Could I actually be a great-grandson of Julius Caesar?

Question

I saw how one of my relatives on a accurate website was listed as a 58th great-grandson of Caesar.

Answer 1

Very unlikely.

Julius Caesar did not have any legitimite descendants who survived to adulthood (his daughter died in childbirth).

Assuming he fathered illegitimate children, I suppose it's possible you are a descendant of one of them, however, the website you describe as "accurate" is almost certainly not.

Records of european 'common folk' (who compose the vast, vast majority of almost everyone's ancestry) go back only until the 1500s at the earliest (and very often, far less back). To get back any further, you have to hit a line of nobility - not impossible, but not certain, either. When I see sites that purport to trace ancestry into the early middle ages (and back), I get very skectical and frankly, tend to discount ALL the information that site provides, since uncritical acceptance tends to be a sign of a poor researcher.

Even with nobility however, records become sparse as you go back, and there are simply no credible genealogical records going back to ancient rome - period. Anyone who claims otherwise or has lines going back that far has either made it up, adopted faulty research, or used many, many assumptions and fictional genealogies (for instance: Elizabeth II would be a descendant of Woden, the Supreme Norse God according to these works).

This said, probabilities would hold that if you have ancestry tracable to S/E Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa, you almost certainly have (some) blood of the Romans in you - just nothing tracable to any specific person.

Answer 2

I've seen geneologies where I'm the N'th decendant of Somerled and on my maternal grandmother's side I'm decended from Charlemagne. It's baloney.

I've traced the Somerled one back to the 1500s and at that point there is an odd event where one of my legitimate male ancestor's was fathered by a man who (according to other records) had no sons ! It's an error. These bogus geneologies go back so far, and then there is confusion and lack of records, and if someone appears with the right name in the right general location at the right time - someone makes the leap and assumes that person was the ancestor. Of course people of wealth and power have more and better records - so if the name fits ... Perhaps this explains all the suposed decendants of the famous.

Of course there are typically more direct decendents of any "ancestor" in every generation. If we assume that Caesar had two children, each of whom married and had two children and so on for every 25 year generation, then now - ~2000 years later (80 generations) there would be 2^80th direct decendents of Caesar alive. That's 180 trillion times more people than the entire world population ! Of course it's not true, but by simple population growth the entire planet could be direct decendants of Caesar. It's impossible to guess how successful Caesars descendants were in war and plague and disease and such, but it's entirely possible that there are many millions of direct descendants of Caesar alive today. You may be one, but I wouldn't trust the geneology very much.

Now here is a puzzle. We each have two parent and 4 grandparent and 8 great grandparent ... So if we go back about 30 generations (perhaps 750 years ago) and count all of MY ancestors it exceeds the entire world population of the time. We haven't even counted YOUR ancestors nor those of the other 6 billion living humans. Here's a clue - a lot of your ancestors are related to each other (other than by marriage).

Answer 3

http://www.vroma.org/~bmcmanus/augustus.html
Out of curiousity, I pulled up this web site with some family info on Julius Caesar. GENERALLY speaking, genealogy back into ancient times can be unreliable, depending on the documents to back it up. But? this can be the exception, since the ones who had reason to keep such records were royalty and nobility.
I would still take it with a grain of salt though. SOLID, provable, quality family research is a problem, with many incorrect lineages out there, but especially with the internet. Someone sees a family tree.. copies it.. and assumes it is right, without ever checking the sources. Good researchers can sound real picky, until you understand the reasons for it.

Answer 4

This Wikipedia article gives Julius Caesar's marriages, children and grandchildren.

Julius Caesar's daughter, Julia, died in childbirth. The grandchild died a few days later.

Julius' legal heir was his nephew, who became Augustus Caesar. He executed Julius Caesar's son with Cleopatria.

It appears Julius Caesar had no other legal descendants.

Answer 5

I'm also descended from Caesar! I've actually traced a branch of the royal family back to Rome.

Answer 6

I am always dubious of genealogy claims that go back before Constantine. Too much finnagling was done to make claims of legitimacy to one title or another. Even Charlemagne played with genealogy to claim he was a descendent of Jesus Christ in the Merovingian lineage.

BTW, 58 generations is pretty skimpy for a lineage to a man who died 2050 years ago. I have a documented lineage back to Bishop Arnulf of Metz in the 600s and that's almost 80 generations. Be skeptical of these claims until you can get legitimate documentation of it from one of the peerage societies in Europe that has done the research to prove its accuracy.

Answer 7

when you go back that far nobody knows because we do not even know who the father of Anna Nicole smiths kid is. Please- do you really think they can go back that far and be accurate? On the other hand if you go back that far and do the multiplications, there are probably millions of people that could say the same thing.

Answer 8

dlpm deserves the points. She is absolutely right making the answer to your question, no. It appears that he had no great grandchildren at all.

Answer 9

Probably not....
That would be pretty cool though.....