The gens eventually drifted into obscurity, although a few Menenii are still attested in the epigraphy of the late Republic and imperial times.
[1] During the first secession of the plebs in 493 BC, Agrippa Menenius Lanatus, the former consul, was despatched by the Senate as an emissary to the plebeians, who were gathered on the Mons Sacer.
He said that he was sprung from the plebs, although he and several generations of his descendants held the consulship at a time when, according to the historians of the late Republic, it was open only to the patricians.
Licinus is expressly given in the Fasti Capitolini, while Livy renders it as Licinius, and some later historians have amended it to the more common praenomen Lucius.
This surname is derived from the Latin adjective, meaning "wooly", and perhaps originally referred to a person with particularly fine, curly, or abundant hair.