Section IV.—Cæsar, &c.
No cognomen has ever been so much used as that of Cæsar, which first began in the Julian gens, nearly two centuries before the time of the great Dictator. Some derived it, like Cæso, from cædo (to cut); others said that the eyes of the first owner of it were unusually blue (cæsius), or that his hair (cæsaries) was wonderfully profuse; and a fourth explanation declared that it was the Moorish word for an elephant, which one of the Julii had slain with his own hand in Africa. However this might be, adoption into the family of Cæsar was the means of obtaining that accumulation of magisterial offices that placed the successor of Julius at the head of affairs, civil and military; and whilst habits of republican equality were still retained by the emperors, Cæsar was merely used as their designation. After the first twelve, adoption could no longer be strained into any fiction of the continuance of the Julian clan, and Cæsar became more properly a title. After the new arrangement of the empire under Diocletian, Augustus was the title of the emperor who had become an actual monarch, and Cæsar of the heir to the empire with considerable delegated power. In consequence, when Charlemagne relieved Rome from the attacks of the Lombards, the pope, as the representative of the S.P.Q.R., created him Cæsar, and the title has been carried on among his German representatives as Kaiser, though no elected “King of the Romans” might assume this sacred title until he had been crowned by the pope’s own hand. As a Christian name it has seldom occurred. Cesare Borgia was named, like many Italians of his date, in the classical style, but no one wished to inherit it from him, and it is seldom found except in France as Cesar; though in some counties of England the peasantry give it in baptism, having taken it, perhaps, from the surname Cæsar. The only feminine I can find is Cesarina Grimaldi, in 1585. Kaiser occurs in the same manner in Germany.
Camilla was a warlike Volscian nymph, dedicated to the service of Diana, and celebrated in the Æneid. Her name is said to have been Casmilla, and to have been given as meaning that she was a votaress of Diana. It is believed to be an Etruscan word, and the youth of both sexes were termed Camilli and Camillæ when employed in any solemn office; and thus Camillus became a name in the gens of Furius, and was noted in him who saved the capitol. Nymphs always had an attraction for the French, and a Camille figures in Florian’s romance of Numa Pompilius, while Camilla was adopted in the rage for classical names which actuated the English after the Reformation, and in some few families it has been handed on to the present day. Camillo was revived with classical names in Italy; and at the time of the Revolution, Camille was very fashionable in France. Camilla is still very common in the Abruzzi, its old classic ground.
Clemens came in so late that it hardly deserves to be called a cognomen, but we find it as the third name of Titus Flavius Clemens, Vespasian’s nephew, who was put to death by Domitian, on a charge of atheism, like others who went over to the Jewish superstition, i. e. to Christianity. A very early church at Rome is dedicated to him, and he is thought by some to be the same as the Clemens mentioned by St. Paul (Phil. iv. 3), author of two epistles, and first of nine bishops of Rome so called. Another great Father, St. Clemens of Alexandria, was likewise of the same name; besides a martyr of Ancyra, all called from the adjective clemens, which has much the same meaning as its derivative clement in all modern tongues. Its origin is uncertain: some saying it meant of clear mind, others of inclining mind; but the substantive Clementia was a personified idea, worshipped at Rome as a goddess, bearing a cup in one hand and a lance in the other. “Your Clemency” became a title of the emperors, and we find the orator Tertullus even addressing it to Felix. It is possible that it was thus that Clemens first passed to the emperor’s kinsman. There is a pretty legend that St. Clement was martyred by being beheaded, and thrown into the sea, where a shrine (I think of coral) was formed round his head, and he thus became the patron of sailors, above all, of Danes and Dutchmen. In Germany Clemens has preserved its Latin form, but cuts down into Klenim, Mente, Menz, Mentzel; as in Denmark into Klemet and Mens. The English surname, Mence, may perhaps be from this source; and Clement and Clementi are French and Italian surnames, as Clement and Clemente are the Christian ones. Italy probably first modernized the abstract goddess into Clemenza, whence France took up Clémence, while Germany invented Clementine for the feminine, whence our Clementina, rendered popular for a time in honour of the Italian lady in Sir C. Grandison. The Russians have Kliment, the Hungarians Kelemen, and the Esthonians contract the name into Lemet. It must have been from the Dutch connections of eastern England, that Clement and Clemency were both at one time frequent.[[64]]
[64]. Smith; Cave; Marryat, Jutland; Michaelis.
Section V.—Constantius.
Constantius arose likewise as late as any cognomen deserving to be reckoned. It comes from constans (constant), a word meaning holding together firmly, and compounded of con (together), and stans, the participle of the verb sto (I am, or I stand).
So late, indeed, did Constantius become prominent in history in the person of Flavius Valerius Constantius, that he does not even seem to have had a prænomen, and his sons and grandsons varied the cognomen by way of distinction into Constans and Constantinus. Of these the first Christian emperor rendered the diminutive glorious, and though it has not been much copied in the West, Κονστάντινος is one of the very few Latin names that have been Latinized among the Greeks, as well it might be, in memory of the emperor who transported the seat of empire to a Greek city, and changed its appellation from Byzantium to Constantinopolis.
Constantius Chlorus was very popular in Britain, and—as has been said before—the belief that his wife Helena was of British birth, held the island firm in its allegiance till the death of the last emperor who claimed kindred with him. And then Constantius and Constantinus were names assumed by the rebels who first began to break the bonds of union with the empire, as if the sound were sure to win British hearts. Indeed, Cystenian has never entirely disappeared from the Welsh nomenclature, nor Kusteninn from Brittany.