Sulpicia in first person

Read the following excerpt and answer the questions.

Despite preserving very little of her work, Sulpicia is the only poetess of classical Latin times. A century later, there was another poetess with the same name, but different from the one we are concerned with here. In the Corpus Tibullianum, the third book of the poet Tibullus, there is a collection of elegies under the name of the Cycle of Sulpicia, dedicated by her to her beloved Cerinthus, probably an assumed name. In this book, by Tibullus, there are poems that other poets dedicated to Sulpicia. We have little information about her, daughter of Servius Sulpicius Rufus and Valeria, niece of the powerful Messala and protected by him. Sulpicia was in contact with the great poets of her time and her poems, though few in number, are full of confidence and audacity, as can be seen in this fragment from one of her elegies.

Our translation from: Verón Gormaz, José (2015).  “La literatura en tiempos de Augusto”, in Anuario del Centro de la Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia en Calatayud,  no 21, pp. 17-26.

1.      Sulpicia was the daughter of Servius Sulpicius Rufus and Valeria. Observe how, whilst the father has the tria nomina: praenomen (first name), nomen (second personal name that indicates the gens to which the person belongs) and cognomen (nickname), the daughter has no praenomen and uses only the family nomen. Later on, women could have a cognomen. Do you consider this to be another example of the androcentric model that prevailed in Roman society as a result of patriarchal thinking, since the woman was named after her father's name?

2.      In Spain, as a general rule, any person gets the first surname from the father and the second one from the mother. Article 109 of the Civil Code recognises the right of the parents, by mutual agreement, to determine the order of the surnames before their registration in the civil registry. But only 0.5 of newborns have the mother's surname in the first place. Do you consider this to be discrimination of a patriarchal society? Justify your answer. 

3.      Investigate about how the "baptism" or naming ceremony was in Rome (Dies Lustricus).

4.      Search for more information: how many surnames do English, French and Italians have? Can they choose between the father's or mother's surname or is it mandatory to choose the father's one? And what's the situation like in Spain? Give your opinion about this.

5.      Find Sulpicia's poems and cite the topics they tackle.