The gens Urbinia was an obscure plebeian family at ancient Rome. Only a few members of this gens are mentioned by Roman writers, but others are known from inscriptions.
Origin
The nomenUrbinius belongs to a class of gentilicia originally formed from cognomina ending in -inus.[1] The surname Urbinus probably referred to a native of Urbinum in Umbria.
Members
Urbinia,[i] a vestal virgin buried alive for unchastity during the pestilence of 472 BC.[2][3]
Urbinius Panopion,[ii] proscribed by the Second Triumvirate, was saved by one of his slaves, who exchanged clothes with him, and was slain in his place.[6][7]
Urbinia, a woman whose estate was contested by a certain Clusinius Figulus, who claimed to be her son, and retained the advocate Labienus to represent him against Urbinia's heirs, represented by Gaius Asinius Pollio. Quintilian describes a rhetorical trick of Asinius, who implied that Figulus' case was exceptionally weak by describing Labienus himself as the strongest point in the plaintiff's favour.[8][9][10]
Lucius Urbinius Quartinus, a native of Africa, was a soldier in the praetorian guard, where he served in the century of Faenius Justus. He was buried at Misenum in Campania, aged sixty, having served for twenty-five years, in a tomb built by Lucius Valerius Saturninus, dating from the second century, or the first half of the third.[11]
Marcus Urbinius Rufus, a native of Dacia, dedicated a tomb at Misenum, dating between the middle of the second century and the middle of the third, for his fellow-soldier, Cassius Albanus, a native of Corsica, aged thirty years, two months, and two days.[12]
Gaius Urbinius Victor, buried in a third-century tomb at Genua in Liguria.[13]
T. Robert S. Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic, American Philological Association (1952–1986).
Lothar Bakker and Brigitte Galsterer-Kröll, Graffiti auf römischer Keramik im Rheinischen Landesmuseum Bonn (Graffiti from Roman Pottery in the Bonn Rhineland Museum), Bonn (1975).