5 An 1893 publication on the physiognomy and pathology of female criminals by Italian doctor Cesare Lombroso and historian Guglielmo Ferrero – the latter of whom was responsible eighteen years later for a history of the Roman empresses titled The Women of the Caesars – was fronted by a title-page illustration of a Roman portrait bust of Claudius’s wife Messalina, whose facial proportions were claimed to match those of nineteenth-century prostitutes: see Wyke (2002), 328–30.
6 On the literary tradition of ‘female worthies’ and their roots in Roman history, see Winterer (2007), 41f; Hicks (2005a) and (2005b); McLeod (1991). On Messalina’s modern reception history, see chapters 9 and 10 of Wyke (2002), for a full and fascinating account.
7 See recent revisionist readings of Nero too; for example, Elsner and Masters (1994).
8 See Elsner and Masters (1994), 2, on the problem with regard to Nero’s story; also Edwards (2000), xvi and D’Ambra (2007), 160.
9 On the preoccupations of biography as a genre, see Lee (2009) and (2005).
10 Literary references to individual imperial women as princeps femina include Ovid, Epistulae ex Ponto 3.1.125, Ovid, Tristia 1.6.25 and the anonymous Consolatio ad Liviam 303 (all referring to Livia) and Macrobius, Saturnalia 2.5.6 (referring to both Livia and Julia). See also Purcell (1986), 78–9 on the term; and Barrett (2002), on the analogy of ‘first lady’ as applied to Livia.
11 On the habits of America’s first ladies, see Caroli (1995), 5–7 (on Martha Washington); 148 (on Edith Wilson); 56 (on Martha Johnson Patterson); 90 (on Lucy Hayes); 71–2 (on Mary Lincoln); 275–6 (on Nancy Reagan).
12 See Caroli (1995), 35.
1 Ulysses in a Dress: The Making of a Roman First Lady
1 The opening to Hays’s entry on Livia, in Vol. 2 of Female Biography.
2 This dramatised portrait of Livia’s flight is based on Suetonius, Tiberius 6; also Cassius Dio, Roman History 54.15.4 and Velleius Paterculus 2.75.
3 An admittedly loose translation of Caligula’s reported nickname for his great-grandmother: Suetonius, Caligula 23.2. See Purcell (1986), 79 on translating this epithet.
4 Livia’s birth is commonly dated to either 59 or 58 BC: see appendix 5 in Barrett (2002) for a full summary of the arguments. I have abided by the more orthodox date of 58.
5 Suetonius, Tiberius 1. On Livia’s genealogy, see Barrett (2002), 4–8.
6 The year of Livia’s and Tiberius Nero’s marriage is uncertain, but see Barrett (2002), 11 on 43 BC being the most likely date.
7 Cicero, Letters to his Friends 13.64.2: trans. Treggiari (1991), 129.
8 Barrett (2002), 11 on Tiberius Nero’s likely age.
9 Treggiari (2007), 95; see also D’Ambra (2007), 73. On Cicero’s letter, and on women’s consent to marriage in general, see Gardner (1986), 41f.
10 On women, marriage and the law, see Gardner (1986), 5 and 13.
11 Gardner (1986), 42–3 on limited opportunities for acquaintanceship.
12 The use of a spear in this context has long proved difficult to interpret. It may, as Plutarch suggests, have been intended to recall the warlike claiming of the Sabine brides by the Romans: see Olson (2008), 21f for more on this.
13 I have reconstructed this scene based on modern scholarship on Roman weddings, chiefly that of Treggiari (1991), 161ff. For specific details, see also Hemelrijk (1999), 9 on the putting-away of toys; Lefkowitz and Fant (1992), no. 271 for a third-century wedding invitation specifying the time of day; Croom (2000), 95–6, citing Pliny the Elder’s Natural History 9.56–114, for pearl-embroidery on socci; Shelton (1998), no. 56 for Catullus’s take on the wedding song with its ‘dirty Fescennine jokes’.
14 Suetonius, Tiberius 5 on Tiberius’s date and place of birth.
15 Barrett (2002), 177.
16 Suetonius, Tiberius 14.1; Pliny the Elder, Natural History 10.154.
17 Rawson (2003), 101–2.
18 Kleiner and Matheson (1996), 92, cat. no. 56, for illustration of the speculum from Pompeii; Lefkowitz and Fant (1992), no. 355 on instructions for the midwife: Soranus, Gynaecology 1.67–9.
19 Rawson (2003), 106.
20 See the Favorinus episode described in Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 12, as below.
21 On the lustratio, or cleansing ritual, see Rawson (2003), 110–11.
22 Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 12.
23 Hemelrijk (1999), 66, citing Tacitus, Dialogue 28 which also states that Aurelia, the mother of Julius Caesar, and Atia, the mother of Augustus, nursed their own children. See also Gardner (1986), 241f on breast-feeding, which briefly discusses a fragmentary third-century letter from a parent apparently requesting their son-in-law to provide their daughter with a wet-nurse: ‘I do not permit my daughter to suckle.’
24 Suetonius, Tiberius 6.
25 Suetonius, Tiberius 4; Cassius Dio, Roman History 48.15.3.
26 Inscriptions Latinae Liberae Rei Publicae 1106 and 1112: translated P. J. Jones (2006), 98; see also Hallett (1977), 151–7.
27 On Fulvia’s reputation, see Delia (1991).
28 Martial, 11.20.3–8 preserves the poem. On Fulvia’s pleasure in Cicero’s death, see Cassius Dio, Roman History 47.8.3–4. See Wyke (2002), 170 and Pelling (1988), 141 on the abuse and function of Fulvia.
29 See Milnor (2009), 277–8 on women acting virtuously in the public sphere. On Rome’s republican female heroines and villainesses, see Hillard (1992) and Joshel (1992). On their adoption by British and American women in the eighteenth century, see Hicks (2005a) and (2005b).
30 Cicero also implied an incestuous relationship between Clodia Metelli and her brother, a standard theme of Roman political invective that would also be levelled at Caligula and Drusilla; Nero and Agrippina Minor; Berenice and Agrippa II; Domitian and Julia Flavia; Julia Domna and Caracalla; and Galla Placidia and Honorius.
31 Plutarch, Life of Antony 10.5.
32 See Fischler (1994), 117: Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae 8403.
33 Cartledge and Spawforth (1989), 94 on Claudian connections in region: see also Barrett (2002), 17.
34 Lefkowitz and Fant (1992), no. 179.
35 Tacitus, Histories 1.3.1. There are also references to mothers supporting their sons’ political candidacies; for example, in the cases of Helvia and Seneca, or Servilia and Brutus: see Dixon (1988), 5. On the concept of sui iuris, see Gardner (1986), 6.
36 Plutarch, Life of Antony 31: see also Wallace-Hadrill (1993), 32, and Wood (1999), 30-1. Octavia was born around 69 BC and was Octavian’s full sister – he had another elder half-sister named Octavia too. In his account, Plutarch confuses the two sisters. For reasons of clarity, I have omitted any mention of the half-sister Octavia from the main narrative.
37 Antony and Cleopatra, II. vi.119–23. The television drama in question is HBO’s Rome.
38 Plutarch, Life of Antony 87 on Antony’s and Octavia’s children.
39 There is an argument that Fulvia was the first woman to be depicted on a coin, but the identification is too insecure for comfort: see Wood (1999), 41–3, and Wallace-Hadrill (1993), 32 in support of theory that Octavia is the first woman.
40 Kleiner (2005), 262, suggests that Octavia and her hairdressers invented the nodus.
41 Wood (1999), 44 on acceptability of royal couples appearing on Hellenistic coinage.
42 For a complete survey of Octavia’s coin portraits, see Wood (1999), 41–51.
43 Barrett (2002), 18–19 on the date of Livia’s and Tiberius Nero’s return.
44 On the marriage to Claudia, see Suetonius, Augustus 62; and Plutarch, Life of Antony 20. See Barrett (2002), 22 on the argument that the marriage to Claudia never actually went ahead.
45 On Livia moving in with Augustus, see Barrett (2002), 26.
46 Suetonius, Augustus 62.2.
47 Suetonius, Augustus 69. For the arguments over whether this wife was Livia or not, see Barrett (2002), 24 and Flory (1988), 352–3. On Augustus falling in love with Livia: Cassius Dio, Roman History 48.34.
48 Velleius
Paterculus, 2.79 and 2.94.
49 Barrett (2002), 26 on arguments over the relationship of Drusus’s birth to the wedding. The discovery of a calendar at Verulae in Lazio in 1922 revealed the date of the wedding: Flory (1988), 348.
50 Suetonius, Claudius 1.1. See also Cassius Dio, Roman History 48.44.5.
51 On the historiographical tradition of this episode, see Flory (1988).
52 See also Vout (2007), 1–3 on this episode.
53 Gardner (1986), 146–7 and Pomeroy (1975), 158 on guardianship and custody of children – children do sometimes seem to have been allowed to remain with their mothers, however.
54 Fantham (2006), 23.
55 Seneca, Epistulae Morales 70.a2; Propertius 4.11.65. Scribonia’s genealogy is extremely complicated. We do need to be a little cautious about the term ‘gravis’, to which translators react differently: see Severy (2003), 149.
56 On Catherine Macaulay and Hortensia, see Winterer (2007), 44f. On the house of Hortensius, see Tamm (1963), chapter iv; Kleiner (1996), 34; Claridge (1998), 128–30; Barrett (2002), 177f.
57 For a close-up of the women of Cicero’s family, see Treggiari (2007).
58 Ovid, Amores 3.2.
59 Some soirées were evidently men-only affairs, save for females hired to provide entertainment. On women drinking, see Treggiari (2007), 19. See Cicero’s contemporary Cornelius Nepos on the custom of Roman women dining out, in the prologue to the Lives of the Foreign Generals, 6.
60 Hemelrijk (1999), 10; see also Treggiari (1991), 414.
61 See Hemelrijk (1999), 42–4 on women’s presence at dinner parties.
62 See Treggiari (2007), 7; also Treggiari (1991), 420 on women’s salutatio.
63 Casson (1974), 139.
64 On the discovery of the Prima Porta villa, and its identification, see Zarmakoupi (2008), 269–70; also Reeder (2001), 13f. The identification is now widely accepted, although there is still room for reasonable doubt. It is certainly reflective of the kind of property Livia would have owned, at the very least.
65 Reeder (2001), 84 on naming of the villa. The villa was also possibly known just as ad gallinas.
66 Casson (1974), 145.
67 Reeder (2001), 12.
68 Reeder (2001), 84. See Pliny the Elder, Natural History 15.136 on the story of the hen-chick, and Macaulay-Lewis (2006), on the discovery of perforated pots at the villa.
69 The story has slight variations according to different accounts: compare Pliny the Elder, Natural History 15.136–7; and Suetonius, Galba 1.1. See Flory (1995) on the omen.
70 Plutarch, Life of Antony 35. There is a possibility that Octavia was not actually pregnant with Antonia Minor here, who was born in January 36, but another daughter, who did not survive: see note by Philip Stadter in the translation of Plutarch’s Life of Antony by Waterfield (1999), 525.
71 Plutarch, Life of Antony 31; Barrett (2002), 30 on the epithet being inspired by the occasion of Tarentum.
72 See Wood (1999), 50, and figs 9 and 10; Zanker (1988), 61.
73 Plutarch, Life of Antony 36.
74 Cicero, Letters to Atticus 15.15.
75 There are countless books on Cleopatra and her legend, and I have no intention of trying to muscle in on their territory. For the essentials of Cleopatra’s biography and her artistic representation, see Walker and Higgs (2001) and Kleiner (2005); on her afterlife, see Hamer (1993) and Wyke (2002), 195–320.
76 Bondanella (1987), 215 on the exorbitant costs of making the film.
77 See Walker and Higgs (2001), cat. 381–2 for watch-casings; cat. 390–1 for figurines, and Hamer (2001), 306, on Tiepolo’s paintings, one of which can be seen in the National Gallery in London: cat. no. 6509: The Banquet of Cleopatra.
78 See Pelling (2001), 298, on Plutarch’s role in the creation of ‘the Cleopatra legend’; and Pelling (1988), 37, on Shakespeare’s reliance on North’s translation of Plutarch, which was in itself indebted to a French translation of 1559.
79 Pelling (1988), 33–6 on truth, fiction and reconstruction in Plutarch’s account.
80 Plutarch, Life of Antony 28–9.
81 Plutarch, Life of Antony 53–4. See Fischler (1994), 118 on this passage.
82 Cassius Dio, Roman History 49.38.1.
83 On the grant of sacrosanctitas and tutela see Hemelrijk (2005); Flory (1993) and Purcell (1986), 85–7. On the concept of tutela, see Gardner (1986), 14f.
84 This statue is discussed in more detail in Chapter 2 of this book. Flory (1993) cites several references in Roman literature to other women said to have been granted public statues, none of which survive, but they were virtually all women from Rome’s mythical history; cf. Hemelrijk (2005). The only notable exception is a gilded statue of Cleopatra herself, reputed to have been set up by Julius Caesar in the temple of Venus Genetrix. On the statues of Livia and Octavia as a possible propagandistic reaction to this statue, see Flory, 295–6, and also Hemelrijk, 316, for the argument that it may in fact have been placed there by Octavian, not Julius Caesar.
85 On statues and inscriptions honouring women in the Greek east, see Flory (1993), 296 and Hemelrijk (2005), 309; for more detail, see Smith (1987), Kajava (1990) and Van Bremen (1996).
86 Positioning based on last visit in 2008.
87 On the Velletri head (Museo Nazionale Romano inv. 121221), see Wood (1999), 52ff.
88 Wood (1999), 96 on Livia’s ‘Claudian’ overbite.
89 Wyke (2002), 217–18, and Kleiner (1992), fig. 3. Cleopatra in turn put Antony on her own coins.
90 Suetonius, Augustus 69.
91 Ibid.
92 Edwards (1993), 47.
93 See Hamer (1993), 60ff on the episode in art.
94 Pliny the Elder, Natural History 12.84 and 9.120–1. Edwards (1993), 186–91 on attacks on food and expenditure.
95 On use of asses’ milk in women’s cosmetics, see Richlin (1995), 198f.
96 Plutarch, Life of Antony 57. Interestingly, Plutarch in fact goes on to note that people pitied Antony rather than the tearful Octavia, because Cleopatra was no more beautiful than she was.
97 Cassius Dio, Roman History 50.3 and Plutarch, Life of Antony, 58.
98 Plutarch, Life of Antony 58–9 and Cassius Dio, Roman History 50.4. See Zanker (1988), 57–8 on the identification of Antony with eastern god Dionysus.
99 Plutarch, Life of Antony 60; Cassius Dio, Roman History 50.4–6.
100 Plutarch, Life of Antony 60; Cassius Dio, Roman History 50.8.
101 It may of course be that this was a story put about to make Octavian’s victory seem even greater: see Pelling (1996) 55, n. 297.
102 Plutarch, Life of Antony 65.
103 Virgil, Aeneid 8.678–708.
104 Plutarch, Life of Antony 85. Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, ‘It is well done, and fitting for a princess, / Descended from so many royal kings’ (V.ii.325–6).
105 See Flory (1987), on the criteria for awarding the name Augusta, throughout the Julio-Claudian period.
106 D. Kleiner in K. Galinsky, ed. (2005) The Cambridge Companion to Augustus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 203.
2 First Family: Augustus’s Women
1 I, Claudius, Episode 2: ‘Waiting in the Wings’.
2 Michael Bloomberg, mayor of New York, famously maintains a public telephone directory listing.
3 Suetonius, Augustus 72. On the oak crown and laurel trees decorating the front doorway, see Ovid, Fasti 4.953–4 and Augustus, Res Gestae 34; cf. Favro (1996), 203.
4 Richardson (1992), 73; cf. obituary for Pietro Rosa in the 13 September 1891 edition of the New York Times.
5 The lead pipe was stamped with the name Julia Aug[usta], Livia’s honorary name in later life: see more in chapter three. This has led to the current identification of the house as the Casa di Livia, or the House of Livia. There is no conclusive evidence otherwise that Livia had her own separate residential quarters. Yet literary evidence does suggest that different members of the imperial household had their own quarte
rs, and their own staff even. On the ‘House of Livia’, and the subsequently discovered ‘House of Augustus’, identified with Catulus’s old home, see Tamm (1963), chapter iv; Richardson (1992), 73; and Claridge (1998), 128–31.
6 Cassius Dio, Roman History 54.16.5; Ovid, Epistulae Ex Ponto 3.1.142.
7 On Cornelia’s dictum, see Valerius Maximus 4.4 pr.: Lefkowitz and Fant (1992), no. 259.
8 On the empresses’ toothpaste recipes, see Levick and Innes (1989), 17–18.
9 See D’Ambra (2007), 60.
10 Edwards (1993), 166 on use of local stone. Suetonius, Augustus 64 on the emperor’s taking care that his daughters and granddaughters were taught spinning.
11 Treggiari (1975), 54 and 74.
12 For all of the above, see the seminal article by Treggiari (1975). On Roman women’s footwear, see Croom (2000), 107 and Olson (2008), 56.
13 This competition began in 1992 after Hillary Clinton provoked hostility by telling an interviewer she had chosen not ‘to stay at home and bake cookies’ – and was forced to atone by pitting her recipe against Barbara Bush’s in a contest sponsored by Family Circle magazine.
14 Suetonius, Augustus 64. Edwards (2000), 313, n. 76 suggests this explanation for the ‘daily chronicles’.
15 Octavia had five children of her own in all: her son Marcellus and two daughters Claudia Marcella Maior and Claudia Marcella Minor; and her two daughters by Antony: Antonia Maior and Antonia Minor. In the interests of clarity, I have omitted to go into detail about the lives of the two Claudia Marcellas, or the elder Antonia.
16 Hemelrijk (1999), 17 on lack of information about Roman girls’ childhoods; D’Ambra (2007), 62, and figs 25 and 26 on the ivory doll from the second-century sarcophagus of Crepereia Tryphaena in the Capitoline Museum in Rome.
17 Olson (2008), 16; cf. Croom (2000), 91–3.
The First Ladies of Rome Page 43