United States or Northern Mariana Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It was this Juppiter of the Capitoline who was chosen to be the divine representative of Rome's political ambition; and her confidence in the future, and the omen of her inevitable success lay in the cult-names, the cognomina, with which this Juppiter was henceforth and forever adorned, Juppiter Optimus Maximus.
The Romans had surnames, or cognomina, but the barbarians who won Europe from them had not. In England surnames were not used until nearly a hundred years after the Norman Conquest, and then only by kings and nobles.
Sir, Since my last communication to you on the subject of the works, so commonly spoken of as by the "Great Unknown" "the Wizard of the North," and other equally novel cognomina, the veil has been withdrawn; we now have the open avowal, both from his own lips, and under his own hand, of the authorship from the individual himself, who has so long, and, as it now appears, so justly, enjoyed the reputation of having written them.
The cognomen Maro is in origin a magistrate's title used by Etruscans and Umbrians, but cognomina were a recent fashion in the first century B.C. and were selected by parents of the middle classes largely by accident. In this he is doubtless following a fairly reliable tradition, accepted all the more willingly because of his intimacy with Maecenas, who was of course Etruscan:
Their descendants were distinguished by various praenomina and cognomina , but rejected by common consent the praenomen of Lucius, when, of the two races who bore it, one individual had been convicted of robbery, and another of murder. Amongst other cognomina, they assumed that of Nero, which in the Sabine language signifies strong and valiant.
Verum haud recta insistentes via umbras germanae gloriae non veram sectabantur, cognomina sibi nobilitatis imponentes, eaque Anglorum more ostentantes atque iactantes, quum antea is haberi esseque nobilissimus soleret, qui virtute non opibus, qui egregiis a se factis non maiorum suorum clarus erat.
Word Of The Day