Julius, Octavius, Augustus, Marius, etc. Did it signify class or maybe it was a naming trend?
It's just Latin grammar. -us is the nominative male second declension ending for a noun.* and I don't really know Latin so there are probably exceptions but because of this grammatical rule most male names seemed to end with -us, just as most female names seemed to end with -a.
*I've probably totally screwed up that description of the noun, hopefully somebody who actually knows Latin doesn't come in here and see this...