Lucius Nonius Asprenas (suffect consul 29)

Lucius Nonius Asprenas was a Roman senator who flourished during the Principate. He held the office of suffect consul in 29 as the colleague of Aulus Plautius.[1] He was the oldest son of the homonymous consul of AD 6 and Calpurnia the daughter of Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, consul in 15 BC. Asprenas the Younger had two brothers, Publius Nonius Asprenas Calpurnius Serranus, ordinary consul in 38, and Nonius Asprenas Calpurnius Torquatus.[2]

Pliny the Elder notes that two brothers of the Nonii Asprenates were afflicted with colic, which they cured by use of a crested lark: one took it as food, and wore its heart in a golden bracelet; the other sacrificed the bird in a shrine of unbaked bricks built in the shape of an oven.[3] It is believed that our Asprenas was one of these brothers.[1]

Asprenas was one of seven witnesses of the Senatus consultum de Cn. Pisone patre, the Roman Senate's official act concerning the trial and punishment of Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso. At the time Asprenas was a quaestor.[4] As the act was published 10 December AD 20, and because Roman law of the time dictated quaestors to be 24 years of age, we can deduce that Asprenas was born around 4 BC.[5] His grave monument on the Via Flaminia mentions the only other two offices we know Asprenas held: suffect consul, and augur.[6]

Asprenas is known to have had at least one son, Lucius Nonius Calpurnius Asprenas, suffect consul around the year 72.[2]

References

  1. 1 2 "Nonius 17", Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, volume 17, cols. 872-3
  2. 1 2 Ladislav Vidman, "Zum Stemma der Nonii Asprenates", Listy filologické / Folia philologica, 105 (1982), pp. 1-5
  3. Pliny, Naturalis Historia, XXX.63
  4. Miriam Griffin,"The Senate's Story", Journal of Roman Studies, 87 (1997), pp. 249-263
  5. John Morris, "Leges annales under the principate: I. Legal and constitutional", Listy filologické / Folia philologica, 87 (1964), p. 317
  6. CIL VI, 31689
Political offices
Preceded by
Gaius Fufius Geminus, and
Lucius Rubellius Geminus
Suffect Consul of the Roman Empire
29
with Aulus Plautius
Succeeded by
Marcus Vinicius, and
Lucius Cassius Longinus
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