Cloe'lia
or CLUI'LIA GENS, patrician, of Alban origin, was one of the gentes minores, and was said to have derived its name from Clolius, a companion of Aeneas. (Festus,
s. v. Cloelia.) The name of the last king of Alba is said to have been C. Cluilius or Cloelius.
He led an army against Rome in the time of Tullus Hostilius, pitched his camp five miles from the city, and surrounded his encampment with a ditch, which continued to be called after him, in subsequent ages,
Fossa Cluilia, Fossae Cluiliae, or
Fossae Cloeliae. While here, he died, and the Albans chose Mettus Fuffetius as dictator, in consequence of whose treachery the Romans destroyed Alba. Niebuhr, however, remarks, that though the Fossa Cluilia was undoubtedly the work of an Alban prince called Cluilius, yet that the story of the Albar army encamping there was probably invented for the sake of accounting for this name. (
Liv. 1.22,
23;
Dionys. A. R. 3.2-
4; Festus,
s. v. Cloeliae Fossae; comp.
Liv. 2.39;
Dionys. A. R. 8.22; Niebuhr, vol. i. pp. 204, 348, n. 870.)
Upon the destruction of Alba, the Cloelii were one of the noble Alban houses enrolled in the Roman senate. (
Liv. 1.30;
Dionys. A. R. 3.29.) They bore the surname SICULUS, probably because the Albans were regarded as a mixture of Siculians with Priscans. Tullus was perhaps another cognomen of this gens. See CLOELIUS TULLUS.
The following coin of this gens contains on the obverse the head of Pallas, and on the reverse Victory in a biga, with the inscription T. CLOVLI,
Cloulius being an ancient form of the name.
