Viviana (gens)
The gens Viviana was a Roman family during the late Republic and early Empire. The gens is known primarily from three individuals, the jurist Vivianus, of the 1st century CE, who wrote extensively on slave ownership, and two different individuals, both known as Vivianus Rhesus, one recorded as the Governor of Thrace, the other noted by scholiasts as have walked out of an early recitation of Ovid's Ars Amatoria.[1] Some scholars have contended that the two figures should be considered the same, however RM Tindall notes that, at the time of Ovid, Thrace was not yet a province of Rome. The gens is also known to scholars from the epigram associated with the family, duramus membratim.[2]
It seems probable that the family traced some links back to Thrace, whether historical or imagined, as at least one member of the gens is recorded with the cognomen Rhesus, associated with the Homeric hero slain outside the walls of Troy.