and the first of the gens who obtained the consulship was Titus Quinctius Capitolinus Barbatus in 471 BC; but from that year their name constantly appears in the Fasti consulares.[2][3][4]

As with other patrician families, in later times there were also plebeian Quinctii. Some of these may have been the descendants of freedmen of the gens, or of patrician Quinctii who had voluntarily gone over to the plebs. There may also have been unrelated persons who happened to share the same nomen.[2]

Pliny the Elder relates that it was the custom in the Quinctia gens for even the women not to wear any ornaments of gold.[5]

  1. ^ Crawford, Roman Republican Coinage, p. 291.
  2. ^ a b Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. III, pp. 633, 634 ("Quintia Gens").
  3. ^ Livy, i. 30.
  4. ^ Niebuhr, History of Rome, ii. 291, 292.
  5. ^ Pliny the Elder, xxxiii. 1. s. 6.