The First Ladies of Rome

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by Annelise Freisenbruch


  18 Treggiari (1975), 52 and 56 on Dorcas and education of members of Livia’s household.

  19 See Hemelrijk (1999), 79–88.

  20 Hemelrijk (1999), 22.

  21 Macrobius, Saturnalia 2.5.2. On Agrippina Maior’s education, see Chapter 3 of this book.

  22 On the production and dissemination of ancient portraits, see Fittschen (1996), 42 and Wood (1999), 6.

  23 On Julia’s nodus, see Wood (1999), 64 and figs. 20 and 21; also Wood (1999), 1–2 on portraits as ideals for other women of empire.

  24 Plutarch, Peri tou Ei tou en delphois 385F; cf. Barrett (2002), 37.

  25 Casson (1974), 180 on emperors’ travelling style.

  26 Cassius Dio, Roman History 54.7.2. For a detailed account of Livia’s and Augustus’s travels, see Barrett (2002), 34–8.

  27 See Reynolds (1982), 104–6: Document 13. Inscriptions suggest her family had a patron-client relationship with the island: see Barrett (2002), 37.

  28 On the dates of their stay on Samos, see Barrett (2002), 37–8. On the statues on Samos, see Flory (1993), 303, n. 27. See also Reynolds (1982), 105 on the grant of freedom to the Samians.

  29 Fischler (1994), 118 and n. 10 for more examples. See also Dixon (1983). On Cleopatra: see Plutarch, Life of Antony 83.

  30 Excerpted from Cassius Dio, Roman History 55.16–21.

  31 Augustus’s habit of consulting Livia on matters such as this calls to mind the modern parallel of Harry and Bess Truman. He publicised the fact that he consulted his wife on important decisions, and their lifetime’s correspondence was published in 1983: see Caroli (1995), 203–4.

  32 D’Ambra (2007), 77–8 discusses this; cf. Lefkowitz and Fant (1992), nos. 242–6 for epistolary examples, and also the letters of second-century rhetorician Fronto on his relationship with his wife Cratia.

  33 Cassius Dio, Roman History 54.19.3 on Augustus’s affair with Terentia; Suetonius, Augustus 62 on the emperor’s love for Livia and Augustus 71 on her finding virgins for him. See also Aurelius Victor, de Caesaribus 1.7 and the anonymous Epitome de Caesaribus 1.23: the first says that Augustus was unlucky in marriage, the other that Livia was passionate about her husband.

  34 Pierre d’Hancarville (1787), Monumens du culte secret des dames romaines, no. IV, Auguste et Livie. My thanks to Daniel Orrells for drawing my attention to this work.

  35 Cassius Dio, Roman History 58.2.5.

  36 On Livia as a successor to women of the golden age, see Consolatio ad Liviam 343; on the naked men, see Cassius Dio, Roman History 58.2.4.

  37 Cassius Dio, Roman History 55.16.2.

  38 Suetonius, Augustus 63; Pliny the Elder, Natural History 7.13.

  39 See Barrett (2002), 35.

  40 His eldest son with Fulvia, Iullus Antyllus, had been put to death by Octavian after the latter’s victory; but the younger son Iullus Antonius ended up marrying Octavia’s daughter Claudia Marcella Maior. Antony also had three children with Cleopatra: the twins Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene, and a son Ptolemy Philadelphus.

  41 Suetonius, Augustus 28.

  42 See Kleiner (1996), 32. On the portico’s history, see Ridley (1986), 179–80.

  43 Pliny the Elder, Natural History 34.31. See Flory (1993), 290, and Plutarch, Caius Gracchus 4 on the statue.

  44 On the inscription, see Flory (1993), 290–2 and Hemelrijk (2005), 312f on the possibility that Augustus had a Greek statue of a goddess recycled to depict Cornelia.

  45 Marcellus’s qualities: Velleius Paterculus 93. On Tiberius’s appearance and demeanour, see Suetonius, Tiberius 68.

  46 It was not Julia’s first betrothal – a former engagement when she was two years old to Antony’s eldest son Antyllus was dissolved when the two men’s brief rapprochement of 37 BC collapsed.

  47 Fantham (2006), 29.

  48 On Marcellus’s death and tributes: Fantham (2006), 29f. Seneca, Consolatio ad Marciam 2 reports that Octavia never recovered from Marcellus’s death.

  49 Donatus, Life of Virgil 32. The work was based on one by Suetonius.

  50 Siegfried and Rifkin, eds. (2001) 16–22, on Ingres’s Virgil compositions.

  51 Graves (1934), 37; BBC‘s I, Claudius, episode 1.

  52 See note 50.

  53 Currie (1998), 147. On Cleopatra, see Plutarch, Antony 71.

  54 Juvenal, Satires 6.629–33.

  55 Marcellus Empiricus, De Medicamentis liber 15.6 and 35.6: see Barrett (2002), 111–12 for a translation. On Octavia’s toothpaste, see Levick and Innes (1989), 17–18.

  56 Seneca, Consolatio ad Marciam 2.

  57 On marrying after being widowed, see Severy (2003), 53; on marriage laws, in general, see Gardner (1986), chapter three.

  58 Cassius Dio, Roman History 54.6.5 on Maecenas’s advice to Augustus; for Octavia’s role in the affair see Plutarch, Antony 87. Agrippa’s birthdate is not certain, but thought to have been around 63 BC.

  59 On the Villa Boscotrecase, see Crawford (1976) and von Blanckenhagen and Alexander (1962); on Agrippa owning a house in the region see Cassius Dio, Roman History 54.28.2. Matteo della Corte, who published the only record of the finds and floor plan of the villa in 1922, believed that it belonged to Julia’s and Agrippa’s son Agrippa Postumus, thanks to the discovery of a tile bearing his name. He was challenged in 1926 by Michael Rostovtzeff, whose theory that the house originally belonged to Agrippa before passing to his son’s hands, is now widely accepted.

  60 For more on the Boscotrecase paintings, see Ling (1991), 55–6; and Fantham (2006), 77.

  61 D’Ambra (2007), 96; Wallace-Hadrill (1988), 50–2 on the absence of upstairs floors from Pompeii houses, which may be significant.

  62 Treggiari (1975), 52 on Livia’s cubicularii. Note that although ‘bedroom’ is the usual translation for cubiculum, it does not quite have the same connotations as our modern notion of that room. The key point is that it is the most private room in the house.

  63 Suetonius, Augustus 72 on Julia Minor’s palace and Augustus’s country residences.

  64 The act was called adoptio when the person being adopted – who could be male or female – was previously in the patria potestas of another; when, however, the male being adopted was himself not under paternal power (sui iuris) or even a paterfamilias himself, it was called adrogatio. Women could not be adopted under this latter arrangement, nor could they initially adopt themselves although later emperors seem to have permitted it, in cases where a woman had lost children.

  65 C. B. Rose (1997), 225, n. 154.

  66 The exact date of Julia’s and Agrippa’s marriage is unknown, as are the years of the births of their daughters Julia and Agrippina Maior, but based on an estimate of the years of their marriages, and the birth dates of their own children, a birth date before 16 BC is probably accurate for Julia – who may in fact have been born before Lucius – and after 16 BC for Agrippina: see Fantham (2006), 108.

  67 C. B. Rose (1997), 13: I. Priene 225. See Fantham (2006), 66 for more inscriptions honouring Julia.

  68 On senators being banned from marrying women from certain classes, see Gardner (1986), 32. On inheritance to anyone beyond sixth degree of relation, see Gardner (1986), 178.

  69 Lex Papia Poppaea of AD 9. See Edwards (1993), 40.

  70 Gardner (1986), 77. These figures were later revised to a period of two years’ grace for widows, and eighteen months’ grace for divorcees. There was some form of redress for women who could prove they had been wrongly accused of adultery, or whose husbands had cheated on them with married women: see Gardner (1986), 90.

  71 Gardner (1986), 178.

  72 On the ius trium liberorum, see Gardner (1986), 20. Women still in patria potestas, in other words women whose fathers were still alive, had to wait until those fathers’ deaths before the law could apply to them. On the statue, see Zanker (1988), 157.

  73 Edwards (1993), 34. This translation of Res Gestae 8.5 is hers.

  74 Edwards (1993), 56. On the unlikelihood of the law being enforced very often, see Gardner
(1986), 121 and 124.

  75 Suetonius, Augustus 34.2 on the public demonstrations; Vistilia’s case actually came to trial during the reign of Augustus’s successor Tiberius: see Tacitus, Annals 2.85.

  76 Ovid, Amores, 1.4. On Augustus’s new seating laws, see Rawson (1987), 85, 89 and 113; also Edmondson (1996), 88–9.

  77 See Richlin (1992), 76 and Fantham (2006), 81.

  78 Macrobius, Saturnalia 2.5.9. On Domitius Marsus as a source, see Fantham (2006), 81; and Richlin (1992), 69 and n. 7. On the alleged affair with Sempronius Gracchus while married to Agrippa, see Tacitus, Annals 1.53.

  79 Macrobius, Saturnalia 2.5.2.

  80 Macrobius, Saturnalia 2.5.3–5.

  81 Croom (2000), 74 and 87, and Olson (2008), 32.

  82 On colours, see Ovid, Ars Amatoria 3.169; on vulgar colours, see, for example, Martial Epigrams 10.29.4; cf. Olson (2008), 11–12.

  83 Olson (2008), 55–7 and Croom (2000), 104–7 and Stout (1994) on women’s accessories.

  84 On cost of clothes-making, see Croom (2000), 21; on Coan silk, see Olson (2008), 14 and Croom (2000), 121.

  85 Macrobius, Saturnalia 2.5.7.

  86 Olson (2008), ch. 2 passim on the cosmetic arts employed by Roman women, and 73 on the treatment for grey hair.

  87 D’Ambra (2007), 115 on the jar of face cream, and the health of the cosmetics industry.

  88 On the rhetoric of female self-adornment, see Wyke (1994).

  89 Seneca, Consolatio ad Marciam 2.3–4 on Octavia’s behaviour after Marcellus’s death.

  90 Richardson (1992), 248.

  91 See Flory (1998), 491 on the role of Roman women in a triumph.

  92 Suetonius, Tiberius 7.

  93 Fronto, De Nepote Amisso, ii (Haines. Vol. 2. 229–9).

  94 On Drusus’s banquet, see Cassius Dio, Roman History 55.2.4; and Flory (1998), 491.

  95 Consolatio ad Liviam, 133–7. My own translation. Suetonius, Claudius 1 reports that Augustus was suspected of having a hand in Drusus’s death, on the grounds of his stepson’s reputation for favouring republicanism, although Suetonius himself dismisses these allegations. For more on this sequence of events, see Barrett (2002), 42–4.

  96 See Flory (1993), 299.

  97 Seneca, Consolatio ad Helviam; cf. Lefkowitz and Fant (1992), no. 261.

  98 See Flory (1993), 297–300.

  99 See Kleiner (1996), for a reassessment of women’s roles in this regard; also Purcell (1986), 88–9 on Livia’s contribution.

  100 Cassius Dio, Roman History 55.8.4 on Vipsania Polla’s racetrack.

  101 On the festival of Bona Dea, see Beard, North and Price (1998), Vol. 1: 296–7 and Takács (2008), 101; cf. Juvenal, Satires 6.314–41. See Takács (2008), 23 on provenance of temple of Fortuna Muliebris.

  102 Kleiner (1996), 32–3.

  103 Strabo 5.3.8. Barrett (2002), 200–1 for more detail on the portico.

  104 The portico has long since vanished, but a surviving fragment of a marble plan of Rome dating from the era of the Severan dynasty has preserved for us the existence, location and general floor plan of the building. It was built in the shape of a rectangle 115 m by 75 m (377 feet by 246 feet) around a courtyard garden. Ovid, Ars Amatoria 1.71–2, tells us there was an art gallery there, and Pliny the Younger mentions meeting friends there: Epistulae 1.5.9.

  105 Kleiner (1996), 33–4 on Eumachia’s portico, and other women who commissioned their own buildings.

  106 Severy (2003), 131f on the cult of Concordia, and 134 for the idea of Mother’s Day and the festival of the Matralia.

  107 See Suetonius, Tiberius 10; Tacitus, Annals 1.53; Velleius Paterculus 2.99; Cassius Dio, Roman History 55.9.5–8.

  108 See previous note, and Fantham (2006), 83 on Tiberius’s possible motives.

  109 Macrobius, Saturnalia 2.5.3; 2.5.6; 2.5.8.

  110 See Ovid, Fasti 2.127f on this event. On Julius Caesar’s consecration, see Beard, North and Price (1998), Vol. 1, 208.

  111 Velleius Paterculus, 2.100; Seneca, de Beneficiis 6.32; Pliny the Elder, Natural History 21.8–9; Tacitus, Annals 3.24; Suetonius, Augustus 64–5; Cassius Dio, Roman History 55.10.12–16. See also Syme (1984) on ‘the crisis of 2 BC’.

  112 Cassius Dio, Roman History 55.10.14.

  113 See Ferrill (1980) for an overview of scholarship on the reasons for Julia’s downfall.

  114 Seneca, De Brevitate Vitae 4.5: translation from Richlin (1992), 68.

  115 Edwards (1993), 42–7 and Fischler (1994), 118–19 on adultery and political invective.

  116 Varner (2004), 46.

  117 Linderski (1988), 190. See Suetonius, Augustus 65 and 101; Cassius Dio, Roman History 56.32.4.

  118 Wood (1999), 30.

  119 Wood (1999), 30 and 74; C. B. Rose (1997), 21 and Varner (2006), 86–8 on possible treatment of Julia’s portraits after her exile.

  120 Wood (1999), 69–70, and Fantham (2006), 137.

  121 On subsequent judgements of Julia, see Fantham (2006), chapter 10.

  122 Suetonius, Tiberius 11 and 15; Barrett (2002), 52.

  123 See Olson (2008), 15, on the toga virilis.

  124 C. B. Rose (1997), 18.

  125 Barrett (2002), 53 for a summary.

  126 Potter (2007), 55. An obvious exception of course was Britain, conquered by Claudius in AD 43.

  127 Suetonius, Augustus 97–9; Velleius Paterculus 2.123.

  128 Cassius Dio, Roman History 56.42–6

  129 Tacitus, Annals 1.5–6: Cassius Dio, Roman History 56.30.

  130 These questions rear their heads again in chapters four and six with regard to Agrippina Minor and Plotina: see Barrett (1996), 24–5 on the Agrippina comparison.

  131 My Turn: The Memoirs of Nancy Reagan (1989), 216, cited by Caroli (1995), 279.

  3 Family Feud: The People’s Princess and the Women of Tiberius’s Reign

  1 Les femmes illustres, or Twenty heroick harangues of the most illustrious women from history. London: Dormand Newman (1693), trans. James Innes.

  2 This description of Agrippina’s homeward journey is based on and excerpted from Tacitus, Annals 3.1.

  3 On Scribonia’s age and longevity, see Fantham (2006), 17–18 and 158, n. 30. We know that she was still alive in 16, two years after Julia’s death, as Seneca (Epistulae Morales 70, 12) refers to her giving counsel to her relative Scribonius Libo, when he was implicated in a conspiracy against Tiberius.

  4 Germanicus’s birth date was 24 May, in either 15 or 16 BC. I have opted for the later date here.

  5 On the journey between Brundisium and Rome along the Appian Way, see Casson (1974), 194f.

  6 For description of Tiberius, see Suetonius, Tiberius 21.

  7 Suetonius, Augustus 101.

  8 Cassius Dio, Roman History 56.10 and 56.32. He mistakenly refers to the sum of 100,000 sesterces, rather than the 100,000 asses specified by the Lex Voconia. See Barrett (2002), 175 on this, and on the Lex Papia Poppaea of 9, which curbed the inheritance rights of women with less than three children, with a handful of special exceptions, including Livia herself: see Cassius Dio, Roman History 55.2.5–6. On the value of different forms of Roman currency: Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd edn, s.v. ‘Roman coinage’.

  9 Crawford (1976), 39; Barrett (2002), 174–5 and 183.

  10 Tacitus, Annals 1.8; Suetonius, Augustus 101; Cassius Dio, Roman History 56.46.1. Cf. Barrett (2002), 151; C. B. Rose (1997), 22.

  11 See Flory (1987), 113 and passim, on the history and meaning of the name Augusta, and for an overview of who was granted the title during the Julio-Claudian era.

  12 Flory (1987), 114 on the prevalence of this belief in the nineteenth century; also Barrett (2002), 154.

  13 Tacitus, Annals 1.14; Suetonius, Tiberius 50. Cf. Flory (1987), 121.

  14 Wood (1999), 90.

  15 Cassius Dio, Roman History 57.12.2; Tacitus, Annals 2.42; Josephus, Antiquities 17.1.1; C. B. Rose (1997), 23 on Tiberius’s response to the ambassador from Gytheum, in Sparta.

  16 Barrett (2002), 164
–5.

  17 See Treggiari (1975) on these individuals.

  18 Ovid, Epistulae ex Ponto 3.1, my own translation.

  19 Senatus Consultum de Cn. Pisone Patre: see Griffin (1997), 252.

  20 Cassius Dio, Roman History 57.12.2.

  21 Cassius Dio, Roman History 57.12.5: cf. Purcell (1986), 90.

  22 Suetonius, Augustus 50. Cf. Cassius Dio, Roman History 61.33.12 on Agrippina Minor accompanying Claudius to supervise fire-fighting efforts in a display of her overbearing desire to share in his power. This indicates that this was very much one of the duties of concerned emperors and their families, yet also that it could be seen as evidence of a woman becoming too visible.

  23 I follow the line taken by Susan Wood, who in turn subscribes to the theory of Rolf Winkes on the dating of Livia’s portraits: see Wood (1999), 91–5; cf. Winkes (2000) and Bartman (1998).

  24 Virgil, Aeneid 1.279.

  25 See Fejfer (2008), 345 on male and female portraits.

  26 Purcell (1986), 91–2, and nn. 76–7.

  27 See Caroli (1995), chapter two, on first ladies of the nineteenth century.

  28 Kokkinos (2002),11.

  29 Consolatio ad Liviam 299–328.

  30 Kokkinos (2002), 15–16. On univirae and opinions about the remarriage of divorcees, see Gardner (1986), 51.

  31 Kokkinos (2002), 16 and 148: cf. Valerius Maximus 3.3.

  32 On Antonia’s staff, see Kokkinos (2002), 57–65 and Treggiari (1973).

  33 Crawford (1976), 43; see also Kokkinos (2002), 71–2.

  34 Kokkinos (2002), 75–7.

  35 On women’s management of business and own affairs, see Gardner (1986), 21–2, and 234–5. On the raising of children under Livia’s and Antonia’s aegis, see, for example, Suetonius, Otho 1.

  36 Kokkinos (2002), 25.

  37 Josephus, Antiquities 18.143; cf. 18.165.

  38 See Suetonius, Claudius 2–4.

  39 Suetonius, Claudius 2.

  40 Suetonius, Claudius 4.

  41 Suetonius, Claudius 3.

  42 Suetonius, Claudius 41.

  43 Senatus Consultum de Cn. Pisone Patre: see Griffin (1997), 253.

  44 Wood (1999), 160 and 175.

 

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