The First Ladies of Rome: The Women Behind the Caesars (66 page)

29
On Dumas, see Wyke (2002), 324, n. 3; on Sade, see Cryle (2001), 283, citing Sade,
Oeuvres complètes
9:44; on anti-venereal propaganda, see Kidd (2004), 343-4. See also Wyke (2002), 390 and n. 82 on Messalina as a star of adult films.

30
Juvenal,
Satires
6.117–32.

31
Cassius Dio,
Roman History
60.18.1–3. Augustus too is said to have indulged in similar practices of course.

32
Pliny the Elder,
Natural History
10.172. The world record entry is in A. Klynne, C. Klynne and H. Wolandt (2007)
Das Buch der Antiken Rekorde
(C. H. Beck Verlag, Munich). I have not seen the volume in question, but its publication was covered in the British press.

33
Cassius Dio,
Roman History
60.8.5; Tacitus,
Annals
14.63.2; Suetonius,
Claudius
29 and Seneca,
Apocolocyntosis
10.4. On Livilla’s urn, see Davies (2004), 103: Braccio Nuovo inv. 2302. On the episode as a whole, see Barrett (1996), 81–2.

34
On Appius Silanus, see Cassius Dio,
Roman History
60.14.2–4; on Marcus Vinicius, see Cassius Dio,
Roman History
60.27.4. Other victims included Catonius Justus, a praetorian guard who threatened to inform Claudius of Messalina’s scandalous exploits: see Cassius Dio,
Roman History
60.18.3. On Antonia’s granddaughter Julia, the daughter of Drusus Minor, see Cassius Dio,
Roman History
60.18.4. See Bauman (1992), 170 on the echoes of Fulvia’s sexually aggressive behaviour in Messalina.

35
My thanks to Simon Goldhill for pointing this detail out to me.

36
Cassius Dio,
Roman History
60.14.3–4; 60.15.5–16.2 on the machinations of the freedmen; Suetonius,
Claudius
29 and Cassius Dio,
Roman History
60.18 on the emperor’s being at the mercy of freedmen and wives.

37
Her reported lovers included the actor Mnester and the freedman Polybius.

38
Barrett (1996), 88.

39
Tacitus,
Annals
11.11.

40
Tacitus,
Annals
11.1–3; cf. Cassius Dio,
Roman History
60.27.2–4. The fact that other women from imperial history, for example, Pulcheria, are said to have eliminated opponents for the sake of a garden or vineyard implies some recycling of stereotypes across the
centuries.

41
According to a news report from
The Times
, 17 May 2007, mosaic remains of the gardens have been brought to light in excavations 30 feet (9 metres) below the ground, near the Spanish Steps.

42
This account is based principally on Tacitus,
Annals
11.26–38, which gives the fullest account of the episode. See also Cassius Dio,
Roman History
60.31.1–5, and Suetonius,
Claudius
36–7.

43
Tacitus,
Annals
11.27.

44
Fagan (2002), and Wood (1992), 233–4 on the possible reasons for Messalina’s fall.

45
Hunt (1991), 122 on Marie-Antoinette and Messalina.

46
Flower (2006), 185 and C. B. Rose (1997), 41.

47
See Wood (1992) and (1999), 276f.

48
Robert Graves (1934),
I, Claudius
, 381 (London: Penguin, 2006).

49
Octavia
266–8.

50
Ps-Seneca,
Apocolocyntosis
11.

51
Wyke (2002), 335–43 on Cossa’s play, and
see here
passim
for further examples of Messalina’s reception during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

52
See Ginsburg (2006), 17 on this meeting.

53
On the incest law, see Gardner (1986), 36–7; and Bauman (1992), 180.

54
C. B. Rose (1997), 42; Ginsburg (2006), 57.

55
On Agrippina’s coin portraits, see Wood (1999), 289–91 and C. B. Rose (1997), 42.

56
Wood (1999), 306–7; Ginsburg (2006), 91f.

57
Tacitus,
Annals
12.7.3,

58
Tacitus,
Annals
12.26. Flory (1987), 125–6 and 129–31 on the changing meaning of
Augusta
. On Agrippina publicising her son as heir, see, for example, Cassius Dio,
Roman History
60.33.9.

59
Tacitus,
Annals
12.27.1. See Barrett (1996), 114–15.

60
Barrett (1996), 124.

61
On Agrippina’s sculpture types, and the resemblance to her parents, see Ginsburg (2006), 81; Wood (1999), 297.

62
Tacitus,
Annals
12.37.4; Cassius Dio,
Roman History
60.33.7.

63
Suetonius,
Caligula
25.

64
On Agrippina as a
dux femina
, see Santoro l’hoir (1994), 21–5, and
passim
; also Ginsburg (2006), 26–7.

65
Suetonius,
Claudius
18; Tacitus,
Annals
12.43 on the grain shortages; Barrett (1996), 121–2 on this period.

66
Tacitus,
Annals
12.56–57; Cassius Dio,
Roman History
60.33.3.

67
Pliny the Elder,
Natural History
33.63; Tacitus,
Annals
12.56.3.

68
Tacitus,
Annals
12.57.

69
Tacitus,
Annals
12.7.2.

70
Tacitus,
Annals
12.22.1–3; Cassius Dio,
Roman History
60.32.4.

71
See O’Gorman (2000), 71–2 and 129–32 on parallels between Livia and Agrippina Minor in Tacitus’s account.

72
Claudius’s death: Suetonius,
Claudius
43–5; Tacitus,
Annals
12.66–9; Cassius Dio,
Roman History
60.34.1–3; Josephus,
Antiquities
20.8.1.

73
On the Sebasteion at Aphrodisias, see Smith (1987); also Ginsburg (2006), 89; and C. B. Rose (1997), 47–8, and Gradel (2002), 21.

74
C. B. Rose (1997), 47. Wood (1999), 293 notes that although Antony and Octavia had been featured in a similar pose, those were issues from Antony’s eastern mints, not Rome.

75
Cassius Dio,
Roman History
61.3.2.

76
Tacitus,
Annals
13.2.3.

77
Ibid.

78
Suetonius,
Vespasian
9. Gradel (2002), 68: the temple was later destroyed again, though the Forma Urbis gives us an idea of its ground plan.

79
Tacitus,
Annals
13.5.1. Barrett (1996), 150: the practice of the Senate meeting on the Palatine was not without precedent, but certainly such arrangements had never been made for the convenience of a woman.

80
Tacitus,
Annals
13.5.2. There is a striking modern parallel here in that Julia Tyler, the vivacious second wife of tenth US President John Tyler (1841–5) apparently caused offence by receiving guests seated on a raised platform: Caroli (1995), 46.

81
Tacitus,
Annals
13.6.2.

82
Suetonius,
Nero
52. Santoro L’hoir (1994), 17–25 for more on a woman’s unsuitability for power.

83
Tacitus,
Annals
13.12.1.

84
Tacitus,
Annals
13.12–13; Suetonius,
Nero
28 says that Agrippina and Nero consummated passion in a litter, and that he even chose a mistress who looked like her.

85
Tacitus,
Annals
13.1.3.

86
Cassius Dio,
Roman History
61.7.3; Tacitus,
Annals
14.

87
Tacitus,
Annals
13.15–16.

88
Tacitus,
Annals
13.18–19. Suetonius,
Nero
34.

89
Tacitus,
Annals
13.21.5.

90
Tacitus,
Annals
13.19–22 on whole episode.

91
On Agrippina’s ownership of Antonia’s villa, see Tacitus,
Annals
13.18.5; Bicknell (1963); Kokkinos (2002), 154–5.

92
Tacitus,
Annals
13.45–6; cf. Suetonius,
Otho
3.

93
Juvenal,
Satire
6.462. On Poppaea’s reputed habits, see Griffin (1984), 101; on the coincidence of Claudia Octavia’s name, see Vout (2007), 158.

94
See Vout (2007), 158–9.

95
The following is closely based on Tacitus,
Annals
14.3f; see also Cassius Dio,
Roman History
62.12–13.

96
Tacitus,
Annals
14.4.4.

97
Cassius Dio,
Roman History
62.13.5.

98
Jean de Outremeuse, 14th century: cited in G. Walter (1957),
Nero
, 264 (London: Allen & Unwin). See also Elsner and Masters (1994), 1.

99
Tacitus,
Annals
14.12.1.

100
Suetonius,
Nero
39. Greek numbers are expressed by letters. If you convert the letters of Nero’s name when written in Greek, into numbers, they add up to 1,005, as do the letters for the Greek for ‘murdered his own mother’: see note to Graves’s translation.

101
Suetonius,
Nero
34.

102
Octavia
, 629–45. The subject of the play is the fate of Claudia Octavia, Nero’s first wife, who was divorced and banished to Pandateria in order that Nero might marry Poppaea. She was later put to death.

103
Octavia
, 609–11. On Seneca’s disputed authorship and the afterlife of the play, see Kragelund (2007), 24f.

104
Kragelund (2007), 27.

105
Ginsburg (2006), 80; see also Wood (1999), 251–2.

106
Moltesen and Nielsen (2007), esp. 9–10, 113 and 133.

107
See Dean and Knapp (1987), 114–19 on Handel’s opera.

108
Wood (1999), 302–4 on Agrippina’s posthumous sculptural tradition.

109
Tacitus,
Annals
14.9.1.

110
Letters Written in France in the Summer 1790: Helen Maria Williams
, ed. N. Fraistat, and S. S. Lanser, (2001), 173 (Peterborough, Ontario Broadview Press).

111
Tacitus,
Annals
4.53.3; Pliny the Elder,
Natural History
7.46.

112
See Hemelrijk (1999), 186–8 on Agrippina’s ‘memoirs’.

113
William Wetmore Story,
Poems
1:16 cited by W. L. Vance (1989), in
America’s Rome
(New Haven and London: Yale University Press).

5
Little Cleopatra: A Jewish Princess and the First Ladies of the Flavian Dynasty

1
‘Kleopatra im kleinen’: Theodor Mommsen,
Römische Geschichte
, V, 540 (1885).

2
Bérénice
, Act IV, lines 1208–9, trans. R. C. Knight (1999).

3
On the simultaneous appearance of the two works and the tale’s popularity in 17th-century France and Britain, see Walton (1965), 10–16; on the theme of Rome in early modern Europe, see Schroder (2009), 390. See also the appendix of Jordan (1974) for a thorough review of Berenice’s appearances in literature post-antiquity.