Fenestella

▪ Roman poet

born 52 BC

died AD 19

      Latin poet and annalist whose lost work, the Annales, apparently contained a valuable store of antiquarian matter as well as historical narrative of the final century of the Roman Republic. Fenestella, whose life span is given sometimes as it is listed above and sometimes as possibly 35 BC–AD 36, was used as a source by the 1st-century-AD historian Pliny the Elder, the 2nd-century biographer Suetonius, and the 4th-century grammarian Diomedes.

      Fenestella's Annales was in at least 22 books and certainly included the year 57 BC, although the exact period it covered is unknown. The few surviving fragments ascribed to Fenestella refer to such varied subjects as the origin of the appeal to the people (provocatio), the use of elephants in the games, the wearing of gold rings, the material for making the toga, and details of the lives of Terence and Cicero (Cicero, Marcus Tullius).

▪ paleontology

      genus of extinct bryozoans, small colonial animals, especially characteristic of the Early Carboniferous Period (360 to 320 million years ago). Close study of Fenestella reveals a branching network of structures with relatively large elliptical openings and smaller spherical openings that housed individual members of the colony. Fenestella was a marine form.

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