The First Ladies of Rome: The Women Behind the Caesars (69 page)

20
Historia Augusta
(Severus) 19.7–9 on Severus’s appearance.

21
Fejfer (2008), 348.

22
Baharal (1992), 114.

23
Gorrie (2004), 63–4 and n. 14. See also Lusnia (1995), 123 on Commodus’s wife Crispina also holding this title.

24
Cascio (2005), 137–9.

25
Cassius Dio,
Roman History
77.9.4. See Cooley (2007), 385–6.

26
See Newby (2007), 224 and Cooley (2007), 385–7 on Severus’s attempts to link himself to the Antonines.

27
Newby (2007), 222–4 on Severan dynastic portraits; Lusnia (1995), 138–9 on Julia’s key role in imperial propaganda.

28
Birley (1971), 107.

29
Cassius Dio,
Roman History
79.30.3. On promotion of Domna’s relatives, see Birley (1971), 134; Levick (2007), 48.

30
Birley (1971), 76 and 35.

31
Historia Augusta
(Severus) 18.8.

32
See Hemelrijk (1999), 306, n. 130.

33
Cassius Dio,
Roman History
77.1.2.

34
Cassius Dio,
Roman History
76.15.

35
Herodian 3.10.8; Cassius Dio,
Roman History
77.3.

36
Varner (2004), 164–5 on Plautilla’s portrait typology.

37
Cassius Dio,
Roman History
76.15.

38
Philostratus,
Life of Apollonius
1.3,.

39
Whitmarsh (2007), 33 on talk of a ‘salon’ culture; see also Bowersock (1969), 101–2.

40
Philostratus,
Lives of the Sophists
622. See also Hemelrijk (1999), 124.

41
Bowersock (1969), 101–9, on Victor Duruy’s
Histoire de Rome
of 1879 as the root of speculation
about Julia Domna’s circle; cf. Hemelrijk (1999), 122–4.

42
Philostratus,
Epistle
73: trans. Penella (1979), 163; cited in Hemelrijk (1999), 125.

43
Hemelrijk (1999), 25 and 233, n. 38 on Julia Domna being the first woman since Cornelia known to have studied rhetoric; see also Levick (2002) on rarity of women philosophers.

44
Lucian,
De Mercede Conductis
36.

45
Martial,
Epigrams
11.19.

46
Birley (1971), 149.

47
Kampen (1991), 231.

48
Croom (2000), 79–80. On the Severan arch at Lepcis Magna, see Newby (2007), 206–11; Varner (2004), 178–9.

49
Lusnia (1995), 138.

50
Kleiner and Matheson (1996), 152.

51
Gorrie (2004), 69.

52
Lusnia (1995), 120–1.

53
Kleiner and Matheson (1996), 85–6, no. 46.

54
Cassius Dio,
Roman History
76.16.

55
Cassius Dio,
Roman History
77.4.

56
Varner (2004), 163–8 on the mutilation of Plautinaus’s and Plautilla’s portraits; see also Kleiner and Matheson (1996), 86.

57
Cassius Dio,
Roman History
77.7.

58
Birley (1971), 170.

59
Cassius Dio,
Roman History
77.12.

60
Herodian 3.14.2 and 3.14.9.

61
Cassius Dio,
Roman History
77.16.5.

62
Lusnia (1995), 131–2 on Domna as
mater Augustorum
, and on the new coin issue; see also Gorrie (2004), 64.

63
Cassius Dio,
Roman History
77.14.7.

64
Cassius Dio,
Roman History
77.15.2.

65
Herodian 3.15.6–7.

66
Herodian 4.1.5; 4.3.5.

67
Herodian 4.3.8.

68
See Lusnia (1995), 133–4.

69
Cassius Dio,
Roman History
78.2.2–6.

70
Varner (2004), 176–7.

71
Varner (2004), 182.

72
Varner (2004), 184.

73
Cassius Dio,
Roman History
78.2.5–6.

74
Herodian 4.6.3.

75
Cassius Dio,
Roman History
78.10.

76
Herodian 4.9.3.

77
Hemelrijk (1999), 306, n. 130 on ‘Neronisation’ of Caracalla, as discussed by R. J. Penella (1980), in ‘Caracalla and his Mother in the
Historia Augusta’, Historia
29: 382–5.

78
Cassius Dio,
Roman History
79.4.3.

79
Cassius Dio,
Roman History
79.23.1.

80
Cassius Dio,
Roman History
79.24; Herodian 4.13.4.

81
Cassius 79.24. See Levick (2007), 145, and Varner (2004), 168, n. 116.

82
Levick (2007), 145 on Julia Domna’s deification.

83
Herodian 5.3.2–3;
Historia Augusta
(Macrinus) 9; Cassius Dio,
Roman History
79.30. See Kosmetatou (2002), 401 and Birley (1971), 191–3 on this sequence of events.

84
Herodian 5.4.1–4; Cassius Dio,
Roman History
79.30f. A rumour was apparently planted that Avitus was actually the product of an affair between Soaemias and Caracalla: Herodian 5.3.10.

85
Cassius Dio,
Roman History
78.38. On destruction of portraits, see Varner (2004), 185.

86
Historia Augusta
(Elagabalus) 4.1.

87
Icks (2008), 175.

88
Historia Augusta
(Elagabalus) 2.1.

89
Historia Augusta
(Elagabalus) 21.4; Herodian 5.5.5–7.

90
Herodian 5.7–8.

91
Cassius Dio,
Roman History
80.20; cf. Herodian 5.8.9. Varner (2004), 199.

92
Fragment of Zonaras 12.15. Trans. E. H. Cary (in translation of Cassius Dio,
Roman History
)

93
Kosmetatou (2002), 399–400 and 414.

94
Historia Augusta
(Elagabalus) 18.3.

95
Kosmetatou (2002), 402–11 on the public image of Mamaea in particular.

96
Herodian 6.1.9–10;
Historia Augusta
(Alexander) 20.3; Kosmetatou (2002), 409–10.

97
Historia Augusta
(Alexander) 26.9; Eusebius,
Ecclesiastical History
6, 21, 3f.

98
Kosmetatou (2002), 412.

99
Herodian 6.8.3.

100
Herodian 6.9.6–7.

8
The First Christian Empress: Women in the Age of Constantine

1
Speech at the Edinburgh Rectorial Election,
The Times
, 8 November 1951: cited by Drijvers (2000), 28, from Donat Gallagher, ed. (1983)
The Essays, Articles and Reviews of Evelyn Waugh
(London: 1983), 407.

2
See Pohlsander (1995) and Harbus (2002) for detailed overviews.

3
Drinkwater (2005), 28.

4
Zenobia: Drinkwater (2005), 51–3 and Sartre (2005) 513–15.

5
The key sources on Helena’s early background are Ambrose,
De Obitu Theodosii
42; Eutropius,
Breviarum
10.2; the anonymous
Origo Constantini
2.2; Philostorgius,
Ecclesiastical History
2.16; and Zosimus 2.8.2 and 2.9.2. See also Drijvers (1992), Pohlsander (1995) and Harbus (2002).

6
See McClanan (2002), 180 on narrative patterns of redemption in the lives of female saints. In the sixth century, for example, the humble background of Justinian’s wife Theodora morphed into the story of the reformation of a born courtesan.

7
See Lieu (1998), 149f on this tradition.

8
Pohlsander (1995), 15.

9
See Drijvers (1992), 17–18 on legality of the marriage and use of the term
uxor
; also Leadbetter (1998), 78–9 on concubinage and legitimacy.

10
Gardner (1986), 58 on imperial use of concubines; see also Arjava (1996), 205–10.

11
On Constantine’s need to prove his legitimacy and discourage unfavourable rumours about Helena’s and Chlorus’s relationship, see Leadbetter (1998), 79–81. For the suggestion that Constantine deliberately suppressed details about his and Helena’s background, see Harbus (2002), 10.

12
On the arrangement of the tetrarchy: see Bowman (2005), 74–6, and Rees (2004), 76–80.

13
Leadbetter (1998), 77–82 for more on links between the marriages and the creation of the tetrarchy; see also Pohlsander (1995), 17, Harbus (2002), 19 and Lenski (2006), 59–60.

14
See Lancon (2000), 18, and
Panegyrici Latini
12.19.3.

15
See Rees (2004), 46–51.

16
Elsner (1998), 84–6.

17
Croom (2000), 101.

18
Lactantius,
On the Deaths of the Persecutors
7.9.

19
For conclusions on this point, see Pohlsander (1995), 14–15 and Drijvers (1992), 21. E. D. Hunt (1982), 30 suggests she would have accompanied her son to Nicomedia, however.

20
Zosimus 2.9.2.

21
Drijvers (1992), 22–3; see also Harbus (2002), 44f and Pohlsander (1995), 7–8, and chapter 4,
passim
, on Helena’s links to Trier.

22
Trier ceiling: M. E. Rose (2006); Ling (1991), 186f, Pohlsander (1995), 37–46.

23
On changing attitudes to jewellery in late antiquity, see Fejfer (2008), 349–51 and M. E. Rose (2006), 101.

24
Panegyrici Latini
. 6.2; see also R. Rees (2002),
Layers of Loyalty in Latin Panegyric, AD
289–307 (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 168–171 on the ‘truth’ of the panegyricist’s claim.

25
On the deaths of Prisca and Valeria in the summer of 314: see Lactantius,
On the Deaths of the Persecutors
39–41 and 50–1.

26
The key accounts are Eusebius,
Life of Constantine
1.28: Lactantius,
On the Deaths of the Persecutors
44. See Cameron and Hall (1999), 204–6.

27
See Lenski (2006), 72–3 for an overview of Licinius’s downfall; Eusebius,
Life of Constantine
3.47 on Helena’s receiving title of
Augusta
.

28
Beard, North and Price (1998), 298–9 on the female principle
and Christianity, and on elite female adherents to the new faith. Augustine,
City of God
1.19 scrutinises the example of Lucretia to reproach those critics of Christian women who did not commit suicide after the sack of Rome in 410.

29
Constantine’s laws: see Gardner (1986), 120; Cameron (1993), 58; G. Clark (1993), 21–36; Evans-Grubbs (1995), 317-21.