460 Parshia Lee-Stecum
Roman mission, expressed in the famous passage from Book 6 of the poem, “to war
down the proud” (Aeneid6.1154). However, this act has further ideological potency in
light of the eventual merging of Latin and Trojan peoples to form the first Romans. In
the final book of the epic, the gods Jupiter and Juno agree to an assimilation of Trojan
culture that will see Italian/Latin customs dominant (Aeneid12.835ff.) The defeat of
Numanus, and eventually his Italian comrades, is also an assumption of the ethnocultural
characteristics of the defeated peoples.
The Italian Family
Roman elite identity nested in the family. The history and prestige of an aristocratic
gensconditioned how individuals from that family might define themselves and advance
their careers (Gruen 1992; Flower 1996; Smith 2006; Farney 2007: 11–26). Ethnicity
was utilized as part of the construction and projection of family identities. As a result,
the story of Roman elite ethnicity comprises the stories of numerous individual families.
Gentes(singulargens) can refer to the extended aristocratic clans of Rome (gens Metella,
gens Fabia,gens Julia,etc.),justasitcanrefertolargertribalgroupsorpeoples.The
narratives of the elitegentesand thegens Romana, while super-imposed upon each other,
were not identical, with one eventual exception: thegens Julia.
During the Augustan ascendancy in the late first centuryBCE, the origins of Rome
became closely identified with the Trojan/Latin origins of the Julian family. However,
it is clear that powerful Romangenteswere constructing and emphasizing diverse Italian
origins and identities for themselves long before. The Julian origin myth was unique only
in its eventual pervasiveness and elaboration. A variety of etymological and mythograph-
ical techniques were employed to link Republican families with ethnocultural groups and
communities throughout Italy. As the Trojan origins of Rome could project alliances and
enmities with other communities, these mythic genealogies may have initially expressed
relationships among elite families. To claim Sabine, Oscan, Latin, or Etruscan origins may
have suggested kinship with other families who claimed similar descent. However, these
stories also worked to diversify and distinguish the Republican clans vying for power and
honors as Rome’s Mediterranean empire grew in the wake of the Punic wars. With the
notable exception of descent from the Trojan followers of Aeneas, the ethnic groups with
which the Roman elite associated themselves were Italian. Our evidence is very incom-
plete, but peoples from regions geographically closest to Rome in Latium seem to have
predominated (Farney 2007: 41–9).
One way of understanding this is as a reflection of a shared elite culture among the
linguistically and sociopolitically diverse peoples of early central Italy (Ampolo 1977;
Cornell 1989). By the first centuryBCE, the wider story of Rome’s beginnings reflects this
commonality in the joint reign of Tatius and Romulus, in the ascendency of the Tarquins
(an Etruscan family of Corinthian origin), and in the now-shadowy story of the (possibly)
Etruscan “Luceres” (for different interpretations of the derivation of the Luceres, one
of the original three tribes of Rome, see Livy 1.13.8, Varro,De Lingua Latina5.55,