Daughter of the Patriciate

Abstract The name Sulpicia and the filiation our poet asserts bespeak her aristocratic lineage from the ancient Roman patrician family of the Sulpicii, whose recorded traditions go back to 500 bce, ten years after the establishment of republican government at Rome. The chapter explores Sulpicia’s aristocratic paternal lineage and the revival of the political fortunes of the Servii Sulpicii Rufi with a special focus on her grandfather, the jurist Ser. Sulpicius Rufus, and her father, the homonymous orator, in the late republic, along with her brother, Ser. Sulpicius Postumius, who seems to have pursued a senatorial career under the emperor Augustus. Sulpicia also boasted an extensive network of female kin on her paternal side, though we cannot always elucidate the precise relationships among them. In addition to her father’s sisters, whom the jurist married to prominent legal colleagues, Sulpicia may have been related to the mid-republican exemplar of chastity, Sulpicia Fulvi, and the triumviral saviour of her husband, Sulpicia Lentuli.