The surname of the Branch family is thus easily traced back to the eleventh century; but legend claims for the Branches a far greater antiquity, and at least attempts to identify them with the Licinian family of old Rome. For within that immense register where Pliny has deposited the discoveries, the arts and the errors of man- kind — as, it may be, that in this connection Gibbon not unappositely terms the Naturalis Historia — one may read (in Book XVII., Chapter i.), how the trees have fur- nished surnames also to the ancients, such, for instance, as that .... of Stolo to the Licinian family, such being the name given by us to the useless suckers that shoot from trees ; for the best method of clearing away these shoots was discovered by the first Stolo, and hence his name. And legend claims that the Licinian family, in consequence, adopted as its insignia a green branch, and that from this same emblem its descendants have always taken their surname: thus in France their name was Branche; and in Spain and Italy, Branca; and in Normandy, Braunche ; and, presently, in England, Branch. Caius liciniug g>tolo Here were indeed an ancient ancestry were the claims of legend a shade more authentically buttressed ; for the first member of the Licinian family to attain any par- ticular prominence, so far at least as the knowledge of the compiler extends, was that Caius Licinius Stolo, who, in 367 B. C, as tribune (compare Livy VI., 35, 42, as well as other annalists), drew up and proclaimed the celebrated Licinian roga- tions, which in reality converted Rome from an oligarchy into a republic. And by an odd turn of fate, so distinguished did his race afterward become that, in 307, a Roman emperor — and the incarnation of despotism — made it his proudest boast to be a descendant of this same tribune. It is true that the boast now appears to have been but a vainglorious fiction, and the Emperor Licinius, in fact, to have sprung from some obscure and Dacian origin; yet none the less is it worthy of remark that relationship with the Licinian family was then an honor which a master of half Europe might see fit to covet. -Branchiana, 1907
Posted on: Thu, 07 Nov 2013 08:23:35 +0000
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