Submitted for award of PhD September 2006. - King's College London

citizen body after the establishment of the colony at Pompeii, and that the `old
Pompeians' did indeed take part in the political life of the colony and that they were not
separated into a municipium with its own administration.
6.3.7. Elite families
This section looks at the composition of the political elite in Pompeii to examine its
breadth or narrowness. Names in administrative inscriptions of Pompeii usually consist
of three parts, praenomen, nomen gentilicium and filiation. 786 Some genies appear in
several Pompeian inscriptions. Out of the few inscriptions that mention the meddix
tuticus, Vibius Popidius son of Vibius features in two of them and also in a dipinto on an
amphora fragment, because the middle of the second century BC was a particularly
prosperous period of the town, with much rebuilding and it had become fashionable to
set up inscriptions. The gens Pupidia is represented on a stone inscription from the
House of Pupidius Priscus and the eituns inscriptions and continued to play an important
role in the public life of the town after the Social War as numerous Latin inscriptions
attest. 787 The gens Atrana also occurs both in the administrative inscriptions and the
eftuns inscriptions. Vibius Atranus son of Vibius is recorded because he left money to
the Pompeian vereiia in his will, so he must have been from one of the wealthy families
786 Two inscriptions, ST Po 2 and ST Po 14, are fragmentary and the second half of the names is missing
probably with filiation, the tile stamps usually, however, with the few exceptions mentioned previously,
give only the praenomina and nomina gentilicia
87 ST Po 12 and 39.
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