The First Ladies of Rome: The Women Behind the Caesars (62 page)

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 quarters, 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.