page_title: Julii Caesares
section_title: Descendancy
hierarchical_section_title: Julii Caesares / Descendancy
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of Germanicus. Bronze, Roman artwork of the Imperial era, 1st half of the 1st century CE. From Tiber River. Français&#160;: Portrait de Germanicus. Bronze, œuvre romaine de l'époque impériale, première moitié du Ier siècle ap. J.-C. Provenance&#160;: fleuve Tiber. Italiano: Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, ritratto di Germanico in bronzo dorato; da Roma; rinvenuto nell'alveo del Tevere durante lavori presso Ponte Sisto nel 1884. Num.cat. 56.
context_page_description: The Julii Caesares were the most illustrious family of the patrician gens Julia. The family first appears in history during the Second Punic War, when Sextus Julius Caesar was praetor in Sicily. His son, Sextus Julius Caesar, obtained the consulship in 157 BC; but the most famous descendant of this stirps is Gaius Julius Caesar, a general who conquered Gaul and became the undisputed master of Rome following the Civil War. Having been granted dictatorial power by the Roman Senate and instituting a number of political and social reforms, he was assassinated in 44 BC. After overcoming several rivals, Caesar's adopted son and heir, Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, was proclaimed Augustus by the senate, inaugurating what became the Julio-Claudian line of Roman emperors.
context_section_description: The genealogy of the Julii Caesares was studied by Wilhelm Drumann in his monumental history of Rome, and the following tables are based largely on his reconstruction of the family.  In most respects, Drumann's genealogy forms the basis for modern scholarship on the family, with one important exception: Drumann believed that the Sextus Julius Caesar who was a military tribune in 181 BC and the Sextus who was consul in BC 157 were father and son.  While chronology suggested that the tribune might be the son of the Sextus who had been praetor in 208 BC, the consul's filiation indicated that his grandfather's name was Lucius.  Accordingly, Drumann inferred the existence of an otherwise unknown Lucius Julius Caesar between the praetor and the military tribune, although in order to make sense chronologically, the praetor would have to have been rather elderly and the tribune very young when they held their respective offices.  More recent scholarship has concluded that the military tribune and the consul were the same man, which means that his grandfather, Lucius, was the father of the praetor of 208 BC, rather than his son.
  It is therefore Sextus, the praetor of 208 BC, rather than an otherwise unknown Lucius Julius Caesar, who was the father of Lucius Julius Caesar, praetor in 183 BC, and Sextus, the consul of 157 BC.  These sons provide the first two branches of the family; but the third branch, representing the ancestors of Gaius Julius Caesar, the dictator, are less certain.  We know that Caesar's grandfather was also named Gaius, and that he married a woman of the Marcia gens.  Drumann supposed that he might have been the son of a senator named Gaius Julius, who wrote a Roman history in Greek about 143 BC.  This Gaius, he proposed, might have been a brother of Sextus Julius Caesar, the consul of 157, and therefore a son of the Sextus who was military tribune in 181.  Since the two Sexti were in fact the same man, this would probably make the senator Gaius a third son of Sextus Julius Caesar, the praetor of 208 BC.  If he was a senator in 143, and the great-grandfather of Caesar, who was born in BC 100, he was probably not the consul's son, as his eponymous and presumably eldest son, Sextus, was praetor in BC 123.
  The rest of the genealogy is well-known.  As Caesar left no legitimate sons to carry on his name and legacy, by his will he adopted his grand-nephew, Gaius Octavius, who thus became Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, the future emperor better known as Augustus.  Octavian had only a daughter, and therefore adopted two of his grandchildren by Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, who thus became Gaius and Lucius Julius Caesar; but when both died young, the emperor adopted their brother, who became Marcus Julius Caesar Agrippa Postumus, and a stepson, Tiberius Claudius Nero, who became Tiberius Julius Caesar.  Tiberius' son, Nero Claudius Drusus, became Drusus Julius Caesar, and he adopted a nephew, Tiberius Claudius Nero Germanicus, who became Germanicus Julius Caesar; their children also became part of the Julia gens.  The line draws to a close with the death of Germanicus' son, Gaius Julius Caesar Germanicus, better known simply as Gaius or Caligula, in AD 41; after this, the imperial authority passed to Gaius' uncle, Tiberius Claudius Nero Germanicus, and out of the Julian line.
caption: Germanicus Julius Caesar, adopted son of the emperor Tiberius.
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