Rome was a civilization that grew out of the city-state of Rome, founded in the Italian Peninsula circa the 9th century BC. During its twelve-century existence, the Roman civilization shifted from a monarchy to an oligarchic republic to a vast empire. It came to dominate Western Europe and the entire area surrounding the Mediterranean Sea through conquest and assimilation.
In ancient Rome, a gens (pl. gentes) was a clan, or group of families, that shared a common name (the nomen) and a belief in a common ancestor. In the Roman naming convention, the second name was the name of the gens to which the person belonged. The term has also been used to refer to families within a clan system in other contexts, including tribal clans.
The origins of the gentes are unclear, although they are probably not as ancient as the Romans themselves thought; although some were associated with particular cults or ceremonies, all were primarily personal and familial in nature, with no specific political or public duties. Also, the gentes did not usually have legendary founders that were worshipped, and the gentile assemblies are not recorded to have passed any sort of legally binding resolutions. Few of the names have clear Indo-European etymologies, and some have been traced to Etruscan names.
Nevertheless, the relationships of the gentes was a major factor in politics; members of the same gens were "family", and therefore frequently (though not always) political allies.
Gentes did have a legal standing in republican Rome. The gens as a legal entity owned property, including a family burial ground. There was a gens chief, more formally in early Rome and less formally in later Rome; in fact, some notable members of patrician gentes had themselves adopted by plebeian families in order to run for offices not open to the patricii. Members of a gens had a legal obligation to help one another when asked. A gens was exogamous; that is, individuals could not seek marriage partners from within the gens.
A gens was patrilineal and patriarchal. However, such customs were not necessarily inherited from the Italics; the Etruscans could have exercised them also. By the time of republican Rome, Etruscan culture as a whole was fast assimilating to the Italic. The gentes were probably mixed.
Originally the plebeians and patricians were not allowed to intermarry, and several patrician families had collapsed as a result, until the Lex Canuleia, allowing intermarriage, was passed.
Among the patrician gentes there were two categories, the gentes maiores, and the gentes minores. The maiores were the leading families of Rome: these were the Aemilii, Claudii, Cornelii, Fabii, and Valerii, and they claimed special religious and secular privileges.
Julius (fem. Julia) is the nomen of the gens Julia, an important patrician family of ancient Rome supposed to have descended from Julus. (See also: Julio-Claudian dynasty - Julia Caesaris)
The name is also seen as Iulius and Iulia. There were many thousands of people bearing it, since the freedman took the gens name of their previous owners, thus many freedmen of the Julio-Claudian emperors received this name.
From the beginning of the game, they control the provinces of Etruria , Umbria And Liguria.
The Julius family in real life didn't own northern Italy, but they did become the sovereign rulers of Rome. When playing the game the player is trying to replicate, or expand, on Julius Caesar's success in Gaul. The faction must fight Gaul, Germania, Spain and the northern Carthaginian Empire in Spain. The faction must also fight, or ally, with Britannia.
In the game, each Roman House represents a different view of the Roman world, and a different vision for the future of the Republic. The liberal Julii are extremely populist, believing in the power and importance of the Senate and People of Rome; everything is done for the glory of the Republic and the fact that Julii family members happen to be made wealthy and well-loved by their citizens is only a bonus and not an incentive.
This reflects the fact that although historically, the majority of the gens may have been socially conservative, its more famous members were not. Gaius Marius, who married Julia, aunt of Gaius Julius Caesar, was a very liberal member, and served as a populist politician, general, senator, and consul. Gaius Julius Caesar himself was a life-long populist. Both Marius and Caesar were very resolute in their belief that soldiers should be recruited from throughout the Roman Republic, not just Rome, that non-patricians be allowed to serve, that the generals and the state, not the individual soldiers, should be in charge of paying for weapons and armor, that retired soldiers should be given farming land as a sort of pension, and they [Marius and Caesar] favored also the enfranchisement of Italian citizens and the military auxiliaries, respectively.
The historical Julii clan claimed direct descent from the goddess Venus, however, in the game, the goddess of love is not a deity that the Julii build temples to (these are Jupiter, Ceres, and Bacchus). The Julii are not very traditional, however, being one of the least aristocratic of the Patrician families, and their view of Roman culture can be summed up with the phrase "times change". Living on the frontier of civilization, they occupy the margin between the civilized comforts of Rome-proper and the savage, frozen wilderness of the Barbarian north. As such, they have an intense distaste for Barbarians and the barbarian lifestyle, and although being undoubtedly roughened-up by their life alongside the barbarians, they feel that their duty to Rome is to spread Latin civilization northward. They especially dislike Gauls, who have been a thorn in their side for generations.
After some success, the player can start the civil war, which happened in real life, but not how the game portrays it. They must strike down the Roman Senate (S.P.Q.R.), and the other Roman factions: the House of Brutii (the enemies of the Hellenistic world) and the House of Scipii (the arch-enemies of Carthage).
