Genealogies of Roman Clans and Families

A decorative woodcut headpiece features symmetrical floral scrolls and foliage. Below it, a large historiated initial 'G' depicts a seated figure, likely a scholar or deity, within a square frame of vine-work.

IUNIA GENS The Iunian Clan.

Of those clans which are said to have descended from the Trojans and Aeneas, the Iunia is the most noble of all, named after Iunius, a companion of Aeneas, as Dionysius writes in his fourth book. When this clan had migrated to the city along with Romulus, it flourished in praise and martial glory under the kings, right up to L. Brutus, who liberated the Roman people from royal tyranny and was the most famous and also the last of the Iunian clan. For, as Dionysius records in book V, Brutus left no surviving children, and those who follow Brutus are plebeian, not patrician. Cicero, however, seems to have thought differently, for he calls M. Brutus, the killer of Caesar, a kinsman of L. Brutus in Tusculan Disputations IV, when he says: "He who was in Italy at the same time as L. Brutus liberated the fatherland, a renowned author of your nobility." And in the first Philippic: "I say nothing of who that Brutus was, who himself liberated the republic from royal domination: and he propagated his lineage for nearly five hundred years to a similar virtue and a similar deed." The same author says in Brutus: "For who could think that L. Brutus, that prince of your nobility, was lacking?" This same thing is written by Plutarch, based on the opinion of the philosopher Posidonius, who held that the third son of Iunius Brutus was exempt from the conspiracy, and that the Iunian clan was propagated through him. Cicero's authority on this matter ought to be the most weighty, as is that of Posidonius and Plutarch; yet in my judgment, the authority of Dionysius, who confirms his opinion with many arguments and exquisite reasoning, is the weightiest of all. For no one from this clan held a Curule magistracy for two hundred years after the expulsion of the kings: and I cannot be brought to believe by any reason that this could have happened in such a famous and noble family. Cicero attributes this to Brutus, a man very dear to him, not so much because it is true, but to extol by praise that most beautiful deed he performed for the liberty of the Republic, and to signify that first L. Brutus, and then his progeny, liberated the Roman people from kings.