True and False Claims of Descent from the Romans
These are the lineages fraudulently manufactured for John of Gaunt, and re-confirmed for George III and have as yet not been rejected by the current House of Windsor.
There are no credible claims of lineage to the classical period of Europe. While there is general agreement of the facts surrounding the life of Arnulf of Metz (582
- 645), and even some of his likely earlier cousins, his earliest ancestry was attested by contemporaries to be Frankish, rather than Celto-Roman. Arnulf of
Metz's claim was to a lineage that was robustly Roman, reaching into likely descent from antiquity in Europe, but it was not likely his own (claims of descent to antiquity through Welsh, Spanish and Italian lines have generally been refuted). The claims of his Roman ancestry are traced to late Empire Romans, and his associated plebeian gens can be traced back to its earliest member of the Afrania in 185 BC. These were ethnically from Picentine stock (Italics from the northern Adriatic coast) who fought wearing sombreros.
I nevertheless completed the Roman genealogy out of curiosity, though clearly there is no direct relationship. The senior noble Roman families were interrelated, drawn from a variety of ethnic Italic origins (Oscan, Etruscan, Samnite, etc.), and had links with post-conquest Greece. Some of the Tarquinian kings were inter-married with Greeks. The late Roman Republic and Roman Empire's longevity was actually shorter than most post-Roman Empire dynasties. While Rome was far more stable than Chinese dynasties, that averaged only 300 years, Rome's stability pales in comparison to that of France, whose capital Paris remained inviolate for more than a 1,000 years until 1815. The Roman naming system allows easy identification and distinguishability of persons. The Roman Senate demonstrates the stable inheritance of power by members of the same family. However, the dictator and emperorships show a higher level of meritocracy because of its higher circulation among unrelated members.
This particular family block contains many of Rome's most well-known members, including multiple members of the Tarquinians and the Julii, Cincinnatus, Scipio Africanus, both Catos, Sulla, Pompey the Great, Agrippa, and emperors Augustus, Titus, and Probus.
