Just ran across the title of an edition of Cicero published by Benjamin Franklin, M.T. Cicero's Cato Major. I imagine it was a common way of writing Roman names back then, but it sounded more modern to me than either 18th century or classical, and made me smile. I could just imagine: "Hey, M.T., how are things?" "Just fine, J.C., how are you and Cn.P. getting along?"

As I understand it, the Romans abbreviated promiscuously in various inscriptions, and especially regularly abbreviated the first name; but my sense is that the norm was not to abbreviate the family name except where space was at a special premium, because, well, it's the family name, damn it. But I guess I should take it up with old B.F. himself.

And, yes, I know (or at least think I know) it should be C.I. (even though when composing this post I almost screwed it up by first writing G.J. and then C.J.), but J.C. sounded funnier.