The nomenRutilius is derived from the LatincognomenRutilus, red or reddish, which was probably borne by an ancestor of the family who had red hair. The nomen belongs to a large class of gentilicia derived from other names using the suffix .
The Rutilii of the Republic bore the cognomina Calvus, Lupus and Rufus. In addition to these, the coins of the Rutilii include the surname Flaccus, which does not occur in literary sources. Other cognomina occur in the imperial times. A number of Rutilii bore no surname. Rufus, red, was typically given to someone with red hair, and this choice of cognomen may have been influenced by the fact that the nomen Rutilius has the same meaning. Another of the surnames of the Rutilii, Calvus, indicated someone bald, while Lupus, a wolf, belongs to a common type of cognomen derived from familiar objects and animals. Flaccus indicated someone flabby, or with floppy ears.
Members
Spurius Rutilius Crassus, according to Livy, one of the consular tribunes in 417 BC, is probably a mistake for Spurius Veturius Crassus, named by Diodorus Siculus, since no other Rutilii are mentioned for over two and a half centuries.
Rutilii Rufi
Publius Rutilius, tribune of the plebs in 169 BC, opposed the actions of the censors with regard to the publicani and one of his own clients, and brought them to trial, in retaliation for which they removed him from his tribe, and degraded him to the status of an aerarius.
Publius Rutilius P. f. Rufus, had served as a military tribune under Scipio Aemilianus in Spain, praetorcirca 118, and as consul in 105 took emergency measures to protect Rome following a series of military disasters in Gaul. He was falsely exiled for repetundae in 92. Rufus was an ally of Gaius Marius, granduncle of Caesar.
Publius Rutilius Lupus, tribune of the plebs in 56 BC, proposed repealing Caesar's agrarian law. Praetor 49, at the beginning of the Civil War, he was a partisan of Pompeius, and stationed at Tarracina, but departed before Caesar's arrival, returning to Rome. In 48, Pompeius appointed him governor of Achaia.
Publius Rutilius Lupus, a grammarian and rhetorician, active during the reign of Tiberius. He was the author of De Figuris Sententiarum et Elocutionis, a collection of translated passages from Greek authors, many of which are no longer extant in the original.
Publius Rutilius Calvus, praetor in 166 BC, probably received the province of Hispania Ulterior. Some scholars identify him with the tribune degraded in 169, but Münzer suggests that the tribune was one of the Rutilii Rufi.
Publius Rutilius M. f., tribune of the plebs in 136 BC, ordered Gaius Hostilius Mancinus to vacate his seat in the senate, on the grounds that his Roman citizenship had been revoked when the senate handed him over to the Numantines following his defeat the previous year.
Rutilius Geminus, author of a tragedy entitled Astyanax. Fulgentius connects him with the Libri Pontificales.
Rutilius Maximus, a jurist, and the author of Ad Legem Falcidiam, a treatise on a law enacted in 40 BC by Publius Falcidius, tribune of the plebs, requiring that the heir of an estate had to take at least one quarter of the property in question.
Claudius Rutilius Numatianus, praefectus urbicircaAD 413 or 414, was a native of Gaul, and the author of an elegy known as the Itinerarium, or De Reditu, in two books, composed about 417. He was a pagan, and his writing shows some hostility to Jewish and Christian practices.
