De Iúlo aos Iulii: as gentes romanas e itálicas em busca do passado heroico

Abstract

In this paper we intend to track the fabrication of Iulii’s heroic genealogy (family of Julius Caesar and Octavian Augustus) and its multiple and contextual appropriations by historical actors to then understand its accommodation to the Virgil’s epic architecture, the Aeneid. Rethink the origins of the gens and to seek a connection with the heroic past was a plausible solution for new branches that have appeared on the political scene boasting ancient gentile names and a way to turn this ancestral link into a distinct predicate, worthy to be remembered in the writings of all sorts, monuments and coins.