Julii Caesares

Having been granted dictatorial power by the Roman Senate and instituting a number of political and social reforms, he was assassinated in 44 BC.

[2] On the assumption that the Caesares were descended from earlier notable families of the Julia gens, some scholars have suggested that he was the son of Lucius Julius Libo, consul in 267 BC.

Caesar and caesaries are both probably connected with the Sanskrit kêsa, "hair", and it is quite in accordance with the Roman custom for a surname to be given to an individual from some peculiarity in his personal appearance.

With respect to the first, which was the one adopted, says Spartianus, by the most learned men, it is impossible to disprove it absolutely, as we know next to nothing of the ancient Moorish language; but it has no inherent probability in it; and the statement of Servius is undoubtedly false, that the grandfather of the dictator obtained the surname on account of killing an elephant with his own hand in Africa, as there were several of the Julii with this name before his time.

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.

[ii] 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.

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.

[8][11] 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.