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The gens Mamilia was a plebeian family at Rome during the period of the Republic. The gens was originally one of the most distinguished families of Tusculum, and indeed in the whole of Latium. It is first mentioned in the time of the Tarquins; and it was to a member of this family, Octavius Mamilius, that Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, the seventh and last King of Rome, betrothed his daughter. The gens obtained Roman citizenship in the 5th century BC, and some of its members must subsequently have settled at Rome, where Lucius Mamilius Vitulus became the first of the family to hold the consulship in 265 BC, the year before the First Punic War.
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Origin
The Mamilii traced their nomen and origin to the mythical Mamilia, the daughter of Telegonus, who was regarded as the legendary founder of Tusculum and the son of Ulysses and the goddess Circe. This origin was referred to on a coin of the gens, the obverse of which depicts the head of Mercury or Hermes, the ancestor of Ulysses, and the reverse Ulysses himself, clad in the humble disguise he assumed to avoid being recognized by the suitors of Penelope.
Praenomina
The earliest of the Mamilii to occur in history bore the praenomen Octavius, which was rare at Rome. His descendants used the praenomina Lucius, Quintus, Gaius, and Marcus, all of which were very common names throughout Roman history.
Branches and cognomina
The Mamilii were divided into three families, with the cognomina Limetanus, Turrinus, and Vitulus, of which the two latter were the most ancient and important. Limetanus is the only surname which occurs on coins.
Vitulus was a surname in both the Mamilia and Voconia gentes. Niebuhr supposes that Vitulus is merely another form of Italus, and remarks that we find in the same manner in the Mamilia gens the surname Turrinus; that is, Tyrrhenus, an Etruscan. "It was customary, as is proved by the oldest Roman Fasti, for the great houses to take distinguishing surnames from a people with whom they were connected by blood, or by the ties of public hospitality."
The ancients, however, connected the surname Vitulus with the Latin word signifying a "calf", which was depicted on a coin of one of the Voconii Vituli. Although the connection of Turrinus and Tyrrhenus is by no means impossible, or even unlikely, it could also have been derived from turris, "a tower". An ancient tower known as the Turris Mamilia stood in the Subura, and figured in a ritual battle between the residents of two neighborhoods at Rome for the head of the October Horse.