Category:Gens Hortensia (Nova Roma)

HORTENSIA GENS, plebeian; for we have an Hortensius as tribunus plebis, and there is no evidence of any patrician families of this name. Cicero, indeed, gives the epithet of nobilis to the orator (pro Quinct. 22 ; cf. Plat. Oat. Maj. 25 ; Plin. H. N. 9, 80); but this is sufficiently accounted for by the high curule offices that had been held by several of his ancestors. The name seems to have been derived from the gardening propensities of the first person who bore it; and the surname Hortalus, borne by the great orator's son, seems, as Drumann observes, to have been a kind of nickname of the orator himself. (Cic. Alt. ii. 25, iv. 15.)