Etruscan Emperor of Rome?

What PoD would be necessary to get an Etruscan as Emperor of Rome?

Caesar was surnamed Julius.
OTL, the actual emperors, mostly adopted as Julius, had surnames Octavius and Claudius, and there also were serious heirs (several!) with surname Vipsanius.

Would there be a plausible PoD to make a Cilnius an Emperor?
 
I don't see why not. By the way that Gaius Cilnius Maecenas both moved in the halls of power and publicly prided himself on being of Etruscan descent there was apparently no stigma against Etruscan heritage. After all by the imperial era most Etruscans had been Roman for over two centuries. It's probably more of an odd fact of history that a Cilnius never became emperor than there being any real obstacle to it happening. But if you're looking for a POD, having Gaius Maecenas enter the senate and pushing his family to be more politically ambitious might be a good start.
 
You mean someone of Etruscan descent, right? Because I don't think there were any culturally Etruscan populations left.

Yeah the Etruscans and Italians considered themselves Roman by then. The cause of one of Rome's internal wars was due to a bunch of allies found out they were not being annexed and a new land reform was taking large blocks of land from huge landowners and giving them to poor farmers... so long as they were Roman.
 
Claudius had a Etruscan wife which was probably the cause of him becoming a Etruscan historian as a hobby beside being the emperor. Maybe he had a kid that became emperor that would count. But that would be be the last hurrah of the Etruscans, who would disappear from history shortly afterwords just like in OTL.
 
You mean someone of Etruscan descent, right? Because I don't think there were any culturally Etruscan populations left.

Linguistically there certainly were, although Caesar's time probably saw the birth of the very last generation to learn it as a native language. Famously, the emperor Claudius could speak and read Etruscan, and performed probably the very first documentation of a dying language by interviewing the last few elderly Etruscan speakers. Even the oldest of these couldn't have been much more than born when Julius Caesar was consul, so it is possible that there were moderately high-ranking Etruscan speakers by Octavian's Empire.

On the other hand, it's perfectly impossible that even the highest-ranking of these could have become anything close to Emperor. These obviously aren't upper-class Roman elites we're talking about - more like Romansh or Sorbian speakers today. It's even pretty implausible that their own children or grandchildren could have regularly spoken Etruscan; the social process of Latinisation was too far gone by that point.

But hey, there was indeed an Etruscan-speaking emperor in OTL!
 
Well is it possible to have an Etruscan general/politician take caesar's place, and therefore at least the first dynasty would be (nominally at least) Etruscan?
 
Well is it possible to have an Etruscan general/politician take caesar's place, and therefore at least the first dynasty would be (nominally at least) Etruscan?

Yes but only in the same way that JKF being president put an Irishman in the White House. As others have pointed out, any "real" Etruscans were probably poor people from the sticks and the culture likely didn't last too long into the imperial period. There were almost certainly plenty of wealthy influential Romans with some Etruscan ancestry (who may have known even some bits of Etruscan language) but they'd no more be Etruscan than Kennedy was Irish.
 
It's probably more of an odd fact of history that a Cilnius never became emperor than there being any real obstacle to it happening. But if you're looking for a POD, having Gaius Maecenas enter the senate and pushing his family to be more politically ambitious might be a good start.

How about Gaius Cilnius having a family, for part of PoD?
 
Top