Konstantinos Mantas

CHAPTER ONE

The Women of the Imperial Family:

from Livia to St. Helena

The history of the female members of the imperial family is crucial for the general
understanding of the changing status of elite women during the first, second and third
centuries AD: figures such as the formidable Livia, generally little loved by the ancient
historians, or her sister-in-law Octavia, combined in their imagery both real and fictitious
elements of the Republic's conservative ideology on the status of women and new ones which
derived from changes in the constitution and the social patterns of Rome.
During the Republic, elite women had little to do in public life; history had preserved female
characters totally in the shadow of husbands or sons, paragons of the conventional feminine
virtues of self-sacrifice and promotion of the male's career. Cornelia, the mother of the
Gracchi, is a typical example: she bore twelve children, saw only two sons survive into
adulthood, supervised their education (though neither Plutarch nor any other ancient moralist
who lavished praise upon her ever mentions how she set about this and what kind of
supervision she administered), and did not seem to share their radical political views. Some
women did play a political role in strenuous circumstances: Sempronia earned notoriety as
one of the female agents involved in Catiline's conspiracy in 63 BC; Sallust described her as a
lady who was well-educated (or too educated for her own good), witty, but avaricious and
immoral.1
But the Republic's most unconventional lady was undoubtedly Fulvia, the wife successively
of Clodius, Curio and Mark Antony; she was a real precursor of Livia, a woman who
combined matronly virtue of the old-fashioned type with "masculine" qualities which did not
endear her to the ancient historians. Dio Cassius, in particular, describes her as a "monster".
All the prejudices which the ancient male nursed towards women are deployed against her.
She is depicted as a murderess who killed many men during the proscriptions for reasons of
personal hatred and avariciousness.2 In the same passage, Dio describes how she abused the
severed head of Cicero: she spat on it, pulled out its tongue and stabbed it with her hair pins.
Fulvia is a true agent of savagery, sacrilegious and cowardly; Dio, true to his Greek education,
portrays the female as the negative of the logical human - a cruel creature, closely resembling
a Maenad. But it was Fulvia's penetration into that most exclusive of male fields, that of
military command, which outraged the ancient historians. According to Dio3, she occupied
Praeneste and, together with senators and equestrians, participated in every decision; she was
1
2
3

Catiline, 24.3 - 25.6.

Dio Cassius, XLVII, 8.
Dio Cassius, XLVIII, 10.

even girded out with a sword, gave the soldiers their watchword, and addressed speeches to
them (edemegorei pollakis in the Greek text).
The idea of a woman as a leader of any kind was abhorrent to Romans of every age; but
female interference in military matters, especially on the battlefield, was a direct challenge to
the traditional patterns of behaviour which underpinned Ancient Roman society. However,
Fulvia does not seem to have been a "feminist" or a "virago", despite Dio's description of her
in Amazonic attire. She refused to help the fourteen hundred wives of the proscribed to avoid
the heavy taxation which the triumvirs wished to impose upon them in 43 BC.4 Indeed, she
seemed to have been closer to the conventional type of Roman matron: a woman ready to
defend her husband's interests. It was the peculiar circumstances of the civil war which forced
her to leave the household and adopt a "masculine" role, for her husband's sake rather than her
own. She acted similarly to Agrippina the Elder, whose bold action in Germany is recorded by
Tacitus unadorned by negative comments. The two women acted in similar ways, usurping
the male role, albeit briefly, under the pressure of circumstances, and for their husband's sake;
but they lived in different epochs and their husbands were judged in a different light. Mark
Antony was the defeated enemy of Augustus, whereas Germanicus was the latter's favourite
grandson and alleged heir to his office. Fulvia set the pattern in which women of the
Julio-Claudian family were to act: she was the first Roman woman to act as the wife of a ruler;
her face was inscribed on a coin of Antony's as the face of victory; according to J Balsdon,
this was the earliest example of a Roman woman whose face we can recognize on a coin5,
though other scholars who have studied the specific coin have expressed doubts as to the
accuracy of the identifications of Fulvia as "Victory"6.
After the defeat of Antony and Cleopatra at the battle of Actium in 31 BC and their
subsequent deaths, Octavian became the sole ruler of what was to become the Roman Empire.
The passage from the Republic to the Principate was slow and for a long time the Roman
Emperor was not considered to be a monarch, at least not according to the Hellenistic
meaning of the word. Nevertheless, Augustus (as Octavian was named after he became sole
ruler) tried to establish a dynasty, though the lack of male issue from both his marriages
frustrated his ambition. It was this dynastic policy which gave a new, public, role to the
4
5

Appian, Bellum Civile, 4, 136f.

J Balsdon, Roman Women (London, 1962) p49. For a more recent examination of Fulvia's personality, see
D Delia, "Fulvia reconsidered", in S Pomeroy (ed), 'Women's history and ancient history' (London 1991),
ppl73-191.
V Gardthausen, Augustus und seine Zeit (Leipsia,1892) p920 Vessberg, Studien zur Kunstgeschichte der
Romischen Republik (Leipsia, 1942) p248.

female members of the imperial family: their biological ability to produce heirs became
crucial. Caesar's household was no longer a private one; it became the centre of public life. So
his female relatives acquired a new political significance, but only in the narrow family
context as wives, sisters or, more frequently, mothers of emperors. The importance of the
imperial women changed considerably through the first four centuries AD. Emperors who had
claims on the throne on grounds of family inheritance, especially through the female line,
tended to honour their mothers, wives and sisters by bestowing titles upon them which
commemorated their names in inscriptions and coins, whereas the ones who entered the office
by adoption or through election or favour by the army seemed less interested in such dynastic
measures. The importance of the women folk of the emperor was analogous to the shift
towards a more or less open, hereditary type of monarchy.
Augustus had initiated his dynastic policy before he became sole ruler. In 35 BC he granted a
series of privileges to his closest female relatives. His second wife, Livia, and his sister,
Octavia, were both emancipated from potestas and obtained the right to administer their
property without a guardian. He set up statues of them, and gave them status equal to that of
the tribunes as far as security and inviolability were concerned. It is obvious that Augustus
was using these measures in an attempt to create a new image of his family: his wife and sister
would be protected from insults as though they were public officials, and thus his family
would be exalted and sacred. Their statues would serve the same purpose: to celebrate the
new, public image of a former private family. Even their economic autonomy was a mark of
their new status. It was through these women and his only child, Julia, that Augustus hoped to
produce the male heir he so badly needed in order to establish a dynasty. The bitterness and
hostility, real or imagined, which the succession problem created among these three women,
gave plenty of material to ancient historians and satirists, but it has little importance for our
work: i.e. we can never be sure if Livia was the calculating, cold-blooded murderess who
destroyed everyone who was an obstacle in her - unwilling - son's way to the throne. What is
of great interest for the social historian is her image as first lady, her function in the context of
the newly founded Principate, her economic status, and especially the question of whether her
status could be used as a model for the female members of the elite, and if so, to what extent.
Of course, literature could not but create stereotypical images of Livia. Latin authors, such as
Tacitus, have depicted Livia as the wicked stepmother "par excellence". According to MIG

Gray-Fow7, the tendency to put the blame on Livia for all the tragedies which befell Augustus'
family is ill-founded and superficial. He attributes the portrayal of Livia's alleged evil
machinations to the author's love for transforming historical figures into archetypal
stereotypes. Livia was suspected of engineering the deaths of her husband's nephew,
Marcellus, in 22 BC, of her grandson, Germanicus, and even of Augustus himself. Dio
Cassius simply mentions the rumour that Livia poisoned the figs which Augustus used to
pluck with his own hands (in order, ironically, to foil any potential poisoners) because she
was afraid that he would nominate Agrippa Posthumus as his heir instead of her son,
Tiberius.8
In her stepmotherly role, Livia presents a strong contrast to her sister-in-law, Octavia, that
rare paragon of virtue who became stepmother to the children of her husband, Antony, by his
former marriage, and also to the illegitimate progeny of his affair with Cleopatra.
Nevertheless, after the death of her son, Marcellus, Octavia had no role to play in the
succession game, and after Julia's downfall and exile in 2 BC (allegedly on the grounds of
immoral behaviour, though the possibility that she was suspected of conspiring against
Augustus cannot be ruled out), Livia was the only woman in the imperial family who could
aspire to the role of the mother of a future emperor.
Livia was also stereotyped as the sexually frigid wife who turned a blind eye to her husband's
numerous infidelities. However, her conduct as a wife was perfectly in keeping with the
conduct of the traditional Roman matron. Dio Cassius records that when asked how she
managed to rule over Augustus, she said that she was always wise, did whatever he told her to
do, did not interfere in his business, and pretended that she was not aware of his extra-marital
affairs.9 Other passages by Dio reveal a wifely image of Livia which was created by the
ancient authors themselves under the influence of new philosophical ideas (mostly Stoic) on
the wife's more energetic role as assistant and confidante of her husband. In one particularly
lengthy passage, he records an unlikely and uninspiring dialogue supposed to have taken
place between Augustus and Livia in their bedchamber. Augustus cannot sleep, and Livia, the
dutiful wife, feels it incumbent upon herself to ask why. Without apparent need of further
prompting, Augustus launches into a long list of the endless hazards besetting the hapless
ruler: how many enemies he involuntarily creates by the necessary imposition of just policies;
7

8
9

JG Gray-Fow, "The Wicked Stepmother in Roman Literature and History: An Evaluation" Latomus 47
(1988) p746.
Dio Cassius, XXIX, 3-31,1.
Dio Cassius, LVIII, 2,4.

how frustrating this state of affairs is, etc. Livia plays the part of the consort who offers
common sense and shrewd, practical advice. She says it is inevitable that a ruler will make
enemies in formulating his policies, and recommends the application of a philosophical
perspective, taking into account the deficiencies of human nature. (The lofty tone of the
discussion is not immediately reconcilable with the concept of a nocturnal marital discussion
and this has the effect of reinforcing the artificiality of the passage.) Livia continues to regale
Augustus with words of comfort and encouragement, pointing out, for example, that they
have a powerful army to protect them from conspirators10. The most interesting aspect of this
dialogue is the use of the plural by Livia, for example: "We have many soldiers who guard
us...", which indicates 1) that Livia shares her husband's anxieties and her welfare is
commensurate with his; and 2) that she has a share, albeit unofficial, in her husband's public
role. In another passage, seeing Augustus deep in thought, Livia asks him if she can offer any
advice. Although she emphasises the fact that she is a mere woman., she goes on to remark
that she is able to give him advice, whereas his friends are too timid to do so, thus articulating
the new Roman idea that a wife is her husband's best friend. She goes on to develop this theme
by saying that, as his wife, she will share his fate; if he is rescued, she too will be rescued; if he
perishes, so will she11. The couple seem to have become an inseparable entity, at least in the
Augustan ideology.
In contrast to Livia's image as evil-doer, there is a contrasting image depicting her as a
mediator, and agent of forgiveness. She is said to have saved the life of some men whom she
had come across in a state of nakedness (and such an affront to the modesty of the Emperor's
consort warranted the death penalty), saying that to a modest Roman matron, a naked male
was as inoffensive as a statue.12
Her real political status is also ambiguous. During Augustus' reign, she had no official title. It
is true that he had indirectly indicated her high status, for instance, when he had Vedius
Pollius' house demolished, he erected a stoa in its place in which he inscribed Livia's name,
emphasising her central role in his dynastic policies. But the title of Augusta was given to her
only after his death in 14 AD, as a posthumous gift, together with her adoption into the Julian
family with the name Julia.13 According to Dio, Livia had been given the title of the priestess
of the Augustan cult, and the right to use a lictor in public religious services. Her official
10
11
12
13

Dio Cassius, LV, 12,5 - 14,3.

Dio Cassius, LV, 14,3 -16,2.
Dio Cassius, L VII, 2,4.
Tacitus, 4,71,7; Dio Cassius, LVIII.2.4.

status seemed to have been established when she was a dowager, though it was accompanied
by the coldness, or even hostility of Tiberius. According to Dio Cassius relations between
mother and son were polite on the surface but hostile underneath. Livia was claiming that
Tiberius owed his ascent to the throne to her, because Augustus had always disliked him, and
of course, her son was not very impressed by this.14 Nevertheless, due to the fact that Tiberius
was a widower, Livia continue to enjoy her supremacy: she was first among the women of
Rome. Her official status was confirmed by certain honours: she could receive members of
the Senate in her house and these visits were recorded in the public records,15 which means
that they were not simply private occasions; and Tiberius' letters always recorded her name.
In the same passage, Dio refers to her modesty (or diplomacy) which kept her out of the
Senate, of the camp or of the assembly, but at the same time he alleges that she wanted not
only to have a hand in the business of ruling but indeed to have the upper hand, claiming this
as her right since he owed his position as emperor to her. Many people believed that she
should have been called 'mother of the country' and that Tiberius should be called 'son of
Livia', after the Greek fashion. This enraged Tiberius, who refused to ratify the vast majority
of the honours which had been voted for her, and thereafter refused to consider any honour he
considered excessive. Tiberius' hostility was revealed when he refused to let her celebrate the
setting up of a statue of Augustus by giving a dinner party in her house for the Senators, the
equestrians, and their wives, although his refusal was overruled by a vote in the Senate. He
then insisted that, contrary to Roman practice, the sexes at the dinner should be segregated. In
the end, Livia was stripped of all her influence and Tiberius is reputed to have stopped visiting
her.16
Livia was honoured greatly in the Eastern part of the Empire, in which Hellenstic custom had
made the practice of honouring the consorts of kings an acceptable one. There is epigraphic
evidence, for example, that in Asia, Tiberius, his mother and the Senate were honoured as a
single entity.17 There were priestesses of her cult (after her deification, in the reign of her
grandson, Claudius), eg IGRV IV, no 984: "The demos (honours) Iollia daughter of Cointus
priestess of Hera and the goddess Julia Sebaste". Other honorific inscriptions reveal Livia's

14
15
16
17

Tacitus, 1,8,2; Dio Cassius, LVI, 43,7.

Dio Cassius, LVII, 3,3 - 3,5.
Dio Cassius, LVIII, 2, 5-10.
J Balsdon, Roman Women (London, 1962) p94. See also the inscription from Gytheion, in Laconia, in
which honours to Livia are recorded, SEG xi, nos 922-3: her statue was erected by the city together with
statues of Augustus and Tiberius, lines 1-3, 34-35. See also the Livian games for girls which were instituted
ca 2 BC by Lucius Castricius Regulus as part of the Isthmian games at Corinth, J. H. Kent, Corinth: The
Inscriptions 1926-1950 (Princeton, 1996), p70, nol53.

link with female client queens and princesses. Queen Dynamis of Bosporus honours as her
personal euergetes both Augustus and Livia.18 She was patroness of a provincial clientele,
though Augustus had the ultimate power and refused to grant to her proteges, the Samians, the
status of free city, which had been granted to Aphrodisias. She was wealthy, owning many
estates in Gaul, Italy and Asia Minor (Thyateira) and she was exempt from the Lex Voconia,
which restricted the inheritance rights of women in the senatorial class.19 When she died in 29
AD, a very old woman of 86, the Senate voted her an honour unique for a woman: the erection
of an arch. However, Tiberius never allowed this promise to be fulfilled, saying that he would
fund the building work himself, and then abandoning the project.20
Livia was the first Roman woman to become the consort of a ruler in a semi-official capacity,
playing a significant though indirect role, but she could - or would - never try to act in the
exclusive male spheres of the Senate or military leadership. Her power seemed to derive from
her influence on her husband, the economic privileges he bestowed upon her, and her dynastic
importance as mother of the eventual successor. But despite her power, Livia was never a
partner of Augustus in the Principate. The name of Augusta, bestowed for the first time on
her, was purely honorary. V Ehrenburg's thesis seems to be a fair one: "Livia was to be, not a
co- regent, but the most exalted woman of Rome. In other words, she was to hold the position
among women that Augustus had held among men."21
Among the other Julio-Claudian women, Agrippina Maior stands out as an extraordinary
figure: granddaughter of Augustus, and wife of the popular prince Germanicus, she followed
in the steps of Fulvia, actively defending her husband's political rights, and even assuming
military leadership in a time of crisis in Germany. "As long as my husband is absent, I am the
general" is the famous phrase recorded without derision by Tacitus.22 Agrippina's boldness
was the product of the new era of imperial Rome, when wives frequently followed their
husbands in their political and military missions. Hers was an example followed by other
imperial women, such as the Empresses Faustina the Younger in the second century AD and
Julia Domna in the third century AD. (Though no other woman ever commanded Roman
soldiers.) Agrippina's rivalry with another woman, Plancina, wife of Cn Piso, governor of

18
19
20

21

22

IGR nos 901, 902. For another female protege of Livia in Athens, see BCH 51 (1927), p256.
Dio Cassius, 5,2,5, 56,10.
Dio Cassius, LVIII, 2,5-10. She enjoyed posthumous honours in the reign of her grandson Claudius, see for
instance 11, no549.
V Ehrenberg, "The form of rule in the Roman Empire", in V Ehrenberg, Aspects of the Ancient World
(Oxford, 1946), p206.
Tacitus, Annals, 1.69.

Syria, is well-recorded.23 The public quarrel of these two women demonstrates how it was
possible, in the new period, the Principate, for women to enter into power struggles which
could materially affect their husbands' careers. The disastrous consequences (the death of
Germanicus in suspicious circumstances in AD 19, Piso's death in Rome on a charge of
treason) furnished misogynists with additional evidence to back their claim that the outcome
of women interfering in their husband's business could be nothing but disastrous.
It was no coincidence that only two years (21 AD) later, the subject of women's presence in
the provinces was discussed in the Senate, in a debate between the 'conservative' A Caecina
Severus, who claimed that women in provinces were a nuisance, causing lax military
discipline, maladministration and moral and economic corruption; and Tiberius' son, Drusus,
and Valerius Messala defended the new practice on the grounds that it was beneficial to the
welfare of both men and women. The interesting point is that Drusus presents the argument
that members of the imperial family, including Augustus and Livia, himself and his wife, had
travelled together as couples to distant parts of the Empire, without encountering problems or
serious difficulties.24
Agrippina brought about her own downfall by becoming involved in the opposition against
Tiberius. After Livia's death, she and her eldest son were punished by exile after being
denounced in a letter from Tiberius to the Senate.25
During Gaius Caligula's reign, it was his sisters, especially Drusilla, with whom he was
accused of incest, who played the role of Augusta. According to V Ehrenberg, it was during
the rule of the three successors of Tiberius that the importation of the Hellenistic idea of king
and queen, basileus and basilissa, took place. For Ehrenberg, the concept of a couple ruling
jointly derived not from Livia as Augusta or from the Roman idea of a plurality of the
principes but from the orientalising mania of Caligula, and the weakness of Claudius and the
young Nero in the face of Agrippina's ambitions. 26 His ideas seem to be out of fashion
(especially on the subject of Caligula's orientalising mania), but it remains true that until
Drusilla's death, the reigning couple comprised of a brother and a sister, called Augustus and
Augusta. So a new meaning was given to these names by Tiberius and Livia (although the
Augusta had no official title, no imperium and no tribunicia potestas). The Augusta could not

23
24
25
26

Tacitus, 2.55,5.
Tacitus, Annals, 3. 331.
J V D Balsdon, Roman Women (London, 1962), p.96.
V Ehrenberg, 'The form of rule in the Roman Empire', p207-8.

10

become an assistant of the Augustus - a real co- regent - because, as a woman, she had no
access to public office. Formally, her position was not dissimilar to that of the first lady in
America or a lady mayoress in Britain: her title and influence (if she had any) were
diminished when the male to whom she was related by marriage or by blood lost his office.
Claudius' reign was notorious for the domineering position of his two wives, Messalina and
Agrippina the Younger, and of his freedmen. The prevailing idea was that he was a
well-meaning but weak-willed man who became a pawn in the hands of his beautiful,
immoral wives and of his cunning freedmen, and thus let his reign degenerate into tyranny.
In Dio Cassius' words, it was due to the bad influence of his freedmen and of his wives that
Claudius was corrupted; he was governed by slaves and by women. 27 His wife, Valeria
Messalina was held responsible for a series of outrageous crimes: out of jealousy she exiled
Julia Livilla, Claudius' niece, thinking that her beauty and tendency to visit her uncle and
spend time alone with him in his room represented a challenge to her own position. She
managed to have Julia and Annaeus Seneca exiled on the grounds of adultery, and eventually
to have Julia executed.28 Dio Cassius and the Latin historian, Fabius Rusticus, a friend of
Seneca, accused her of immorality of a particularly depraved nature. The former describes her
as presiding over sexual orgies in the palace, in which she obliged respectable matrons to
indulge, and their husbands to watch, punishing by death anyone who declined to do so.29 The
latter wrote even more unbelievable tales and depicted Messalina disguising herself as a
prostitute and 'working' as such in Roman brothels.30
She combined in her person two stereotypes: the avaricious, cruel woman, and the adulterous,
sex-crazed one. Leaving aside these salacious tales, Messalina's character seems to have been
different. Like other imperial women before her, she seemed to have used her sexuality as a
means of preserving her position, and especially that of her son, Britannicus. She even
provided slave-mistresses for her husband, following Livia's example, in order to maintain
her influence over him more effectively. 31 Like other wives, mothers or mistresses of
emperors, Messalina used and abused her indirect power. Dio describes her in collaboration
with the freedman Narcissus, masterminding proscriptions, whereas Claudius is presented as

27
28
29
30
31

Dio Cassius, LX 2.1 -3.3.

ibid, 6.8.
ibid, 17.8.
Juvenal 6, 115-32; Dio Cassius LX, 31, 1.
Dio Cassius, LX, 17.8.

11

a poor old man, terrorised by his wife and freedman and submissive to their whims;32 he even
broke his oath not to put a free citizen to torture. The empress' avaricousness created a pattern
for other imperial women after her: in league with the imperial freedmen she used to sell
political offices, command of expeditions, procuratorships and governorships.33
Adulterous affairs and 'auctions' of offices notwithstanding, Messalina's position seems to
have been unstable: her power was based on her husband's tolerance and mood and to her
alliance with the network of imperial freedmen. Her alienation from them caused, to a degree,
her own downfall:34 in the past she had enjoyed their full cooperation. It was her own mistake,
in slandering and subsequently murdering Polybius, one of the freedmen, which eventually
turned the tables against her.35 Her last, outrageous act, the marriage to Gaius Silius, has been
described by ancient and modern historians alike as a foolish, illogical one. But the whole
image of Messalina created by traditional historians is misleading; she was too intelligent to
have been the paranoid nymphomaniac of the anecdotal history. Her motivation for a
marriage to a young, promising man from an outstanding family (Gaius Silius) seems to have
been born in self-preservation rather than in passion. As S Wood observes, Claudius
honoured his female ancestors (he deified his grandmother Livia) and he granted ceremonial
importance and political influence to his wives.36 But although Messalina had been granted
the right to occupy the seat in the amphitheatre which had in the past belonged to Livia and to
use the carpentum (in which she accompanied Claudius in his trimphal procession of AD 44),
she was denied the title of Augusta. According to Dio Cassius, while Claudius was prepared
to allow Messalina's birthday to be celebrated in public, his sense of moderation prompted
him to deny her the title of Augusta, and their son, Britannicus, the title of Augustus. 37
Another explanation is plausible: that he had not made up his mind about keeping her as his
consort and nominating their son as his successor. S Wood emphasises the fact that
Messalina, unlike Claudius, was a Julian on both sides of her family, and could claim direct
descent from Octavia, the sister of Augustus. Her marriage to a man of distinguished family
could therefore imperil Claudius' office, and his life. Griffin suggests that Messalina's

32
33
34

35
36

37

ibid, 14.1.
ibid, 16.3 - 17.8.
ibid, 30.6, for Messalina's alliance to the imperial freedmen; and 31.5 for Messalina's downfall as a result of
Narcissus' betrayal.
ibid.
S Wood, "Messalina, wife of Claudius: propaganda, successes and failures of his reign', J Rom Arch 5
(1992), pp220-34.
Dio Cassius, LXII, 8.

12

fear for her own position and for that of her son, threatened as they were by the popularity of
Agrippina the Younger and her own son, was the ultimate motivation for her last folly.38
Whatever the reason for her downfall, Messalina's tragic death demonstrates that the imperial
consort's power had certain limitations. She was always dependent upon the whim of the
emperor, and upon her capacity to maintain her control of the staff of the imperial household.
Her beauty could earn her popularity: Messalina's affair with Mnester was tolerated by the
people because of her beauty and of his acting talent but it was shortlived.39
Agrippina the Younger became Claudius' fourth wife not long after Messalina's death. 40 Dio
Cassius attributes this incestuous marriage (Agrippina was Claudius' niece) to her seductive
charms.41 She was, also, an ambitious woman. Her earlier attempt to come close to power had
been frustrated. She was exiled, together with her sister Julia Livilla, by Gaius Calligula, her
brother, in AD 39, and their possessions were put up for auction at Lyons.42 Claudius was
probably afraid of the threat that their prospective marriages would present to his authority.
The Principate had a very anomalous succession practice and lacked a stable law of
inheritance, but Agrippina had achieved her goal, and very soon, if Dio Cassius is be believed,
she usurped Claudius' power (espheterisato in the Greek text) through control of his
favourites (by use of bribery or terror) and managed to undermine the upbringing of his son,
Britanicus.43
Again, we find that she followed the example of Messalina as far as avarice and jealousy were
concerned: she did not fall short of committing the most demeaning acts if she thought she
could profit from them. She tried to favour people who were well-to-do, and then had them
murdered in order to strip them of their wealth. Every woman of high rank who had the
misfortune to be beautiful and thus a potential danger to her position was murdered. Among
them was Lollia Paullina, ex-wife of her brother Gaius Caligula, and a former candidate for
the dead Messalina's position. In accordance with the tradition of powerful, cruel women, Dio
Cassius describes Agrippina opening the mouth of the severed head of the aforementioned

38
39
40
41
42
43

Griffin, Nero, the end of a dynasty (London, 1984), pp28-29.

Dio Cassius, LX, 28.6.
ibid, LXI, 30.6.
ibid, LXI 31.6.
Dio Cassius, LIX.22.8.
ibid, LXI. 32.

13

Lollia Paullina and inspecting the teeth, which had certain peculiarities, in order to be sure
that her 'enemy' was dead.44
Soon, she had all the honours which Messalina had enjoyed before her voted by the Senate
and was even granted the title of Augusta by Claudius.45 Agrippina made her share of the
power public: she could greet anyone she wished in public and these meetings were recorded
in the public records.46 She appeared in a glamorous dress on Claudius' mock battleship
during a theatrical extravaganza which took place on a lake.47 She was also present when
Claudius was giving audience to ambassadors, though she was seated on a separate tribunal.
Dio comments that this was a peculiar sight,48 thus implying that no other Augusta had done
so before. Agrippina set her sights on honours exceeding those traditionally granted to
women. She was not satisifed by a "woman-behind-the-throne" position of power. She
wanted a share in Claudius' official title and persisted accompanying him on official
occasions, such as, for example, the time when the city was destroyed by fire and Claudius
had to visit the blighted areas with his assistants.49
And when she judged that Claudius was of no further use to her, or even that he had become
an obstacle to her plans, she killed him with poison - the typical feminine weapon.50 In the
first year of Nero's reign she seems to have been very influential: coinage and inscriptions
back the literary texts which support this view. Her face and name were on the obverse of the
aureii and denarii of Nero's first years; Nero's name and titles were subordinate to hers,
relegated to the reverse. These coins were struck in the first two months between the death of
Claudius and the conferment of tribunician power on Nero, so that, according to CV

44

45
46
47
48
49

50

Dio Cassius, LXI, 32. Presumably Agrippina acted in this way in order to be sure that her rival was dead.
Such ferocious feminine behaviour was not unusual in other societies. See, for instance, the horrendous
revenge taken by the daughter-in-law of an abdicated feudal lord in the Japanese film 'Ran1 (1984): she had
the other daughter-in-law murdered, her head being severed and preserved in salt so that she could examine
it. (The film is a free adaptation of King Lear.)
Dio Cassius, LXI, 33.2.
ibid, 33.1.
ibid, 33.3. Agrippina wore a beautiful chlamvs woven with threads of gold, AD 52.
Dio Cassius, LXI, 33.7.
ibid, LXI, 33.12. However, as Levick observes in Claudius (London 1990), p46, though a woman could
stand on a tribunal and attend councils of state, she could not be granted military imperium or tribunician
power. She states that Agrippina could wear military garments, especially the paludamentum, but she could
not become colonel of the regiment, even in an honorary capacity unlike the female members of the British
royal family.
Dio Cassius, LXI, 34.2. Killing by poison was a typical feminine way of carrying out a murder. (Cf the
alleged poison murders committed by Livia.) However, in contrast to the Greek writers, Josephus does not
accuse Agrippina of being responsible for Claudius1 death; he simply mentions her trickery in the disowning
of her stepson Britanicus in favour of her own son, Nero, Jewish War 11, 2.4.

14

Sutherland, she could plan her position easily.51 The same author mentions that local coinages
in the eastern half of the Empire in AD 54-5 displayed Agrippina's bust in conjunction with
Nero's. Also, in the east, in the island of Lesbos, two inscriptions of the first century AD
honour hera as "Goddess Sebaste Aeolis Karpophoros Agrippina, the perpetual
gymnasiarchos' 52 and as 'new goddess Bulle Sebaste, Julia Agrippina, the perpetual
gymnasiarchos'.53 These were purely honorific titles which set the fashion for members of the
imperial family to be granted such titles by cities which wanted a particular favour, or simply
to demonstrate their loyalty.54
But Agrippina, though she had started like the typical Roman mother, doing everything to
promote her son's career, unlike Livia showed scant respect for traditions. On one occasion,
when it became clear that she was about to step up onto Nero's tribunal in order to receive an
Armenian embassy, Seneca managed to persuade Nero to get down from the tribunal and
meet his mother, thus avoiding the unpleasant "sign of the state's weakness - that a woman
was publicly a co-ruler of Rome"55. The absurdity of the situation is highlighted by the fact
that the 'barbarians' had had reigning queens, and those in question, the Armenians, had been
ruled by a woman, Queen Erato, in the recent past (early first century AD) 56 It was a Roman
ideological dogma that women should have no place in public life, not a feature of 'barbarian'
societies. Nevertheless, Agrippina persisted, trying to check her son's sexual and political life,
as if Nero was still a minor. Dio refers to her anger at her expulsion from the palace by the
freedwoman, Acte, mistress of Nero, the outrage which led her to tell him: "It was me who
made you emperor", and he rightly mentions that she had forgotten that "every power when it
is given by someone to someone else, automatically ceases to belong to the giver" 57 .
Unfortunately for her, Agrippina's sex prevented her from direct access to that power. She had
to rely on a son, but as S Dixon points out, the mother's power over her son had no concrete,
legal basis; she had no potestas and thus the adult son could challenge her authority with less
difficulty. Progressively, Agrippina was stripped of the symbols of power: Nero withdrew her
51

52
53
54

55
56
57

According to C II V Sutherland, Roman history and coinage 44 BC - AD69 (Oxford, 1987), pp84-87. See
also a Latin inscription from Corinth, in which C Iulius Spartiaticus, the honorand, is recorded as procurator
of Caesar and of Augusta Agrippina, A J S Spawforth, v Corinth, Argos and the Imperial Cult: Pseudo-Julian
Letters 198, Hesperia 63 (1994), pp218-9.
IGR IV no 22, after 59 AD.
IGR IV no 81 ca 50 AD.
For an earlier example, see the decree of Ilion, honouring Antonia, mother of Claudius, for having discharged
many "magistracies', I Ilion, no 88. For a later one see Julia Domna as prytanis in Stratonikeia, Caria, BMC,
Caria (1897).
Dio Cassius LXI, 35.4.
The Cambridge Ancient History X (1953) p277.
Dio Cassius, LXI, 35.7.

15

personal guard; and that revealed to everyone that she was powerless and hated. She was
avoided by everyone as if she had the plague.58
However, Agrippina continued her futile attempts to reclaim control over her son; this time
she was, according to Dio, trying to bestow incestuous sexual favours upon him.59 The incest
stereotype was a recurring motif in ancient authors' accounts of powerful mother-son
relationships: in the third century AD such accusations would be repeated about Caracalla and
his mother, Julia Domna. The drama ended with the infamous matricide, peppered with the
usual sensational elements, i.e. that he had a mistress who resembled his mother.60
Agrippina's great mistake was that she broke away from tradition in two ways. Firstly, she
failed to limit her motherly authority as would have been proper when a son had come of age;
and, secondly, she was not satisfied with the backstage- power position of her gender.
After the death of Nero, the subsequent civil war and the establishment of the Flavian
dynasty, the sources cease to refer to strong female members of the imperial family, due to the
fact that Vespasian and Titus had no consorts and only Domitian, in the middle of these
'bachelor' reigns, was married - to Domitia Longina. Dio Cassius made some slight references
to her in his history: that she was almost slain by her husband because of her adultery with the
dancer Ursus who was murdered in the street. He also refers to Domitian's liaison with his
niece, Julia, with whom he lived openly, and the fact that he did not stop seeing her even after
his reluctant reunion with Domitia in response to the demands of the people.61 Nevertheless,
mistress and wife did not escape being represented according to the usual stereotypes: Julia
intervened in the appointment of Ursus as consul (whom Domitian had wanted to kill), and
Domitia participated in the conspiracy against her husband, out of fear for her life. 62 (On the
same grounds, Marcia, the concubine of Commodus, is said to have organised the conspiracy
against him after seeing her name at the top of the proscription list.)
Strong female characters appear again during the reigns of Trajan and (briefly) of Hadrian:
Plotina, wife of Trajan, Ulpia Marciana, his sister, Matidia, who was her daughter and Vibia
Sabina, daughter of Matidia and wife of Hadrian played an indirect political role but without
expressing the bold spirit of Livia, or the anti- traditional ambitions of Agrippina. Only

58
59
60
61
62

Dio Cassius, LXI, 8.4.6.

Suetonius, Nero 28; Tacitus, Annals, 14.2; Dio Cassius, LXI.11.2.
Dio Cassius, LXVII, 3.
Dio Cassius, LXVIII, 15.2.
Dio Cassius, LXVII, 15.2.

16

Plotina made some sporadic incursions into public life. Though Marciana was granted the
special privilege of the title of Augusta (reserved for wives and daughters of emperors) in 105
AD; and "In 112 AD, Plotina and Marciana were given the right to issue coins".63
All of these women, especially Plotina, were renowned for their modesty. When she entered
the palace, she was heard to comment that she wished eventually to leave it the same woman,
and she conducted herself accordingly during the entire reign of her husband.64 If Cassius is to
be believed, her only crucial political act was that she kept the death of Trajan secret for days,
and she signed his letter which was sent to the Senate recognising Hadrian as his adopted son
and heir.65 Dio claims that he had first hand information handed down to him by his father
Apronianus who was governor of Cilicia at the time.66 As in the cases of Livia and Agrippina,
we find again a woman acting energetically in putting a man on the throne. But Hadrian was
not Plotina's son; so Dio assumed, according to stereotype, that she had a sexual interest in
him. She had also intervened on behalf of the Jews when there was a serious dispute between
them and the Greeks in Alexandria.67 And again, during Hadrian's reign, she persuaded him to
change the rule by which the person nominated for succession to the headship of the
Epicurean school in Athens had to be a Roman citizen.68 Dio Cassius has Hadrian delivering
her funeral oration (121 or 122 AD) and saying that she had often made requests of him and
that he never refused her any thing.69
Nevertheless, the other ladies, having only a remote relationship to the two emperors, simply
enjoyed honours such as the title of Augusta, and the right to strike coins. Matidia the Elder
was also honoured "after her death in 119 by a funeral laudation by Hadrian, gladiatorial
games and distribution of perfume to the populace of Rome, deification, and a temple in
Rome".70 It was the first time that a woman who did not belong to the immediate family of the
Emperor had been publicly honoured.71
Her daughter, Matidia the Younger, and her aunt, Vibia Sabina, remained obscure figures: the
former due to her peculiar status of 'spinster', the latter, due to her husband's indifference and
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70

71

BMC Emp III, xxiii, cvii.

Dio Cassius, LXVIII, 14.5.
Dio Cassius, LXIX 1.
Dio Cassius, LXIX, 3-4.
P. Oxyr. no 1242.
SIG3 no 834.
Dio Cassius, LXIX. 10.3a.
CIL XIV no 3579 for the funeral laudations. It was a Roman custom established in the Republican era for
speeches to be delivered at the funeral of women. For the games, see A Hadrian, 9.9 19.5.
Boatwright, "Matidia the Younger', Classical Views .I (1992), p26.

17

occasional hostility, lived on the margin of politics and public life. Matidia was the possessor
of great wealth: epigraphical sources associate her with landholding and slaveholding in
Mauretania Caesariensis; in Ephesos in Asia, and in Italy, specifically in the city of Rome,
close to Rome at Castel Arcione on the Via Tiburtina, at Tusculum, in and near Ostia, and in
Campanian Suessa. 72 Nevertheless, she would not or could not play a public role. Both
literary sources (her letters are included in Fronto's correspondence) and epigraphical sources
(eg a statue erected in her honour by the priestess Flavia) suggest that she preferred the
company of other women.73 Vibia Sabina, the neglected wife of Hadrian, had her own female
friend, Iulia Balbilla, the poetess.74 Women who had wealth and social rank but no access to
public life retired to domestic obscurity and friendships with other women who, due to their
sex, were usually politically insignificant. Marguerite Yourcenar has Hadrian speaking of his
wife as relatively non-dangerous as she had limited herself to a circle of women poets.75
Antoninus Pius, the adopted son and heir of Hadrian, had a wife, Faustina the Elder, who was
given the title 'Augusta' on his succession - a rare phenomonen if one looks at former
empresses who received the title only on their husband's death (Livia), after giving birth to a
child (Poppaea), or later on in their husband's reign - probably because of estrangement (Vibia
Sabina). She also had the right to issue coins. It cannot be doubted that these honours were the
product of the new emperor's attempt to found his own dynasty - through the female line; he
had only one surviving child, Faustina the Younger. Her mother survived only three years as
an empress and she was deified. "In addition to the voting of a temple, a large coinage was
issued in her name as goddess, with the legend AETERNITAS, for this was a consecration to
be taken seriously.76
Unlike her mother's brief and obscure record in literature, Faustina the Younger attracted the
unsympathetic comments of the author of the 'Historia Augusta' and of Dio Cassius. She was

72

73

74

75

76

ibid, p24. Earlier references to estates owned by women of the imperial family: Livia owned land at Thyatira,
Lydia, IGR IV no 1213, 1204. Domitia owned estates at Dionysopolis Phrygia, MAMA IV no 293.
The archis Flavia Clea erected this statue in honour of Matidia, her own euergetis. the daughter of a Sebaste,
the sister of another Sebaste, granddaughter of another Sebaste, BCH 70 (1946), p255. For earlier examples
of this kind of patronage see BCH 51 (1927), pp256 and 261 in which ana unknown lady honoured Livia as
her euergetis and a man called Occios Crispos honoured Statilia Messalina, Nero's wife as his saviour and
benefactress.
It seems that Vibia Sabina, a neglected wife, had been the first empress who found solace in the creation of a
literary salon: Jullia Balbilla accompanied the imperial couple on their Egyptian journey in November, 130
AD (see L Bowie, vPoetry and poets in Asia and Achaia' in S Walker - A Cameron (eds), The Greek
renaissance in the Roman Empire (London, 1989), p200.
See also Yourcenar's remarks in her fictional biography of Hadrian, Hadrian's Memoirs, which is based on
contemporary sources.
Balsdon, Roman Women, 142. For the coins, see BMC Emp IV, xliif.

18

described as a shameless adulteress, a woman who had affairs with pantomimists. Her son
Commodus' birth was even attributed to her liaison with a gladiator.77 The 'Historia Augusta'
is not the most reliable of sources, but Dio Cassius mentions a story that also spoils her image
of the perfect wife which Marcus Aurelius himself creates in his 'Meditations'. She was
suspected of conspiring with Avidius Cassius at a time when her husband was severely ill,
because she was afraid that he would die and she would lose her status. (Her son Commodus
was very young.) Part of the agreement was their marriage. 78 True or not, this story reveals
that Faustina, as the daughter of the former emperor was a link to the succession: as a woman
she could not become empress regnant but her husband would be the most prestigious
candidate. Perhaps Marcus' ironic reply to the question as to why he did not divorce (or even
kill) a wife who was not only an adulteress but had gladiators and sailors for lovers, namely
that he would, in that case, have to repay the 'dowry' (which was the Empire) had seeds of
truth in it.79
Dio Cassius even interprets her death in AD 176 at Halala, in Asia Minor, as suicide,
committed out of fear of punishment for her lack of marital loyalty and treason. 80 The
accusations against her are typical of those levelled at empresses and upper-class women
generally: love of power and status, marital infidelity, passion for rough, lower-class men. We
can only comment on her official position: she was given the title Augusta and the right to
issue coins during her father's reign (in AD146 or 147), probably as a reward for her proven
fertility. (She had given birth to her first child in 145 AD.) The Augusta's fertility was to be
demonstrated many times, as she is known to have given birth to eleven more children, most
of whom did not survive infancy. "Year after year - except for a gap between 152 and 156 children arrived. This achievement was fitly recognised in coinage -FECUNDITAS
AUGUSTAE- any type of which showed draped by four children. 81 So, it was for her
typically feminine contribution to the dynasty -biological reproduction- that Faustina was
honoured. She also followed her husband on most of his military campaigns (during thea
Marcomannic wars, between 170 and 174 AD) and was rewarded with the title of 'Mother of

77

78
79
80
81

For the alleged love affairs of Faustina the Younger with pantomimes, see A Marcus Aurelius XXIII.4. For
the birth of Commodus resulting from a liaison with a gladiator, see A Marcus Aurelius 29. 1.7.
Dio Cassius, LXXI, 15.20.
A Marcus Aurelius, XIX.9.
Dio Cassius, LXXI, 29.
Balsdon, Roman Women, 143. For the coins depicting Faustina the Younger with four of her sixteen
children, see BMC Emp IV, 398

19

the Camps'.82 This title formally established the tradition of the presence of the emperor's wife
at military camps (something which had first happened many years previously when
Agrippina the Elder had accompanied Germanicus on his campaigns in Germany). The facts
seem to prove as more realistic the image of Faustina as a good wife: constant pregnancies
and the hardships which a military campaign imposed, especially on women,, must have
contributed to her rather premature death during Marcus' campaign against the rebellion of
Avidius Cassius in Cappadocia, though Dio Cassius offers gout or suicide as reasons for her
death.83 The Senate voted posthumous honours for her which confirmed that empresses as
well as elite women in general were considered, above all, to be patrons of marriage and
philanthropy. The Senate voted for the setting up of silver statues of Marcus and Faustina at
the Aphrodisium of Rome, and for an altar on which all the young brides of the city together
with their bridegrooms would have to sacrifice; and for the erection of Faustina's gilded
statue, in which she was on a chariot, at the theatre so as to be watched by him and preserve
her seat of precedence as she had done when she was alive. 84 Also, Marcus Aurelius
established a new philanthropic order of Faustinian girls in her honour (his father- in-law,
Antoninus Pius, had established the practice in honour of his dead wife, Faustina the Elder),
and transformed the village where Faustina died to a colony and built a temple in her
hounour.85
In the next reign, that of Commodus, the emperor's wife, Bruttia Crispina, played no role in
public life before she was found guilty of adultery, banished to Capri, and later executed. 86
Nevertheless, there is an inscription from Yalova, in Bithynia, which honours her as
hieromnamon. the city's eponymous archon, in the fashion of Eastern cities honouring
members of the imperial family;87 very few things are known about her, or her brief period as
imperial consort except that she incurred the jealousy of Commodus' sister, Annia Lucilla,
who felt insulted when she was ousted from the supreme position upon her brother's marriage,
though Herodian comments that the latter never ceased to honour her (perhaps because she
was of a character not better than his).88 Married to an elderly, retired man, Ti. Claudius
Pompeianus, after a brief spell of widowhood (she was previously married to L Verus), she

82

83
84
85
86
87
88

Dio Cassius LXXI 31.1. HA Marcus Aurelius XXVI 5-7. The title was borne by the wives or mothers of
emperors down to the reign of Philip the Arab in the late third century AD.
Dio Cassius LXXI, 29.
Dio Cassius, LXXI, 31.
HA Marcus Aurelius, XXVI 9.
Dio Cassius, LXXII 4.6; A Commodus, V.II.
L. Robert, Hellenica, 11-12 (1960), pp597-600, no 3.
Herodian 1.8.3f.

20

organised a conspiracy against her brother's life in 182 AD, in collusion with Ummidiusa
Quadratus; this affair ended with her banishment to Capri and subsequent execution.89
After his wife's execution, Commodus chose not to marry again and instead took Quadratus'
concubine, Marcia, as his own: she was a remarkable woman90, and in the usual pattern of
semi-anecdotal history in which Herodian and the author(s) of "Historia Augusta" specialised,
she played an active role in the conspiracy against him after finding out, accidentally, that he
had decided to murder her, but she was not his wife, let alone Augusta and her role cannot be
discussed in further detail in this specific chapter.
After the political crisis following the death of Commodus and the end of the Antonine
dynasty in 192 AD, Septimius Severus became emperor in 193 AD. He was married (for the
second time) to a Syrian upper-class lady from the priestly family of Emessa, Julia Domna.
She was the first empress who maintained her political influence during the reign of both her
husband and her son - except for a difficult period in her husband's reign, after her temporary
defeat in her struggle against the Prefect of the Guard, Plautianus. Her political prominence
can be proved by literary, epigraphical and numismatic material as Mary Gilmore-Williams
points out in a very old but still useful article: "After the first century of the Roman Empire,
two empresses - Julia Domna, wife of Septimus Severus and mother of Caracalla, and her
niece Julia Mamaea, mother of Alexander Severus - surpassed all others who bore the name
Augusta in the dignity of their titles, in the public honor they received, and in the extent to
which they participated in the actual administration of the government". 91 Julia Domna's
record in literature reveals some stereotypical images, but also some new characteristics.
The 'Historia Augusta' offers, as usual, a sensationalist, romantic story about her marriage;
that Severus, after the death of his first wife, Marcia, learnt that the horoscope of an Oriental
girl promised that she would become a king's wife, so he sought her out and married her,
bearing in mind the promise of the prophecy.92
Although Dio Cassius claims that she was of plebeian rank,93 the fact that she was daughter of
Julius Bassianus, the priest of the Sun, at Emessa, a highly prestigious office, proves the
opposite. As Gilmore-Williams mentions in her aforementioned article, she was given the

89
90
91
92
93

Herodian, 1.8.5f; A Commodus, IV 1-4.

Herodian 1.16.4.
"Studies in the lives of Roman empresses, I: Julia Domna', in A3 A (1902), p259.
HA, Severus 3.9.
Dio Cassius, LXVIII, 24.

21

title of Augusta during the first year of her husband's reign and this is her official title in all her
inscriptions and coins. She was honoured for her fertility (she had given birth to two sons,
Caracalla in 188 AD and Geta in 189AD) (as had been the case with previous empresses). In
several of the inscriptions mentioned above, Julia Domna is called 'Mother of Augustus' or
'Mother of Antoninus Augustus and of Geta Caesar' as if her chief claim to honor, in addition
to the fact that she was wife of the Emperor, was that she had borne heirs to the Empire.94
But this was not exceptional; it was the fact that the two boys were referred to as sons of
'Augustus and of Julia Domna Augusta' which broke with the tradition established during the
early Principate when only the emperor's name was mentioned on the 'prince's' inscriptions.95
Julia Domna was regarded as the ancestress of emperors, or even as co-founder of the
dynasty, a unique honour for an empress. Almost every surviving inscription from her
husband's and her son's reign includes her name, a fact that highlights her influence. More
importantly, a Greek inscription from Memphis records the laying of a pavement for the
perpetual victory and preservation of our lords the Emperors Septimus Severus and Marcus
Aurelius Antoninus and of Julia Domna Augusta, Mother of the Camp.96 An inscription found
in the temple of Serapis at Ostia was dedicated for the 'prosperity, return and immortality of
our lords, the Emperors, Severus and Antoninus and of Julia Augusta, and for a fair voyage
for the whole expedition',97 referring to a military campaign of Severus. Other honours were
bestowed upon her, of a kind unique for an empress. Some of her coins, for example, had a
legend on the reverse: 'Liberal AVG' with the design 'Liberalitas standing'; and this, according
to Gilmore-Williams, implied that she distributed money stamped with her own name, as if
she shared in the sovereignty. She was also associated with military honours in an unusual
way for a woman. The legend 'Fortuna Redux' was reserved for emperors returning to Rome
after a victory from Augustus' time onwards: Julia Domna had it inscribed on her coins. In
196 AD, after her husband's victory in Africa she was given the title 'Mother of the Camps',
perhaps because Severus wanted to imitate the policy of Marcus Aurelius (Faustina had been
given that title), but Julia Domna must have been present on her husband's campaigns, as her
name is mentioned in many inscriptions recording prayers for the victory of Severus and his
sons.98

94
95
96
97
98

Gilmore-Williams, p277.
CIL VII nos 9035, 17871.
CIG 4701b, 199 AD.
IGIs no 917.
CIG, nos 39366, 5973; CIL VI nos 225, 227 461, 738 and 3786; CIL VII no 226; IGSI NO 922.

22

She was honoured by large numbers of inscriptions in Numidia, at Lambaesis, the permanent
site of the Legio III Augusta, and the reason is that the associations of soldiers and officers
adopted members of the imperial family as patrons. In a Greek inscription from Thrace, dated
in 202 AD, a prayer for the imperial family includes 'most divine emperors ...Severus and ...
Antoninus the Augusti and of ... Geta Caesar and of Julia Domna, Mother of the Camp, and of
their whole house and of the sacred senate and the people of Rome and the sacred armies'.99
Statues of Julia were erected by Greek towns on mainland Greece and Asia Minor.100
Notwithstanding these honours, which were unique for a woman, Julia Domna's
representation on coins and sculpture usually depicts her as a mother whose issue will
stabilise the dynasty, (coins on which the face bears the legend IULIA AUGUSTA, and the
reverse AETERNITAS IMPERI with Caracallas' and Geta's portraits as children),101 as well
as a power of concordia (on coins which depict busts of Severus and of her, the former
wearing the spiked crown, the latter resting upon a crescent moon, thus symbolising
eternity).102 And according to Dio Cassius, for a period she was defeated on the political level
by the prefect of the guard, Plautianus: he accused her of adultery, which in consequence of
the Augustan legislation constituted treason for the women of the imperial family, and was
punished by exile or even death.103 Though he used every means available to incriminate her,
putting free women to torture, contrary to the law, she was acquitted, but her influence over
her husband was diminished. In 203 AD, Plautianus became father-in-law of the prospective
emperor, Caracalla, giving him his daughter, Plautilla, as wife.104 Julia reacted by using her
influence on her son to turn him against his wife and father-in-law.105 In 204 AD, the Empress
played a significant part in the celebrations of the Ludi Saeculares, an important festival for
the prosperity of the state, and again hers is the first name of an empress to be recorded as
having participated in the celebration. 106 This was a mark of reconciliation between the
imperial couple and of the decline of the power of Plautianus, who was murdered by Caracalla
in AD 203.107

99

100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107

IGR I no 776. See also IGR I no 828, in which the name of Julia Domna precedes that of her daughter-in-law,
Plautilla, in the prayer for the health of the Severan family, Thrace.
In Hermione, Argolis, CIG no 1216; in Samos CIGS III no 1007; Ephesos CIG no 2972.
M. Gilmore-Williams, "Studies in the lives of Roman empresses', AJA (1902), p279.
ibid, p243.
Dio Cassius LXXV 15.
Dio Cassius LXXVI 1.
ibid, 3.
Zosimus II6; 9.7.1.
Dio Cassius, LXXVI.3.

23

Julia Domna regained her influence over Severus and accompanied him on his long military
campaign in Britain (208 - 211 AD), together with Caracalla and Geta. Dio Cassius records a
semi-anecdotal story in which the Empress, after discussing the sexual morals of Scotsmen
with the wife of a man called Argentocox, and presumably having criticised their laxity, was
silenced by the woman's reply that at least, women of Caledonia chose their lovers from the
best stock and had sexual intercourse with them openly, whereas Roman women selected the
worst ones and committed adultery in secret.108 As a barbarian was not in the best position to
know the morals of Rome, the comment seems to have originated with Dio himself, thus
creating perhaps a cloud of suspicion over the empress' innocence with regard to former
accusations of adultery.
Another role which she tried to play unsuccessfully was that of mediator between her sons.
According to the "Historia Augusta", Geta became Augustus (in 209 AD) only because Julia
intervened on his behalf;109 this literary evidence is strongly supported by coins struck in
honour of Geta which have the name and portrait of his mother on the face, and on the reverse
the legend MATER AVGG with Julia Domna as Cybele.110
After Severus' death in 211 AD at York, the clash between the brothers broke out into open
conflict, and Herodian describes a council which was held in order to divide the empire
between them. Julia Domna was present and prevented the division in typical feminine
fashion: she became overtly sentimental and melodramatic, claiming that if it was possible to
divide the empire into two, they could not divide her unless they had her cut into two
pieces.111 The passage seems too much of a theatrical setpiece to be true, but it implies that
the empress was perceived as using her influence to keep the empire in order. In 212 AD,
Caracalla used his mother (willingly or unwillingly) in order to murder Geta. Dio Cassius
again describes a scene worthy of Ancient Greek tragedy with Geta (aged 23 or so) trying to
find refuge, like a little boy, in his mother's lap and shouting for help while she was wounded
in the arm in her futile attempt to protect him.112
Scholars are divided as to the role played by Julia in the murder of her second son. Balsdon
adopts the sentimental view that Julia had to accept it in the interests of self preservation,

108
109
110
111
112

ibid, LXXVI 10.5.

HA, Geta, 5.
M. Gilmore-Williams, 'Studies in the lives of Roman empresses', AJA (1902), p281.
Herodian, IV.3.5.
Dio Cassius, LXXVIII.2.

24

whereas Susan Dixon finds her suspect of willing cooperation.113 Whereas this can never be
proved, it seems that she was anxious to preserve her status: her behaviour was not the kind of
behaviour which may be expected from an unambitious, devoted mother. She concealed her
mourning, and shared a household with the murderer of her son. The fact that this murderer
was her own son does little to soften the apparent callousness of her behaviour.
During her son's brief rule, she became even more powerful. Dio Cassius claims that she tried
to persuade Caracalla to change his ways, but without success; however, he found it
convenient for his mother to shoulder the bulk of the administrative work, and allowed the
letters addressed to him by the Senate and the army to mention her name beside his own. And,
like Agrippina, she could have meetings with important men in public. 114 The fact that a son
and his mother were in co-operation and lived under the same roof while the son was
unmarried caused vicious gossip once again. According to Herodian, the Alexandrians used
to call her 'Jocasta' and Caracalla 'Oedipus'.115 The suspicion of incest was so strong that the
'Historia Augusta' distorted the facts to the extent where Julia Domna appears as Caracalla's
young step-mother who was enjoying a love-relationship with him in place of his rather old
natural mother.116
Nevertheless, after Geta's murder, Caracalla and Julia Domna were the only surviving
members of the imperial house and she continued to be associated with him in honours to an
extent which was unparalleled by any previous Augusta: "A remarkable indication of this fact
is found in an Arval inscription, which contains the record of the sacred rites of the Dea Dia,
as celebrated by that brotherhood on the 20th of May 213. After the feasts, which were a
necessary part of their ceremonials, it was customary to make acclamationes in honour of the
Emperor. Though the names of women of imperial families, from Livia to Tranquillina, are
included in Arval records, no other Augusta is mentioned as honored with acclamatio". 117
Julia Domna is also honoured as Juno and co-victor with her son in Germany.118
Her administrative role is confirmed by an inscription recorded by W Turbin, in which she
replies ambiguously to a petition made by the Ephesiasus that she should pray for the benefit

113

114
115
116
117
118

S. Dixon, The Roman Mother, (London, 1988), pl96: "Her role is suspect. It looks very much as if she had
been in league with Caracalla!'.
Dio Cassius, LXXVII, 18.2-4.
Herodian IV.9.
HA, Caracalla, 10.
Gilmore-Williams, p288; CIL VI no 2086.
CIL VI, no 2086, line 23.

25

of all cities and people, given by her son, the Emperor, but especially for Ephesos on account
of its size and beauty.119 According to Dio Cassius, Caracalla's downfall in April 217 AD was
due to the fact that the documents from Rome were: carried first to Julia Domna at Antioch
and so the letter informing him of the conspiracy of the praetorian prefect Maerinus was
fatally delayed.120 Julia had followed her son to Asia, acting as his chief assistant, initially at
Nicomedia, then at Antioch; according to Dio all documents and letters, except those of the
highest importance, were presented to her.121 But she had failed to influence him morally, as
Dio Cassius shows. Julia complained of his extravagant gifts to the soldiers (perhaps due to
her avarice), and Caracalla touched his sword and replied that as long as they had it, money
could not fail.122
Her son's murder did not cause Julia any grief, but because it radically changed her status,
reducing her from the highest rank to that of a mere private person, she contemplated suicide.
Macrinus' kindness, which enabled her to preserve honours and her personal guard, renewed
in her the hope that she could rule in her own name, in the manner of the Asiatic queens,
Semiramis and Nitocris, encouraged by the fact that she was descended from the same area as
these legendary women.123 The idea seems ludicrous: the imperial office was not a hereditary
monarchy and a woman could not become queen/empress regnant. Was it the fact that Julia
Domna had participated in unusual honours and even the administration of the empire in a
public way that gave her such ideas? Or, as the example of her sister and niece's regency
showed, had the Roman monarchy started to become 'orientalised' to such an extent as to give
women access to public affairs? Dio's text is extremely fragmentary, but it informs us about
the thwarting of her hopes by Macrinus (who was informed about her plotting), and describes
how, overwhelmed by lost glory, psychological and physical pain (she suffered from cancer),
she committed suicide.
Apart from her political role, Julia Domna had an interest in philosophy, like Plotina, and
during her temporary political defeat she seems to have found solace in the creation of a
philosophical salon, in which men like Dio himself, or Philostratos, participated.124 The latter
refers to Julia as the person who commissioned him to write his biography of Apollonius of

119
120
121
122
123
124

W Turbin, v Imperial subscriptions and the administration of justice' JRS 81 (1991), p. 110.
Dio Cassius, LXXVIII, 4.
ibid, 10. 122
ibid
Dio Cassius, LXXIX, 23-25.
Dio Cassius, LXXV, 15.

26

Tyana, and in his Life of Sophists characterises her as 'philosopher'.125 There is also one of his
letters on Plato's philosophy addressed to her, which implies that the empress' intellectual
interests were not a whim of the moment. After her 'restoration to power', she continued to
pursue her philosophical discourses with prominent men.126 Bowersock seems right in his
claim that only less prominent sophists would have bothered to participate in the literary salon
of an empress. (The prominent ones would try to find a place in the imperial
administration. 127 ) However, this does not mean that Julia's salon was just a coterie of
flatterers, intellectually mediocre, who lived as parasites by giving her spiritual solace.
As emperor, Macrinus did not expect a challenge to his authority from Julia Domna's sister,
Julia Maesa. Nevertheless, he ordered her out of Rome, but allowed her to retain her
possessions.128 Maesa was very wealthy and, according to Herodian, had a large clientele in
Emesa.129 Her network and wealth would enable her to regain and even improve her previous
status, because she missed life in Rome, and especially in the palace, terribly. 130 In order to
achieve her goal, however, she needed a male emperor of her own to promote. She chose her
eldest grandson, Varius Avitus, the future Elagabalus, son of her daughter Julia Soaemias.
The boy, who was priest of the Sun in Emesa, was unusually attractive and had won the
admiration of the local troops. With her money, Maesa won them to her side. According to
Dio Cassius her grandson was proclaimed emperor in the local camp after being smuggled in
without the knowledge of his grandmother and his mother. However, according to Herodian,
the women were directly involved in the affair.
It seems unbelievable that a youth of fourteen should have been proclaimed emperor of
Rome, but Maesa had announced that her daughter, Julia Soaemias, had conceived the child
in an adulterous affair with Caracalla - and this, together with her money, was enough to win
over the eastern troops. A strong sense of dynastic loyalty had grown up amongst the troops in
the early third century AD. Dio Cassius describes an unusual display of courage for women
and children:131 in 218 AD. Maesa's army was on the point of being defeated, when Maesa,
together with her daughter, Soaemias, and Elagabalus, who were accompanying the army,
jumped down from their chariot and pestered and harassed the retreating soldiers, crying and

125
126
127
128
129
130
131

Philostratos, Life of Apollonius of Tyana, 1.3.

Dio Cassius, LXXVII, 18.3-4.
G W Bowersock, Greek Sophists in the Roman Empire (Oxford, 1969), p. 106-9.
Herodian, 5.32; A Macrinus, 9.1.
Herodian 5.3.1-3.
Herodian, 5.5,2.; 5.7.1.
Dio Cassius, LXXIX, 38.15.

27

pleading with them not to desert the battlefield. Even the boy kissed his small sword and,
mounting his horse, charged the enemy. Other imperial women had accompanied their
husbands or sons on military campaigns, but this was the first time that women were present
on the battlefield, in the midst of the slaughter. This episode, which would have been
considered disastrous for conservative Romans of the Republic or the early Principate, acted
as a tonic: a Roman soldier could not leave defenceless women to the mercy of the enemy.
According to Herodian, Macrinus tried to escape, but was recognised and murdered. 132 So
Elagabalus became the new emperor of Rome and the people who ushered him into this
position were his grandmother, his mother and Gannys, a favourite freedman who had been
brought up in Maesa's household.133 Maesa preferred to risk everything rather than live as an
ordinary person again.134 She was like Faustina the Younger and her own sister, Julia Domna,
enamoured of power and status.
According to literary sources, she was the dominant person during her grandson's brief
reign.135 Her pre-eminence is also indicated in epigraphical sources (she was given the title of
'mother of the camp') and in numismatic ones. (She was the only Augusta to issue double
denarii). And being well aware of the Roman attitude to 'proper' masculine dress and
behaviour, she tried to dissuade her grandson from behaving 'effeminately'.136 However, in
this she failed, as did everyone else,
Elagabalus' exotic religious life and bisexual orgies affronted the Romans. He had gone way
beyond the acceptable limits of behaviour for a Roman emperor, marrying a Vestal virgin,
instituting festivals of dubious moral character, taking part in a chariot race, wearing eye
make-up and rouge.137 Maesa soon realised that she would have to make use of her second
grandson if she were to keep her position. The elder boy was too foolish and immoral to be of
any real use, so she persuaded him to appoint as Caesar his cousin, the son of her other
daughter, Julia Mamaea.138
Elagabalus broke another political taboo (if the unreliable "Historia Augusta1 is to be
believed). He encouraged his mother or grandmother (the woman's actual identity is not

132
133
134
135
136
137
138

Herodian 5.4.7-9.
Dio Cassius, 79.6.
Herodian 5.3, 10-12.
Dio, LXXIX 17.2.
Herodian, 5.5.4-6.
Herodian 5.6-9.7.
Herodian 5.7 1.3.

28

clear), to be introduced into a session of the Senate, to be given an official seat beside the
consuls and even to sign a decree as if she herself was a senator.139 According to Tacitus, in
AD 54 Agrippina tried to preside with Nero over the Senate, but as in the Armenian embassy
episode, Seneca advised Nero to dissuade his mother from this idea. So it seems that Julia
Soaemias or Julia Maesa was the only woman who ever entered the Senate and participated in
the proceedings. The story about the creation of a Senate of women and its ridiculous decrees
(concerning the proper dress and adornment of Roman matrons) seems to have been nothing
more than a bad joke.140 The official titles of Maesa and Soaemias were accordingly 'Mother
of Augustus' and 'Mother of the Army' and 'Mother of the Army and the Senate'.141
In 221 AD, according to Dio Cassius, Elagabalus brought his cousin, Bassianus, before the
Senate, and with his grandmother and his mother on either side of him, adopted him as his
son.142 Maesa and Mamaea did not hesitate to declare that the latter had committed adultery
with her cousin, Caracalla, too.143 And in the same year, a palace struggle started between
Maesa, Mamaea and her son on the one hand, and Elagabalus and Soaemias on the other.
Elagabalus tried to corrupt his cousin by encouraging him to copy his foolish life-style, but
Herodian gives full credit to Mamaea whom he presents as the ideal Roman mother: careful,
severe, entrusting her son's education to good teachers in both manly activities (wrestling,
exercises) and also more intellectual ones.144 Like Agrippina before her, she was giving her
son an education worthy of a prospective emperor, whereas her sister Soemias seemed to
spoil Elagabalus by allowing him to indulge freely in sexual escapades. The next step of the
notorious emperor was the attempt to poison his cousin, but again, Maesa, Mamaea and the
soldiers who thought that his cousin would make a better emperor, kept him under careful
scrutiny.145 Again, Maesa, having lived in the palace for years, prevented the machinations of
her elder grandson against his cousin.146
As a final move, Elagabalus tried to remove his cousin from the office of Caesar and deny him
the right to be present on public occasions. This led in 222 AD to a mutiny of the soldiers, who
massacred Elagabalus and Soaemias who as Augusta was with him in the camp - the presence

139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146

HA, Elagabalus, 9. If.

ibid, 4.4.
CIL, viii, no 2564; Herodian 5.8.8.
Dio Cassius, LXXX, 17.2.
Herodian, 5.7.3.
Herodian, 5.7.4-6.
Herodian, 5.8.1-3.
Herodian, 5.8.3-

29

of the Augusta in the camps seems to have been established as a common feature by that
time147 -and their bodies were dragged around the city and thrown into the sewers.148 In Dio's
account, Soemias embraced her son and clung tightly to him and so perished with him; their
bodies were stripped, their heads were cut off, her body was thrown in an unknown place and
only his was thrown into the river.149 Nevertheless, Soaemias' murder implies that she played
an active part in his loathsome public life.
And once again, a mere boy, "under the tutelage of his mother and grandmother was greeted
as emperor by the soldiers and conducted up to the palace". 150 Who did take charge of the
actual business of ruling the Empire? The sources tend to agree that it was the two women
who co-operated with a body of wise men as 'regents' (something new for the Roman
Empire).151 According to Herodian, Alexander (the youth's new name) possessed the imperial
office only in name; the control of the administration and of the imperial policy was left to his
womenfolk who are given credit for their attempt to bring back a return to a better
government. And so they elected sixteen Senators as the Emperor's advisers.152 A fragment of
Dio Cassius describes Alexander as proclaiming his mother Augusta immediately, and her as
taking over the administration and choosing wise senators to be advised by them in her
actions. Maesa died briefly after Alexander's accession to power.153 The evidence shows that
she died ca 224-226 AD, though Herodian claims that she lived for a long time after, and was
deified.154 Mamaea was left as sole 'guardian' to her son and chose to play the role of the
severe mother, controlling her son's sexual life with zeal. (She even used the ploy of hard
work to keep his sexuality under control. 155) Her title by 227 AD was no longer xmater
Augusti et castrorum' (mother of Augustus and of the camps), as her mother's had been; it
became the more prestigious 'mater Augusti et castrorum et senatus et patriae' (mother of the

147
148
149
150
151

152

153
154
155

Herodian, 5.8.5-8.
ibid, 9.
ibid, 20.
Herodian 5.8.10.
There is a problem concerning the nature of this body of sixteen senators: was it a temporary council or a
consilium principis. According to J Crook in Consilium Principis (Cambridge, 1955) pp86-88, these advisers
kept on functioning as such until the end of Alexander's reign. F Millar in The Emperor in the Roman World
(London, 1992) pl21 observes that the advisers were with the emperor at the time of his murder. (See also
Herodian VI, 12; vii, 1.3).
Herodian 6.1-3. But as J Crook observes in Consilium Principis p87, Ulpian was the de facto head of
government. (Dio Cassius LXXX.l).
Zonaras, 12.15, 31-20,9D.
Herodian, 5.5.
Herodian, VI.6.

30

Augustus and the camps and the senate and the fatherland), and later 'mater generis humani'
(mother of the human race).156
Like her aunt Julia Domna and her own mother, she was thought as being avaricious:
Alexander criticised her obsession with money but she alleged that she was saving it in order
to enable him to distribute cash to the soldiers and thus retaining their loyalty. But she was
hoarding for herself, and she confiscated other people's inheritances for this reason.157
A part of her playing the overbearing mother was the selection of the right wife for her son
(Gneia Seia Herennia Sallustia Barbia Orbiane) from a patrician family but, sensing that a
daughter-in-law would sooner or later challenge her position as Augusta, she banished her
from the palace and later had her father executed (because he had laid charges against her for
insults) and exiled the girl to Libya. Alexander was opposed to these acts but he was under his
mother's domination.158
So while Maesa's strict maternal control proved to be beneficial as long as her son was
immature, and her supervision of his education followed the traditional pattern, her failing to
understand that her son had become an adult proved fatal. In contrast with other young men
who rebelled against overbearing mothers, Alexander chose to accept motherly
domination.159 Feminine rule and the rule of a youth was tolerated for most of his reign - so
long as peace prevailed. During the course of a series of wars, Alexander proved to be
inadequate as a military leader. His preference for peace and the fact that his mother was his
chief adviser were interpreted as signs of weakness.160 The Pannonian Maximus won the
soldiers to his side: Mamaea was very unpopular for her tight-fistedness.161 A meeting was
arranged, and Alexander and his mother, who, as usual, was accompanying her son, were
executed. Before she died Mamaea, like her sister Soemias before her, had to support in her

156
157
158
159

160

161

C R Whittaker, Herodian II (Loeb) p85, note 4.

Herodian, 6.8-80.
Herodian, 6.9-10.
Other earlier examples: for the conflict between Tiberius and Livia, Dixon ppl83-84; and between Nero and
Agrippina, Dixon, ppl84-85.
Herodian, 6.8.3: Mamaea is accused of restraining her son's military plans due to her womenly timidity
(gynaekia deilia) and motherly love. For a similar misogynistic attitude see Dio Cassius L.33 in which
Cleopatra is blamed for causing Antony's defeat at Actium in 31 BC.
Herodian, 6.9.5.

31

arms a son who at the time of his death was behaving like a little boy and blaming her for all
his misfortunes.162
The idea of a child-emperor with his mother acting as regent was to become a common feature
in Mediaeval Europe as well as the Byzantine Empire, which even tolerated women becoming
emperors. The notorious Irene transformed her regency for her son Constantine VI into
co-rule and when he proved irksome, she had him de-throned and blinded. From 797 until 802
AD she ruled as 'Irene, great King and Emperor'. So innovative was her behaviour that her
title remained masculine. But for the Roman Empire, this was an affront to the legal theory
that the principate was a magistracy: the emperor was not a hereditary monarch but an
'elected' official, the most suitable man who was called to take the highest office. The socalled Roman imperial dynasties in a sense are artificial. Though Augustus tried to create a
dynasty descended from himself and his wife, Livia, while preserving the form of Republican
rule, a balance was never achieved. In the early third century AD a sense of dynastic loyalty
had grown up amongst the soldiers, who were always susceptible to bribery and had the
power to create emperors. This combination of factors enabled Julia Maesa and her daughters
to rule the empire through immature youth - for as long as there were no major military
problems. When the 'barbarians' - especially the new Sassanid dynasty in Persia -started to
pose a serious threat, the army could with justification think in terms of having a 'real' Roman
emperor - a military man. In the following years, only one very young person, Gordian III,
became emperor, and the sources, 'Historia Augusta' in particular, reflect the traditional
stereotypical image of the young emperor dominated by his mother. It was a strong, male
figure, his father-in-law, who saved this emperor from "letting his favours be sold by eunuchs
and attendants at court through his mother's ignorance or connivance".163
In the chaotic period between Alexander Severus1 death in 235 AD and Diocletian's accession
in 284 AD, when the armies chose, proclaimed and killed about forty emperors, there could be
no question of a woman playing even a minor role in public life. Even the mother of Gordian
III, with her alleged dominance over him, is an obscure, unnamed person, mentioned twice in
"Historia Augusta".

162

163

Herodian, 6.9.6. Alexander was twenty-six years old at the time of his death and Herodian's description of
him acting as a little boy does not ring true. It seems that the death of an emperor in his mother's lap had
become a literary topos in third century AD.
HA, The Gordians, XXIII.7. Her name was Marcia Faustina. However, in Cambridge Ancient History XII,
(1939), p81, it is stated by W Ennslin that her influence is backed only by highly suspect passages of the
Historia Augusta and that the epigraphical and numismatic evidence which could prove that she was
influential is lacking.

32

In Diocletian's era of 'restoration' (284 - 305 AD), the military nature of the imperial office
became even stronger but after his resignation in 305 AD, the tetrarchy collapsed and the
dynastic-hereditary system prevailed. The one imperial woman the fragments of whose life
have been preserved in the literary sources (mainly in Eusebius' Vita Constantini) is Helena,
mother of Constantine the Great. Though legends created by the official history (with their
tendency to present the victorious parties under the guise of perfect respectability)
characterised her as wife of Constantine, one of the Tetrarchs 'domina nostra Flavia Augusta
Helena', (to give her official title during her son's reign), she was never 'divi Constantini
castissima coniunx'.164 She was of humble origin (the daughter of an inn-keeper) and a mere
concubine who was discarded by Constantius for a political marriage to Theodora,
step-daughter of Maximian, the co-emperor of Diocletian, in 293 AD. Helena seemed to have
lived in obscurity until her son's ascent to imperial power in 306 AD. In the meantime, she had
become a Christian, and, indeed, a zealous one.165 As the mother of the emperor, Helena
played a part in politics, mostly in imperial intrigues and the early ecclesiastical and
theological conflicts. (She was Arian, perhaps due to Eusebius' influence.) Balsdon attributes
Constantine's Arian sympathies to the feminine' influence of his mother and his half-sister
Constantia.166 Helena was lavishly honoured by her son during her lifetime. She was given
the title of Augusta and her face and name were inscribed on gold coins.167 She was like the
pagan imperial women, the owner of 'property in various parts of the world'.168 Her economic
power increased when Constantine gave her, officially, free access to the imperial treasure to
use it as she liked.169 This was a rare sign of trust by an emperor, even if the beneficiary was
his own mother. Helena used her own money and the imperial fiscus to found and decorate
churches in the Holy Land, establishing a pattern of philanthropy which would be adopted by
other empresses in the Eastern Roman Empire. Instead of benefitting the well-to-do as pagan
patrons, imperial or simply high-class, male or female, had done before her, she distributed
money to the marginals, the naked and the poor. She liberated prisoners, some of them from
the horrible service in the mines. She freed people who had been unjustly oppressed and
restored exiles to their native lands.170 But like her pagan predecessors, Helena was a brilliant
politician and was well aware that cities and, more particularly troops, must be placated with

164
165
166
167
168
169
170

Paneg. Lat 7(6), 6.

RE VII, 2820-2, no 2.
Balsdon, Roman Women, 169.
Eusebios, Vita Constantini III, XLVII.
ibid, XLIII.
ibid, III, XLVII.
ibid, XLIV.

33

distributions of money and gifts. Cities and soldiers are in the first order of her beneficiaries in
Eusebius: she became euergetis to cities as a whole and to individuals who approached her,
and she was very generous to the soldiers.171 The individuals who approached her, almost
certainly, were people whose status in local society carried weight. And the army was what
made and destroyed emperors. Helena could give some clothes to the naked and free a (small)
number of wretched people in order to gain Christian glory for herself and her son, but the
bulk of her benefactions seem to have been directed towards setting up churches (in place of
pagan temples) and maintaining links with the local elite and with troops, both vital to her
son's welfare. The pagan philanthropic' policy remained at the core of her 'new' 'Christian'
policy: helping the poor was not a complete novelty.
Imperial men and women as well as local euergetae had set up similar projects in the past
(Trajan's alimentary programmes, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius' Faustinian money
gifts to poor girls, the alimentary programmes of such Asia Minor euergetae as Opramoas in
Lycia or Menodora in Pamphylia). The difference was that the pagan programmes were not
specifically designed to improve the lot of the destitute, and they were not prompted by
religious motives; they were simple gifts to the community in general.
And like her pagan predecessors, Helena, Christian faith notwithstanding, could act with
arrogance and even with cruelty. She deposed Eustathius, the Bishop, on her way through
Antioch,172 and did not like her daughter-in-law, Fausta, as Julia Domna and Julia Mamaea
had disliked their daughters-in-law. According to Eusebius, she persuaded her son that Fausta
was responsible for the death of her step-son, Crispus, Constantine's son by a concubine, and
had her murdered in a horrible manner, in the imperial bath. 173 She died in the eightieth year
of her life and her body was specially honoured and her funeral was an imperial one.174 As a
Christian, she could not be deified, but instead, she became a saint: imperial women and men
from her son's reign onwards were granted this privilege, after deification had become
irrelevant.

171
172
173
174

ibid.
RE, vii, 2822.
Eusebius, Epist. Caes. XLI.12.
Eusebius, Vit.Const. XLVII.

34

Epilogue
The study of the women of the imperial family from the first century to the early fourth
century AD can be revealing for both the history of the Principate and for social history. At
one level the imperial family set the pattern for every other elite family: the difference lay
only in the degree, every aspect of imperial family life being exaggerated due to its
extraordinary position in the social and political hierarchy. The Julio-Claudians as well as the
Severans included in their numbers strong-willed women who manipulated the existing
circumstances to their own advantage. Livia seems to have been the first woman who was
promoted to the public role of the consort of a Roman ruler. Her power rested on her status as
wife of Augustus and also as daughter of an elite family. When she received the title of
Augusta, a statue was erected in her honour and her filiation was included in the inscription on
its base. She, herself, when dedicating the Roman temple of Fortuna Mulieribis used her
filiation before her husband's name, thus indicating that her status and power did not derive
only from his own but from her paternal family too.175
Her unique position even among elite women was emphasised by the fact that she enjoyed
privileges which were denied to any other woman: (a) financial independence due to
exemption from guardianship in 35 BC, as well as the sacrosanctity of the tribunes, together
with her sister-in-law, Octavia;176 (b) the right to inherit property from Augustus in defiance
of the Voconian law of 269 BC. 177 She was the first woman who acted as a social
benefactress; she gave aid to fire victims in AD 16,178 she paid for poor girls' dowries,179
funded the construction of building projects (she rebuilt two temples), 180 as well as
constructing two new edifices, the Macellum Liviae and the Porticus Liviae. In her
benefactions, as well as that of Hellenistic queens, we find the seeds of the female euergetism
which flourished in the second and early third centuries AD. Through her wealth and
extraordinary position, Livia managed to play the role of the honorary male, i.e. at her death
she left a legacy of fifty million sesterces to Galba presumably amongst others, thus acting as
a patron towards her client.181

175
176
177
178
179
180
181

CIL, 6,882a.
Dio Cassius, XLIX 38.2.
Dio Cassius, XXXVI 10.2, 9AD.
Dio Cassius, LVII 16.2.
Dio Cassius, XXXVIII 2.3.
One of Bona Dea Subsaxana, Ovid Fasti 5.157-58, and another of Fortuna Mulieribus, CIL VI No 883.
Suetonius, Gallia 5.

35

Her political influence was strong during Augustus' reign and in the early part of the reign of
Tiberius. She had managed to obtain a clientele, especially in the Eastern part of the Empire.
The recipients of her patronage were cities as well as important individuals, especially of the
female sex. Augustus, initially, declined to give a grant of 'freedom' to the city of Samos,
although he mentions that his wife had supported their petition.182 This reveals the limits of
the empress' power: she was powerful, but it was the Emperor who had the official power to
validate or veto her patronage on the political level. Nevertheless, according to Dio Cassius,
during his eastern tour between 22 and 19 BC, Augustus spent two winters on Samos and this
time he was persuaded by Livia to grant 'freedom' to the Samians and also to make a favour to
another of her client cities, Sparta, by giving to her the island of Cythera. 183 Both cities gave
special honours to Livia as a proof of their gratitude. Samos set up an honorific inscription in
the reign of Tiberius, for Marcus Livius Drusus and Alphidia, the Augusta's parents, and
Gytheion, a Laconian city, honoured her with the erection of her statue.184 It seems that Livia
was the link between the imperial family and the female members of the families of
'client-kings'. Queen Dynamis of Bosporus, one of the very few female 'client' rulers, who
held the title of a 'philoromaeos' (friend of the Romans), had set up inscriptions honouring
Livia as her personal euergetis (benefactress).
Also, Queen Pythodoris, daughter of the Thracian King Roemetalkis, herself ruler of parts of
Pontus and Armenia, had set up a similar inscription in honour of Livia. 185 The Jewish
princess Salome, sister of Herod, left Jamneia, Phasaelis and Archelais to Livia in her will.186
According to Purcell, Livia had a public role to play, which was something of a novelty.
"Again the controls have only been slackened by a point or two: the sacrosanctitas, the
carpentum, the theatre-seats, all say this woman is allowed to take a few steps out into the
public, male world; so observe the limits which she is defining by her extraordinary privilege.
Livia's masculine honours, remarkable though they were in their emancipatory extent, were
not remotely normative except in this inverted way: they were really the reverse of a
movement towards a serious change in the social role of women, and so are no exception to
the repressive stabilising intended by Augustus' social programme as a whole.187 In other
words, Livia's position was unique and cannot be used as a model for the status of other elite

182
183
184
185
186
187

I Reynolds, Aphrodisias and Rome (London, 1982), doc. 13, p l04.

Dio Cassius, XXXIX 7.2.
Samos IGR IV nos 982,984; Gytheion SEG XI (1950-54) no 923.
SEG, XXIX (1989), no 695.
D Braund, Rome and the Friendly King, (London, 1984), p l42.
Purcell, " Livia and the Womanhood of Rome' PCPS 32 (1986) p 86.

36

women. She was in many ways very close to the position of the 'honorary male'. The
privileges bestowed upon her by Augustus were part of his dynastic policy, not a concession
to the women of the upper classes.
Livia enjoyed some independence during her son's reign. Ambassadors from cities could be
sent to her jointly with her son and Tiberius was willing to pronounce that she could receive
honours. 188 But he followed the republican tradition that honours to women should not
surpass a certain limit. Purcell's indirect suggestion that she was a 'female prince' is a
hyperbole. Livia had a public role to play, but she had no share in the imperial office. She
established the pattern of behaviour for future imperial women but this was social, religious
and economic, not political. A woman, even the wife or mother of the emperor, could not
attend the senate or participate in the administration of the state or to command of the army.
Livia did not attempt to break into these spheres and consequently maintained her popularity.
Other women of her status, like Agrippina, made the mistake of showing disrespect for
tradition, and thus failed to survive politically and biologically. The title "Augusta" was not
the equivalent of the masculine 'Augustus': it was not given automatically to the wife of the
emperor, who had to prove, usually by her fertility, that she deserved it. An emperor could
refuse to grant that honour to a wife whom he did not trust, as Claudius did, even in the case of
Messalina, who had given him an heir. When an emperor did not need to launch dynastic
propaganda, there would be no incentive for him to honour his wife in this way. Nevertheless,
it seems that the fact that the four emperors of 69 AD did not give such titles to their wives
was due to their short-lived reigns rather than to moderation, for example: "In the first week of
March Caecina Alienus led the Twenty-First Legion and his other heavy troops through Aosta
.... when Caecina had occasion to address reception committees properly dressed in togas,
eyebrows were raised when he appeared in the military dress (breeches, a practical garment in
the north now being adopted by the army, and a general's bright cloak) normally laid aside in
a civilian context. His wife, too, made tongues wag: instead of preserving a decent decorum,
she paraded in public on horseback in a loud purple dress. Women had no business to flaunt
themselves in this brazen manner."189 The title 'Augusta' could be held by more than one
woman at the same time, usually the wife and the mother of an emperor, which underlines its
honorary nature. Even more, the woman could lose the title due to a change in the emperor's
attitude towards her: this is why the emperor's mother was in a more stable postion than his

188
189

See the Gytheion decree, SEG XI (1950-54) no 927.

Wellesley, The long year AD69 (London, 1975), p52.

37

wife, who could be divorced or executed when she was of no further use. Emperors who were
interested in stabilising their position would be more willing to honour their female relatives,
as Claudius did. This is also true of those who gained access to the imperial office through a
woman, usually by marrying her, as in the case of Marcus Aurelius. Usurpers like Philip the
Arab in the mid third century AD could attempt to strengthen their dynastic claim by heaping
honours upon their wives. According to L de Blois, the appellations of Marcia Otacilia
Severa, Philip's wife, were the same as those of Julia Domna, Maesa and Mamaea: mater
Augusti, mater castrorum, mater senatus, mater patriae' and combinations of these titles.190
Lack of male issue and the need to acquire an heir through adoption limited the opportunities
of the womenfolk of Trajan and Hadrian to play an active public role (although Plotina has
been described as intervening in Trajan's succession in favour of Hadrian). Some of them
(Plotina, Sabina, Julia Domna), expressed an interest in intellectual matters but only as
patrons of second-rate poets like Julia Balbilla or by flattering sophists, to compensate for
lack of influence on their husbands. According to G Bowersock, the importance of Julia
Domna's literary circle has been overrated.191 For him, first rate sophists "had more to do than
edify an empress".192
In a way, imperial women set the pattern for elite members of their sex, becoming patronesses
and benefactresses of individuals and cities. Wealth was the key to power as it is today, and
even unofficial 'empresses' ie concubines of emperors acted as sellers of offices in order to
hoard money: Messalina and Agrippina, the wives of Claudius, did so and their example was
followed by Caenis, the concubine of Vespasian, who was said to have used to acquire large
sums of money by selling governorships, procuratorships, generalships, priesthoods. 193 The
eastern cities repaid imperial women's benefactions by erecting their statues or even
bestowing upon them honorary titles: Agrippina the Younger was given the title of perpetual
gymnasiarchos by the Lesbians, Antonia, the mother of Claudius, was honoured by a citizen
of Ilion for having discharged magistracies of the city. Bruttia Crispina, the wife of
Cornmodus, was a hieromnamon of Yalova. Since the granting of the title "mother of the
camps" to Faustina the Younger, it became customary for imperial women to hold this
honorific title, which may have derived from their physical presence in the camps, but must
have developed into a form of symbolic patronage over the army, similar to the patronage
190
191
192
193

L de Blois, "The reign of Philip the Arab', Talanta 10 (1978), p34.

G W Bowersock, Greek Sophists in the Roman Empire (Oxford, 1969), pp l01-110.
ibid, pi 10.
Dio Cassius LXV 14. See also R MacMullen's "Women in power in the principate' in his Changes in the
Roman Empire (Princeton, 1990), pp l69-76.

38

exercised over the cities by female members of their aristocratic families, who were called
mothers of the city or of the council, or of the gerousia.194
In the third century AD, the dynastic feeling had become very strong among the army, and
this, together with their Eastern ancestry, strengthened the grasp of the Severan women on the
imperial power. Julia Domna surpassed all of her predecessors in the amount of public
honours she received. According to Gilmore-Williams, from a total of one hundred and
eighty inscriptions set up in honour of the Empress, the vast majority had some public
significance: thirty-one of them were dedicated by civil magistrates; thirty-four by army
officers or soldiers throughout the Empire; thirty-one are on public works or statues erected
by various cities; twenty-one are priestly dedications, 'ten being erected on entrance to a
priesthood to which it is possible the dedicator was nominated through the favour of the
Empress'.195 From the bulk of this epigraphic record, it becomes obvious that Julia Domna
was an influential person. As for her position in the imperial administration, there is a passage
of Dio Cassius in which Julia is entrusted with the care of the imperial correspondence
because Caracalla was on a military expedition against the Parthians.196 She also replied to the
city of Ephesos, saying that she joins in the prayer of all cities and all peoples to receive
benefactions from her son, praising the city's cultural prominence but not giving a definite
answer to their application. J Oliver observes that the epistle emanated from her while she was
accompanying her son on a visit to Nicomedia in 214/5 AD.197 But this was not so unusual as
it is a reply to a city which had asked an empress to act as her patroness; Livia had done so but
the difference lies in the fact that Julia Domna replied herself, not through the emperor, which
implies that she was, indeed, in charge of the imperial correspondence. The new prestige of
the empress' position is also testified by the instructions given by the rhetor Menander, in his
'Royal Logos': "If the empress is of great worth and honour, you can conveniently mention her
also here: the lady he admired and loved he has also made the only sharer of his throne. For
the rest of womankind, he does not so much as know they exist".198
Of greater interest is the case of Julia Maesa and her daughters. Using her influence as a local
patron in Emesa, the large circle of clients she had acquired and her personal wealth, as an old

194
195
196

197
198

See chapter four.

Gilmore-Williams, p305.
J Oliver, Greek constitutions of early Roman emperors from inscriptions and papryi (Philadelphia, 1989),
p514.
Dio Cassius, LXXIX, 4.3.
Russel and Wilson, Menander the Rhetor (Oxford, 1981), p93. For a more expanded view of the concept of
female basileia in late antiquity, see G Holum, Theodosian Empresses (London, 1982), pp24-26.

39

woman and thus one of the most 'marginal' people in antiquity, she managed to organise an
army mutiny, and to rule the Roman Empire through the reigns of her two grandsons.
Although the obscure passage in 'Historia Augusta' referring to her as a participant in the
proceedings of the Senate seems suspect, it does reveal the fears of the senatorial class that the
unthinkable had happened - a woman ruled. A similar fear is expressed in the surviving
fragments of Dio Cassius, in which her sister, Julia Domna, is presented as planning to
establish herself as a female ruler in the fashion of a Semiramis or a Nitocris.199
There is a thorny problem concerning the women of the Severan dynasty. Scholars from the
nineteenth century onwards had assumed that Julia Maesa and her daughters took the
initiative in political action due to lack of surviving adult males in the family. R L Cleve, in
his brilliant article 'Some male relatives of the Severan women', argues that this was not the
case.200 Qn the contrary, he argues that the Severan women used their influence in order to
destroy their male relatives' political careers. There were four men who were related to the
Emesene Julii and who pursued a career in politics in the period of the Severan dynasty. Three
of them had married Severan women: Julius Avitus Alexianus was the husband of Julia
Maesa, Sextus Varius Marcellus of Julia Soaemias and Gessius Marcianus was the second
husband of Julia Mamaea. The fourth, Gaius lulius Avitus Alexianus, was a blood relative, in
all probability he was a cousin. All of them enjoyed a political career but only in posts of little
importance. According to R Cleve, Julia Domna was to be blamed for her niece's husband's
failure to become Praetorian Prefect.201 Finally, the last surviving male member of the family,
Gaius Julius Avitus Alexander, received posts of honour but of no real power, during the
reign of Elagabalus, because Julia Maesa and Julia Soaemias despised him. If the Severan
women had put their dynastic hopes higher than their personal love for power, they would
never have acted in such a way. But it was the fear that a male relative would diminish their
power that made them use their influence in order to frustrate rather than to help their
relatives' political ambitions.
A little later, another Oriental woman, Queen Zenobia of Palmyra, used her regency for her
son Waballathus (267-272 AD) in order to pursue personal power, and she tried to split the
Roman Empire in two, keeping the Eastern part for herself. Unfortunately, very few
fragments of sources survive from the late third century AD to provide information about this

199
200
201

Dio Cassius, LXXIX, 23.2-4.

Historia 37 (1988), ppl91-206.
ibid, p l99.

40

extraordinary woman. A brief mention by two of the 'writers' of the 'Historia Augusta',
'Trebellius Pollio' and 'Flavius Vopiscus'; some references in the brief chronicle of the sixth
century AD writer, Zonaras, and a few inscriptions, are the only extant sources. Her identity
was obscured by romantic legends about the stereotypical Oriental queen. Her 'kingdom',
Palmyra, had become a part of the Roman Empire in 114 AD. Hadrian granted the city
considerable liberty for military reasons (Palmyra being a buffer state on the Parthian border)
whereas Septimius Severns transformed the city's status to that of a colony with an elected
senate.202 So Palmyra was an oriental city with a Semitic population whose elite class had
been Hellenized and become incorporated into the structure of the Roman Empire, which
needed the city for reasons of defence against the Parthians but also for its wealth: Palmyra
was a commercial centre exploiting her position as a post on the caravan road from the Far
East. Zenobia came to prominence through her marriage to Odenathus who had become King
of Palmyra somewhere in the 250s AD.203 Zenobia's ascent to power was similar to that of the
Severan women: through the demise of her husband and stepson, ie the adult males of her
family, and her regency for her son who was still under age in 267 AD.
In Arabia as well as in Syria, there was a tradition of tolerance towards female rulers from the
eighth century BC until late antiquity.204 And Hellenistic tradition must have played its role in
facilitating Zenobia's ascent to power. Nevertheless, Zenobia, like the Hellenistic queens,
needed a male co-ruler. In an inscription from Palmyra ca 268-270 AD, the honorands include
the Emperor Claudius II and Septimia Zenobia who is called Sebaste and mother of Palmyra's
despot, Waballath Athenodorus.205 In another inscription, set up by her generals, Zabdon and
Zabbaeos, she is hailed as the most illustrious and pious queen, and despoina (domina, lady)
in 271 AD.206 It seems that: "In fact Zenobia, like Semiramis, owed her position entirely to the
minority of her son, the legitimate successor of the previous king'.207
As for their public appearances, it seems that imperial women enjoyed special privileges.
Lucilla, the eldest daughter of Marcus Aurelius, had been used to keep the insignia of her
imperial position: she took her place on the imperial seat at the theatre and she had had the

202
203

204
205
206
207

Antonia Fraser, The Warrior Queens (London, 1988), p 111.

R Stoneman, Palmyra and its Empire (Michigan, 1992) pp78-79. See also F Millar, The Roman Near East: 31
BC - AD 337 (London, 1993), pp 171-73 and 433-38.
See Stoneman, ppl 18-121 and Fraser, p 110.
IGR III no 1027.
IGR III no 1030.
Stoneman p 221.

41

ceremonial fire carried before her.208 The loss of these privileges after her brother's marriage
enraged her and, according to Herodian, drove her to participate in a conspiracy against
him.209 E Rawson observes that Livia was granted the privilege in AD 24 of sharing the
Vestal Virgins' theatre seat and that this may have been common for imperial women later.210
Aelius Aristides boasts that he had been praised for his oratory by the divine Emperors, the
Princesses and the whole imperial chorus, which means that imperial women could be present
during oratory lectures, something of a special privilege for their status.211
It cannot be doubted that the imperial women enjoyed economic privileges and an indirect
power, as well as a (limited) public role, but they did not have a share in the imperial office,
nor could they rule either as 'regents' or in their own right, for as long as the imperial office
remained an 'elected magistracy' of pure military character. Only in the mediaeval era, when
Christianity had been established as the Roman state's official religion, and the emperor had
ceased to be considered as the most powerful military man, could the mother of an under-age
emperor head the regency council, or at least participate in it.

208
209
210
211

Herodian 1.8 3-4.

ibid.
Rawson, 'The Lex Julia Theatralis', in Roman culture and society (Oxford, 1991) p518.
An address regarding Asclepius 14-15 The word basilides is interpreted as 'princesses', because as Ch A Behr
comments in Aelius Aristides: the Complete Works (Leiden, 1982), p471, notes 29 and 30, Aurelius and
his son had visited Smyrna in 176 AD and had attended Aristides' lectures. By that time, the Empress
Faustina was dead, so the term could denote only the imperial couple's daughters.

42