Supplements to the ancestry of Sidonius Apollinaris

Absztrakt

Concerning the ancestry of Sidonius we can state, that the gens Sollia was of Gallic allobroges origin. They were dealing with handicrafts and trade, their centre was around Vienna in Gaul, and were connected with Greeks in southern Gaul and Lyon. For the first time their role in public life was of economic nature, there were a lot of libertinus in the archeological inscriptions. Later the gens Sollia got the dignities of societas publicanorum and the seviri Augustales, thus they set out on the path of social ascension. From libertinus they became Roman citizens of equestrian class. The sources are silent about the family’s rise to the senatorial class. Presumably it happened at the same time, when the surname Apollinaris supplanted the name Sollius and the family relocated its centre around Lyon.