Publius Annius Asellus

Publius (or Gaius) Annius Asellus was a senator of Ancient Rome who had not been included in the census—that is, avoided a correct reckoning of his true wealth—and died, leaving his only daughter to be his heir (or heres). We know of him almost entirely from a single anecdote of Cicero's in his In Verrem. Scholars do not agree on whether we ought to understand this to have been a deliberate obfuscation or a simple coincidence owing to the timing of the census.[1][2][3][4][5][6]

The property, however, was seized by Verres, the praetor urbanus, on the grounds that such a bequest was in violation of the Lex Voconia, and regardless of the fact that it had not been reckoned in the census as being above the threshold to qualify as being in scope for that law.[7][8]

  1. ^ Evans, John K. (2014). War, Women and Children in Ancient Rome. Routledge Revivals. Taylor & Francis. p. 12. ISBN 9781317810285.
  2. ^ Nicolet, Claude (1980). The World of the Citizen in Republican Rome. University of California Press. p. 72. ISBN 9780520063426.
  3. ^ Gruen, Erich S. (2023). The Last Generation of the Roman Republic. University of California Press. p. 204. ISBN 9780520342033.
  4. ^ Parkin, Tim G. (2003). Old Age in the Roman World: A Cultural and Social History. Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 386–387. ISBN 9780801871283.
  5. ^ Keith, Alison (2021). "Cicero's Verres, Verres's Women". In Keith, Alison; Klein, Florence; Fabre-Serris, Jacqueline (eds.). Identities, Ethnicities and Gender in Antiquity. De Gruyter. p. 77. ISBN 9783110719949.
  6. ^ Hallett, Judith P. (2014). Fathers and Daughters in Roman Society: Women and the Elite Family. Princeton University Press. p. 96. ISBN 9781400855322.
  7. ^ Cicero, In Verrem 1.41, comp. 1.58, 2.7
  8. ^ A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities s.v. Voconia Lex