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43-591: In 212, the Constitutio Antoniniana of Caracalla (whose full name was Marcus Aurelius Antoninus) granted Roman citizenship to all free residents of the Empire, resulting in vast numbers of new citizens who assumed the nomen Aurelius , in honour of their patron, including several emperors: seven of the eleven emperors between Gallienus and Diocletian ( Claudius Gothicus , Quintillus , Probus , Carus , Carinus , Numerian and Maximian ) bore

86-535: A Gaul. The Aurelii Symmachi were one of the last great families of the western empire, holding the highest offices of the Roman state during the fourth and fifth centuries. The Symmachi were regarded as members of the old Roman aristocracy, and acquired a reputation for their wisdom and learning. Stemma made from Münzer and Badian. Constitutio Antoniniana The Constitutio Antoniniana ( Latin for "Constitution [or Edict] of Antoninus"), also called

129-466: A dramatic prototype for all persons whose crime is mitigated by extenuating circumstances. These legends belong to an age when higher ideas of law and of social duty were being established; the implacable blood-feud of primitive society gives place to a fair trial, and in Athens, when the votes of the judges are evenly divided, mercy prevails. In one version of the story of Telephus , the infant Orestes

172-473: A family that achieved notability during the second century, attaining the consulship on at least three occasions. Their surname, Gallus , had two common derivations, referring either to a cockerel, or to a Gaul . In the latter case, it might indicate that the first of this family was of Gallic descent, that he was born in Gaul, that he had performed some noteworthy deed in Gaul, or that in some manner he resembled

215-462: A letter from her to Greece; he refused to go, but he implored Pylades to deliver the letter while he stayed to be slain. After a conflict of mutual affection, Pylades at last yielded, but the brother and sister finally recognized each other due to the letter, and all three escaped together, carrying with them the image of Artemis. After his return to Greece, Orestes took possession of his father's kingdom of Mycenae (killing his half-brother Alete , who

258-499: A manner befitting his illustrious forebears. The Cottae were related to Julius Caesar and Augustus through Aurelia Cotta , who was Caesar's mother. The Aurelii Scauri were a relatively small family, which flourished during the last two centuries of the Republic. Their surname, Scaurus , belongs to a common class of cognomina derived from an individual's physical features, and referred to someone with swollen ankles. Orestes ,

301-471: A penal status that denied them the citizenship usually bestowed with manumission . The exclusion is most often taken to refer to the former slaves who had been treated as criminals by their master but for whatever reason were freed from ownership. The Roman jurist Ulpian ( c. 170 – 223) states in the Digest : "All persons throughout the Roman world were made Roman citizens by an edict of

344-428: A result, vast numbers of new citizens assumed the nomen Aurelius , in honour of their patron (whose full name was Marcus Aurelius Antoninus), including several emperors: seven of the eleven emperors between Gallienus and Diocletian ( Claudius Gothicus , Quintillus , Probus , Carus , Carinus , Numerian and Maximian ) bore the name Marcus Aurelius . The one exclusion to the universal grant occurs in

387-563: A temple and took off with Hermione. He seized Argos and Arcadia after their thrones had become vacant, becoming ruler of all the Peloponnesus . His son by Hermione, Tisamenus , became ruler after him but was eventually killed by the Heracleidae . There is extant a Latin epic poem , consisting of about 1000 hexameters , called Orestes Tragoedia , which has been ascribed to Dracontius of Carthage. Orestes appears also to be

430-473: A vexed passage referring to dediticii , a class of technically free people who lacked either full Roman citizenship or Latin rights . In the Imperial era, there were two categories of dediticii : the peregrini dediticii ("foreigners under treaty") who had surrendered and former slaves who were designated libertini qui dediticiorum numero sunt, freedmen who were counted among the dediticii because of

473-657: Is derived from Greek ὄρος (óros, "mountain") and ἵστημι (hístēmi, "to stand"), and so can be thought to have the meaning "stands on a mountain". In the Homeric telling of the story, Orestes is a member of the doomed house of Atreus , which is descended from Tantalus and Niobe . He is absent from Mycenae when his father, Agamemnon , returns from the Trojan War with the Trojan princess Cassandra as his concubine, and thus not present for Agamemnon's murder by Aegisthus ,

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516-476: Is to punish any violation of the ties of family piety. He takes refuge in the temple at Delphi ; but, even though Apollo had ordered him to kill his mother, the god is powerless to protect Orestes from the consequences. At last Athena receives him on the Acropolis of Athens and arranges a formal trial of the case before twelve judges, including herself. The Erinyes demand their victim; Orestes asserts that it

559-770: The Edict of Caracalla or the Antonine Constitution , was an edict issued in AD 212 by the Roman emperor Caracalla . It declared that all free men in the Roman Empire were to be given full Roman citizenship (and by extension all free women in the Empire were to be given the same rights as Roman women, such as the jus trium liberorum ). In the century before Caracalla, Roman citizenship had already lost much of its exclusiveness and become more available between

602-583: The Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitolium . The relationship between Orestes and Pylades has been presented by some authors of the Roman era (not by classic Greek tragedians) as romantic or homoerotic . A dialogue entitled Erotes ("Affairs of the Heart") and attributed to Lucian compares the merits and advantages of heterosexuality and homoeroticism, and Orestes and Pylades are presented as

645-541: The cognomina Cotta (also spelled Cota ) , Orestes , and Scaurus . Cotta and Scaurus appear on coins, together with a fourth surname, Rufus , which does not occur among the ancient writers. A few personal cognomina are also found, including Pecuniola , apparently referring to the poverty of one of the Aurelii during the First Punic War . Cotta , the surname of the oldest and most illustrious branch of

688-445: The Aurelii under the Republic, probably refers to a cowlick, or unruly shock of hair; but its derivation is uncertain, and an alternative explanation might be that it derives from a dialectical form of cocta , literally "cooked", or in this case "sunburnt". Marcus Aurelius Cotta, moneyer in 139 BC, minted an unusual denarius, featuring Hercules in a biga driven by centaurs , presumably alluding to some mythological event connected with

731-504: The Emperor Antoninus Caracalla" (D. 1.5.17). The context of the decree is still subject to discussion. According to historian and politician Cassius Dio ( c. AD 155 – c. AD 235), the main reason Caracalla passed the law was to increase the number of people available to tax. In the words of Cassius Dio: "This was the reason why he made all the people in his empire Roman citizens; nominally he

774-470: The Empire itself, when the consul's grandson, Titus Aurelius Fulvus, was adopted as the successor to Hadrian , becoming the emperor Antoninus Pius . Most of the emperors who followed were born or adopted into the gens, through the end of the Severan dynasty. The surname Fulvus was a common surname, referring to someone with yellowish, yellow-brown, tawny, or strawberry blond hair. The Aurelii Galli were

817-518: The Eumenides, who now offer him wisdom and counsel. They are then propitiated by the establishment of a new ritual, in which they are worshipped as "Semnai Theai", "Venerable Goddesses", and Orestes dedicates an altar to Athena Areia . As Aeschylus tells it, Orestes' punishment for matricide ended after a trial, but according to Euripides, in order to escape the persecutions of the Erinyes, Orestes

860-620: The analyses of more recent scholars, the Constitutio Antoniniana marks a major milestone in the provincialisation of Roman law, meaning that the gap between private law in the provinces and private law in Italia narrowed. This is because, in granting citizenship to all men in the provinces, much private law had to be re-written to conform with the law that applied to Roman citizens in Rome. To these scholars, it therefore also marks

903-583: The ashes of Orestes ( Cineres Orestis ) as one of the seven pignora imperii of the Roman empire in his In Vergilii Aeneidem commentarii (‘Commentary on Virgil’s Aeneid’). Alongside the ashes, Servius lists the other six pignora: the stone of the Mother of the Gods, the terracotta chariot of the Veientines, the ancile , the sceptre of Priam , the veil of Iliona, and the palladium . The ashes were kept at

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946-579: The beginning of a process by which imperial constitutions became the primary source of Roman law. Mary Beard distinguishes the history of ancient Rome up until 212 to be different to the era that follows, "effectively a new state masquerading under an old name". Anthony Kaldellis says Rome went from an empire to a world and this decision would later underpin the enforcement of uniform religious belief. Orestes In Greek mythology , Orestes or Orestis ( / ɒ ˈ r ɛ s t iː z / ; ‹See Tfd› Greek : Ὀρέστης [oréstɛːs] )

989-504: The body, which measured 7 cubits long (311.5 cm if 1 cubit is 44.5 cm ). Thus Orestes would have been a Giant . These remains could have belonged to a huge animal from the Pleistocene epoch. Huge bones found in caves in nearby areas of Greece have been attributed to horses ( Equus abeli ), mammoths , elephants , deers , bovids and cetaceans . Maurus Servius Honoratus , an early 4th century grammarian, regards

1032-565: The chief families of the Aurelii were common throughout Roman history. The Aurelii of the Republic primarily used Gaius , Lucius , Marcus , and Publius , to which the Aurelii Orestides added Gnaeus . The Aurelii Fulvi of imperial times used Titus , Marcus , and Lucius , while the Aurelii Symmachi used Quintus and Lucius . There were three main stirpes of the Aurelii in republican times, distinguished by

1075-484: The country when Clytemnestra wished to kill him. In the familiar theme of the hero's early eclipse and exile, he escaped to Phanote on Mount Parnassus , where King Strophius took charge of him. In his twentieth year, he was urged by Electra to return home and avenge his father's death. He returned home, along with his first cousin Pylades , son of Anaxibia (sister to Agamemnon) and Strophius. The story of Orestes

1118-513: The gens, but the exact symbolism is unknown. The Aurelii Cottae were prominent from the First Punic War down to the time of Tiberius , after which they faded into obscurity. The last of this family appearing in history include Marcus Aurelius Cotta Maximus Messalinus , a friend of Tiberius , who squandered his family fortune through reckless prodigality, and his son, who received a stipend from Nero in order to maintain his household in

1161-575: The inhabitants throughout the different provinces of the Roman Empire and between nobles such as kings of client countries. Before the Edict, however, a significant number of provincials still were non-Roman citizens and held instead the Latin rights . Therefore, being a Roman citizen remained a well sought-after status till 212. Veterans of the Auxilia were also granted Roman citizenship on discharge. As

1204-498: The lover of his wife, Clytemnestra . Seven years later, Orestes returns from Athens and avenges his father's death by slaying both Aegisthus and his own mother Clytemnestra. In the Odyssey , Orestes is held up as a favorable example to Telemachus , whose mother Penelope is plagued by suitors . In Pindar 's version, the young Orestes was saved by his nurse Arsinoe ( Laodamia ) or his sister Electra, who conveyed him out of

1247-502: The name "Marcus Aurelius". So ubiquitous was the name in the latter centuries of the Empire that it suffered abbreviation, as Aur. , and it becomes difficult to distinguish members of the Aurelian gens from other persons bearing the name. The nomen Aurelius is usually connected with the Latin adjective aureus , meaning "golden", in which case it was probably derived from the color of a person's hair. However, Festus reports that

1290-605: The name became attached to a branch of the Aurelii are unclear, but perhaps allude to some heroic deed, or military service in Greece. The Aurelii Fulvi, who rose to prominence in imperial times, originally came from Nemausus in Gallia Narbonensis . Titus Aurelius Fulvus , the first of the family to attain the consulship, was made a patrician about AD 73 or 74. In the second century, the Aurelii Fulvi obtained

1333-470: The number of men able to serve in the legions, as only full citizens could serve as legionaries in the Roman army . In scholarly interpretations that agree with a model of moral degeneration as the reason for the fall of the Roman Empire, most famously the model followed by British historian Edward Gibbon , the edict came at a cost to the auxiliaries, which primarily consisted of non-citizen men. In

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1376-400: The one was struck to the ground by his usual madness and lay there, but Pylades "did wipe away the foam and tend his frame and shelter him with a fine well-woven robe," thus showing the feelings not merely of a lover, but also of a father. But when it had been decided that, while one remained to be killed, the other should depart for Mycenae to bear a letter, each wished to remain for the sake of

1419-419: The original form of the nomen was Auselius , and that the medial 's' was replaced by 'r' at a relatively early period; the same process occurred with the archaic nomina Fusia, Numisia, Papisia, Valesia , and Vetusia , which became Furia, Numeria, Papiria, Valeria , and Veturia in classical Latin . According to Festus, Auselius was derived from a Sabine word for the sun. All of the praenomina used by

1462-485: The other, considering that he himself lived in the survival of his friend. But Orestes refused to take the letter, claiming Pylades was the fitter person to do so, and thus showed himself almost to be the lover rather than the beloved. In 1734, George Frederic Handel 's opera Oreste (based on Giangualberto Barlocci's Roman libretto of 1723), was premiered in London's Covent Garden . L'Orestie d'Eschyle (1913–1923)

1505-526: The principal representatives of homoerotic friendship: Taking the love god as the mediator of their emotions for each other, they sailed together as it were on the same vessel of life...nor did they restrict their affectionate friendship to the limits of Hellas....as soon as they set foot on the land of the Tauride, the Fury of matricides was there to welcome the strangers, and, when the natives stood around them,

1548-509: The surname of a family that flourished for about a century toward the end of the Republic, was a Greek name, and belonged to a class of surnames of foreign origin, which appear during the middle and late Republic. In Greek mythology, Orestes was the son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra , and avenged his father's murder by slaying his own mother, and after escaping the judgment of the Erinyes , became king of Mycenae . The circumstances by which

1591-462: Was honoring them, but his real purpose was to increase his revenues by this means, in as much as aliens did not have to pay most of these taxes." However, few of those that gained citizenship were wealthy, and while it is true that Rome was in a difficult financial situation, it is thought that this could not have been the sole purpose of the edict. Cassius Dio generally saw Caracalla as a bad, contemptible emperor. Another goal may have been to increase

1634-400: Was indeed he who killed his mother, though he was acting on the orders of Apollo. At the close of the trial, Athena votes on the verdict last, announcing that she is for acquittal; the votes are counted and the result is a tie, forcing an acquittal in accordance with the rules previously stipulated by Athena. The Erinyes, who insisted on Orestes' responsibility in the murder, are converted into

1677-668: Was kidnapped by King Telephus, who used him as leverage in his demand that Achilles heal him. According to some sources, Orestes fathered Penthilus by his half-sister, Erigone . For modern treatments see the Oresteia in the arts and popular culture . In The History by Herodotus , the Oracle of Delphi foretold that the Spartans could not defeat the Tegeans until they moved the bones of Orestes to Sparta. Lichas discovered

1720-462: Was ordered by Apollo to go to Tauris , carry off the statue of Artemis that had fallen from the heavens, and bring it to Athens. Orestes traveled to Tauris with Pylades , where the pair were at once imprisoned by the people, among whom the custom was to sacrifice all Greek strangers in honor of Artemis. The priestess of Artemis, whose duty it was to perform the sacrifice, was Orestes' sister Iphigenia . She offered to release him if he would carry home

1763-516: Was the son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra , and the brother of Electra . He is the subject of several Ancient Greek plays and of various myths connected with his madness, revenge, and purification, which retain obscure threads of much older works. In particular Orestes plays a main role in Aeschylus ' Oresteia . The Greek name Ὀρέστης, having become "Orestēs" in Latin and its descendants,

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1806-776: Was the son of Clytemestra and Aegisthus), to which were added Argos and Laconia . Orestes was said to have died of a snakebite in Arcadia . His body was conveyed to Sparta for burial (where he was the object of a cult ) or, according to a Roman legend, to Aricia, when it was removed to Rome ( Servius on Aeneid , ii. 116). Before the Trojan War , Orestes was to marry his first cousin Hermione , daughter of Menelaus and Helen . Things soon changed after Orestes committed matricide : Menelaus then gave his daughter to Neoptolemus , son of Achilles and Deidamia . According to Euripides' play Andromache, Orestes slew Neoptolemus just outside

1849-637: Was the subject of the Oresteia of Aeschylus ( Agamemnon , Choephori , Eumenides ), of the Electra of Sophocles , and of the Electra , Iphigeneia in Tauris , Iphigenia at Aulis and Orestes , all of Euripides . He also appears in Euripides’ Andromache . In Aeschylus's Eumenides , Orestes goes mad after killing his mother and is pursued by the Erinyes (Furies) , whose duty it

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