Octavii

The family was admitted to the senate by king Tarquinius Priscus among the lesser gentes, and was later enrolled by Servius Tullius among the patricians; in the course of time it returned to the ranks of the plebeians and, after a long interval, was restored to patrician rank by Julius Caesar. The first of the house to be elected by the people to a magistracy was Gaius Rufus, who became quaestor. He was the father of Gnaeus and Gaius, from whom two branches of the Octavian family were derived, of very different standing; for Gnaeus and all his scions in turn held the highest offices, but Gaius and his progeny, whether from chance or choice, remained in the equestrian order down to the father of Augustus. Augustus's great-grandfather served in Sicily in the second Punic war as tribune of the soldiers under the command of Aemilius Papus. His grandfather, content with the offices of a municipal town and possessing an abundant income, lived to a peaceful old age. This is the account given by others; Augustus himself merely writes that he came of an old and wealthy equestrian family, in which his own father was the first to become a senator. Marcus Antonius taunts him with his great-grandfather, saying that he was a freedman and a rope-maker from the country about Thurii, while his grandfather was a money-changer.