The gens Plautia, sometimes written Plotia, was a plebeian family at ancient Rome. Members of this gens first appear in history in the middle of the fourth century BC, when Gaius Plautius Proculus obtained the consulship soon after that magistracy was opened to the plebeian order by the Licinio-Sextian rogations. Little is heard of the Plautii from the period of the Samnite Wars down to the late second century BC, but from then to imperial times they regularly held the consulship and other offices of importance.[2] In the first century AD, the emperor Claudius, whose first wife was a member of this family, granted patrician status to one branch of the Plautii.
The Plautii of the later Republic claimed descent from Leucon, the son of Neptune and Themisto, the daughter of Hypseus, King of the Lapiths.[3] The coins minted by Publius Plautius Hypsaeus depict Neptune and Leucon.[1]
The nomen Plautius is derived from the common Latin surname Plautus, flat-footed.[4] Chase classifies the name among those gentilicia that were either native to Rome, or which occurred there and cannot be shown to have originated anywhere else.[5] However, other scholars have suggested that they may have come from Privernum, a city of southern Latium.[6] Several of the early Plautii appearing in the Fasti consulares carried on war against the Privernates.
The earlier Plautii mainly used the praenomina Lucius and Gaius, and occasionally Publius and Marcus. The later Plautii employed different names, mainly Aulus, Quintus, Marcus and Tiberius.
The only distinct family of the Plautii during the middle Republic bore the cognomen Venno or Venox, a hunter.[4] Frontinus describes a story, in which Gaius Plautius, censor in 312 BC, obtained the cognomen Venox by discovering the springs that fed the Aqua Appia, Rome's first aqueduct.[7] However, Venno occurs before this, and appears more often in the fasti. The first of this family to obtain the consulship bore the additional cognomen Hypsaeus, later spelled Ypsaeus on coins, which was evidently a personal cognomen, as it does not appear again for over a century, when this name replaces the older Venno.[8]
Proculus, which occurs as the cognomen of the first Plautius to obtain the consulship, also seems to have been a personal cognomen; it is not apparent whether this Plautius was part of the same family as the Vennones. Proculus was an old praenomen, which the Roman antiquarians supposed to have been given to a child born when his father was far from home, although morphologically it seems to be a diminutive of Proca, a name occurring in Roman mythology as one of the Kings of Alba Longa.[9]
Later Plautii were entangled in the affairs of the imperial family during the first century, this branch first appears in the later years of the Republic, and flourished until the time of Nero. They often bore the praenomen Aulus. This was the family of Aulus Plautius, the first Roman governor of Britain. Many members also wore the cognomen Silvanus, originally referring to one who dwells in the forest. The imperial Plautii of the late second century may have been descended from one of these families through marriage, but were apparently descended from the Titii in the male line, and used Plautius because of its greater dignity.
Many of the Plautii bore no cognomen; these seem to have used the alternative spelling, Plotius, more than the others.[2]