A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

the name of a family of 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 a surname Turrinus, that is, Tyrrhenus. " 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." (Niebuhr, Hist. of Rome, vol. i. p. 14.) The ancients, however, as we see from the coin figured below, connected the surname Vitulus with the word signifying a calf.