Tu'llia Gens
patrician and plebeian.
This gens was of great antiquity, for even leaving out of question Servius Tullius, the sixth king of Rome, whom Cicero claims as his
gentilis (
Tusc. 1.16). we are told that the Tullii were one of the Alban houses, which were transplanted to Rome in the reign of Tullus Hostilius. (
Liv. 1.30.)
According to this statement the Tullii belonged to the minores gentes. We find mention of a Tullius in the reign of the last king of Rome [TULLIUS, No. 1], and of a M'. Tullius Longus, who was consul in the tenth year of the republic, B. C. 500. [LONGUS.] The patrician branch of the gens appears to have become extinct at an early period; for after the early times of the republic no one of the name occurs for some centuries, and the Tullii of a later age are not only plebeians, but, with the exception of their bearing the same name, cannot be regarded as having any connection with the ancient gens.
The first plebeian Tullius who rose to the honours of the state was M. Tullius Decula, consul B. C. 81, and the next was the celebrated orator M. Tullius Cicero. [DECULA; CICERO.] The other surnames of the Tullii under the republic belong chiefly to freedmen, and are given below. On coins we find no cognomen.
The following coin, which bears on the obverse the head of Pallas and on the reverse Victory driving a quadriga, with the legend of M. TVLLI is supposed by some writers to belong to M. Tullius Cicero, the orator, but the coin is probably of an earlier date. (Eckhel, vol. v. p. 327.)
