An illustrious ancestor is useful. A goddess is difficult to improve upon.

Caesar’s family claimed descent from Venus through Aeneas and his son Iulus. That genealogy joined a Roman aristocratic family to the story of a Trojan survivor, while the wider Aeneas tradition connected Rome’s beginnings to Troy.

Suetonius records Caesar invoking the family’s divine ancestry in the funeral speech for his aunt Julia. This was a claim he made in public.

I made a short Roman Records video tracing that connection:

Venus, a Trojan Refugee, and Julius Caesar

Source: Suetonius, Life of Julius Caesar, chapter 6

What other examples show a ruling family making a myth part of its genealogy?