The First Ladies of Rome: The Women Behind the Caesars (63 page)

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.

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).