Genealogies of Roman Clans and Families

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IULIA GENS The Iulian Clan.

Almost all authors report that the Iulian clan descended from Iulus; however, I do not see it sufficiently agreed upon who this Iulus was. For some think he was Ascanius, the son of Aeneas: others, that he was the son of Ascanius and grandson of Aeneas. Virgil, a good author of antiquities in particular, agrees with the former view, whom Servius, Messala, and others have followed. Livy and Dionysius defend the latter view. Those who follow Virgil report that Iulus reigned in Latium for XXXVIII 38 years after the death of Aeneas: the others attribute this to Ascanius, whom they also make the father of Iulus. For, as Dionysius writes, Ascanius had two sons: Ascanius, born of Creusa, and Silvius, born of Lavinia, daughter of King Latinus. Ascanius succeeded his father in the kingdom: Silvius, the brother of Ascanius, succeeded Ascanius, having excluded Iulus, the son of Ascanius and grandson of Aeneas, who was then a youth, to whom, however, for the sake of honor, the highest priesthood was granted by his uncle, which the Iulian clan always held by right, as if received from their ancestors through their hands. This, according to Dionysius, is the origin of the Iulian clan and their most ancient lineage. Furthermore, as the same [Dionysius] teaches in book II, King Tullus Hostilius transferred the Iulian clan to Rome after Alba was destroyed, and co-opted them among the Fathers Senators. There were two primary families of this clan: one of those who were named Iulii, the other those who were called Caesars. The Iulii, from Iulus, the author and prince of the clan: the Caesars, because he who first bore this surname was cut from his mother's womb from the Latin "a caeso matris utero". For this seems more consistent with the truth than [a derivation] from hair caesaries or from an elephant killed caeso elephanto. Nor do I think I should pass over what Tacitus writes in book XVIII: it pertains to the ancestral rites of the Caesars: that by the institution of Tiberius, the Augustales were created as priests from the family of the Caesars. There exists an epigram of C. Iulius L. F. son of Lucius, he who was killed by the Marians, in the antiquities of the city, of this kind: