By Eric Buesing October 22, 2026 The Colonna and the Orsini, two of Rome’s oldest families, have both claimed Julius Caesar as an ancestor. The Massimo say they descend from Quintus Fabius Maximus, the general who wore Hannibal down in the third century BCE. 1 When Napoleon asked Prince Massimo if his family really came from Fabius, the prince answered that he couldn’t prove it, but the story had been going around the family for twelve hundred years. 2 What these families inherited from the Roman aristocracy was its playbook. They held land and married for advantage. They stayed close to the most powerful institution in the city, and they outlasted every government that tried to replace them. My argument is that the families known as the black nobility are extensions of the old Roman ruling class and that they still hold power today through banks, foundations, palaces, and the Order of Malta, the sovereign Catholic order that stands beside the pap...