The Women Who Made The Augustan Age

When one thinks of power players during Augustus's reign, his wife Livia usually comes to mind first. Livia often gets a bad reputation amongst many of the other "bad' women of this period for being too ambitious for herself and her sons, but that is not the whole truth. Livia was born on or about the 30th of January 59 BC into the ultra-powerful Claudian family. ¹  As a teen, she was married off to Tiberius Claudius Nero, and a few years later, she gave birth to her oldest son, the future emperor Tiberius. About six months into her pregnancy with her second child Druses she meets Augustus, then known as Octavian. ²  They fell head over heels for one another. In almost record time, Livia and Augustus were able to obtain divorces from their respective spouses and get married all before Livia welcomed her son Druses into the world, but this is where the trouble began. ³  This whole scandal and quick remarriage tarnished Livia's reputation and would lead to many at the time and in future history books to think the worst of her when she eventually became Empress as Augustus's wife.  When Augustus finally became emperor, Livia had a challenging role to balance as the head of a new imperial family. She had to be a good roman woman, but she also wanted influence behind the scenes, and she did just that. Livia was very dedicated to making Rome a cosmopolitan and beautiful city, so she funded building projects to show her wealth and power. ⁴  Also, one thing to note is that Agustus bestowed Livia and his sister Octavia with financial independence, meaning they could do whatever they needed to with their money when and how they wanted, which is an unheard-of honour for any woman outside of being a vestal virgin. ⁵  Livia was also meant to exemplify Augustus' campaign to revive traditional roman values of simplicity, and Livia was one of the key cogs in this plan. Livia, along with her sons, her husband, and her stepdaughter Julia strived to live as ordinary Romans. Livia managed the home and took care of the kids. ⁶  For this, Augustus awarded her power behind the scenes. Livia played her part well, but it did not shield her from criticism. Livia had a bad reputation from the start, and as time went on, it only got worse as certain members of Augustus's family started dropping like flies. When his nephew died, she was suspected. When Augustus's grandson and heirs died, she was suspected of killing them. She has even been accused of murdering Augustus himself to make way for her son Tiberius to be emperor. ⁷  Of course, Livia wanted power and to stay in the center of politics, but blaming her every time someone important dies is wrong. Sure no one can be sure if she had anything to do with it, but what we do know is that she was a woman with power who helped Augustus build an imperial image. It's more likely that she was unfairly judged by the men of her time and in turn judged by historians based on those judgements. Whatever the case, it can not be disputed that Livia was a powerful individual who helped Augustus make a dynasty. She filled a role that no other woman could have and was practically born to be Rome's first Empress.

Unlike her sister-in-law, Augustus' sister Octavia has a much more positive image and reputation throughout her lifetime and in history. Octavia has always been presented as Rome's good girl, the poor wife who was abandoned by Mark Antony for his evil foreign queen Cleopatra but dutifully stayed in his house and cared for his children even when he very publicly divorced her. However, do not let this series of events fool you too much. While admittedly Octavia was an excellent example of a modest roman woman and mother, she was also a skilled diplomat and was an integral part to helping her brother transition Rome from a republic to an empire. From the moment she was born, Octavia had two things that would help her later in life. The first was access to Rome's powerful men and their conversations and having her mother Atia, who exemplified traditional values that would be the centre of morality in her brother's empire. ⁸  When Octavia was a teen, she married Gaius Marcellus, a Roman nobleman who was very lightly established in politics. ⁹  Through her first marriage and status as a wife, she would have been able to privately discuss politics with men where in public she would not have had this opportunity. ¹⁰  After the death of her first husband, Octavia was a mother of two and only 26 years old. At that time, her brother and Mark Antony had a shaky relationship. Still, conveniently Antony's wife had died the same year Octavia's husband did, so in order to make peace Octavia had the responsibility of marrying him. ¹¹  To most people marrying someone like Antony doesn't seem to be a huge deal. But, politically, Octavia was now a mediator between her brother and husband, and she was a natural at it. Octavia dealt with planning for military campaigns, handled correspondence planned parties, raised his and her children and their two daughters and ran his household. ¹²  in 37 BC, she helped negotiate between her brother and husband during the treaty of Tarentum and while it did not stop hostilities from boiling over the fact that her brother trusted her so much and her skills were helpful enough for all parties to come to an agreement of peace shows just what a secret diplomat she was. ¹³  During her husband and brother's civil war, Octavia showed her true influence and power and was also her brother's most useful tool in establishing his empire. Antony officially divorced Octavia and married Cleopatra in 32 BC, and Octavia was ordered to leave his house by her brother, but she told him NO! Octavia refused to leave Antony's house, but after a while, she was convinced to leave his home with her children and stepchildren. ¹⁴  Octavia was one of the few people who were allowed to say no to Augustus. The fact that she had that power says a lot about how much Augustus valued her. Not to mention Octavia was a huge propaganda piece in his war with Antony and Cleopatra. ¹⁵  It helped rally the Roman people around Augustus like a charm. Eventually, Augustus won his war, and Octavia was again without a husband, but now it was time to exert her influence by being a mother rather than a wife. At this time in her life, she had a very blended family under her roof. She had Mark Antony's two sons from his marriage to Fulvia, her son and daughter from her first marriage, her daughters with Antony, not to mention when Antony and Cleopatra had been defeated, their three children had been sent to Octavia to raise so all in all she had nine kids in her care, and only four were biologically related to her but she raised them all as if they were her own but her pride and joy was her only biological son Marcellus. ¹⁶  Since her brother had no sons, Augustus decided that his only child Julia should marry Octavia's son so that he could be groomed to be the next emperor and Octavia would have the influence of being the next emperor's mother. Unfourtley, Marcellus died tragically young and left Julia a widow at sixteen, but luckily Octavia had a solution to that. Octavia's daughter Marcella was married to Augustus's trusted general Agrippa who seemed like a logical choice to take power if Augustus' died with no heir, so Octavia helped Agrippa divorce her own daughter in order to marry Julia and produce heirs. ¹⁷  This may seem like a cold-hearted move on Octavia's part, but she knew it was necessary, and after all, Marcella could get a new husband. Octavia died roughly in 11 BC, a few years before her brother, at the age of 55 and she had a grand funeral funeral that showed how important she was. ¹⁸  In her lifetime, she not only was a great example of a roman wife and mother but partnered with her brother; she helped establish one of the world's largest empires through her shrewd negotiation skills and insightfulness. Octavia was a woman who knew the world she lived in and how it operated, and without her, the establishment of the roman empire might have looked very different

If anyone knew the consequences of power in Rome, it was Julia, Augustus's only child. Many often overlook Julia as an adulterous party girl who got lobed off to an island to die. Still, her time as a political pawn under her father and how she exercised her own agency as a popular princess is key to understanding how she helped build Rome's first family. Pretty much on the day she was born, on October 31st, 39 BC, Julia had a troubled life when she was taken away from her mother as her father divorced, remarried and raised her strictly in a blended family with her stepmother and step brothers. ¹⁹  Her father came to power shortly after he won his war against Mark Antony and Cleopatra, and suddenly Julia was the only child of the most powerful man in the known world, and Augustus needed to control that power carefully. In 25 BC, at about fourteen, Julia married her first cousin Marcellus in order to tie her family together so one day Marcellus could be emperor and she would bear the next generation of emperors. ²⁰  However, it did not work out the way it should have. Marcellus died unexpectedly, and now Julia was a widow before her sixteenth birthday, and a new marriage was now needed, so Augustus married her to Agrippa, his most trusted friend and general. ²¹  No one can be sure how Julia felt about how her father was using her to create a dynasty, but we do know what her father expected of her publicly, and she played her part as well as she could. Augustus was famous for introducing morality laws that exemplified traditional Roman values, and Julia being the only child, was meant to exemplify these. In public, Julia did just that, but she also pushed her father's buttons with the odd sarcastic remark or scandalous outfit. ²²  Julia was all in all a good roman lady and ran her and Agrippa's household and in quick succession gave birth to five children ²³ : Gaius Caesar in 20 BC Julia in 19 BC. Lucius Caesar in 17 BC Agrippina in 14 BC Agrippa Postumus in 12 BC. Julia fulfilled her duties in public as her father wished and helped create the dynasty. However, she also did something else; she made the imperial family exceptionally popular with the common people. Julia was a social butterfly, and wherever she went, she attracted praise and love. It's worth noting it was not a normal thing for wives of military men like Agrippa to have their wives travel with them, but Julia did. ²⁴  Many of the cities she spent time in on the road, like Mytilene, who erected a statue of her praising her as being a benefactor to the city. ²⁵  Julia's strength was relatability, and she used it to craft an image for herself that was so strong that when she was arrested and accused of adultery, the people of Rome would actually beg for her release. ²⁶  Unfortunately, Julia's downfall is important to the Augustan age because her father basically sacrificed her to save the family's reputation and make an example of her. Julia's husband Agrippa had died in 12 BC. Once again, Augustus knew it was too dangerous to leave her unmarried, so she was married to her stepbrother Tiberius. ²⁷  At first, the marriage was okay enough with Julia giving birth to a son named Tiberiullus. However, it suddenly fell apart when the baby died at the same time Tiberius lost his younger brother Druses. Next thing you know, Julia and Tiberius can't even look at one another, and Tiberius has left for Rhodes just to get away from Rome, which did not look good for anyone involved. ²⁸  No one is 100% sure if Julia was a crazy party girl who slept around, but Augustus indeed made it sound like she was when he sent a letter to the senate showing what he had discovered about his daughter, and it ended her life as she knew it. ²⁹  Many question why Augustus did this to his own daughter, and to be honest, it could be many reasons, but the main reasons could be lack of control. Julia was far too much like her father. He didn't like that he couldn't control her, so when she was threatening the stability of the dynasty as well as his morality laws, he had to make an example out of her for all to see, and Julia died on an island having influenced Rome's first dynasty through her powerful blood and natural charm and yet it had cost her everything.

At the start of Agrippina's time in the imperial limelight, she seemed like she would be everything her mother was not. She was obedient, fertile and had the blood of Augustus running through her veins. However, she was also reckless, ambitious and arrogant in her pursuits, and ultimately it led to the breakdown of the Augustan age because of her descendants. ³⁰   At a young age, when all other options were exhausted, Agrippina suddenly became at the forefront of Augustus's dynastic hopes of bringing Rome into the future, and she did but not in the way anyone really hoped. When Agrippina came into the world in 14BC, no one knew the impact she was going to make or how important she was going to be to her dynasty's survival. Before the age of twelve, her father died, her mother and sister were banished and disgraced, and her older brothers and heirs of her grandfather died, so she had to become better than all of them. ³¹  As a teenager, she was married to Germanicus, who was a second cousin of hers and the adopted son of her stepfather Tiberius. ³²   The plan was to have her stepfather succeed after Augustus, and when Tiberius died, Agrippina and Germanicus would follow after him. In the meantime, Agrippina and Germanicus had the part to play of the perfect Emperor and Empress in waiting, and they did it well. Like her mother before her, Agrippina quickly gave birth to a brood of imperial children. Nero Caesar Drusus Caesar Gaius Caesar (Caligula) Agrippina Livilla Julia Drusilla. ³³   Also like her mother, Agrippina followed Germanicus as he led military campaigns all over the empire, but unlike her mother, she exercised authority and worked in the frontlines rather than behind the scenes which when Tiberius eventually took over, he was not a fan of her behaviour in the slightest. For example, in Gaul, modern-day Germany, while her husband was across the Rhine river, the Romans got word the Germans were coming and to demolish the bridge over the Rhine, which would have trapped Germanicus, so Agrippina got on the bridge and refused to move until her husband was safe.  ³⁴  She also took a role in feeding and clothing the army which as a woman was a huge overstep but for Agrippina it was her way of exercising her power and agency for the good of the empire she loved so much. In 19AD during a trip to Egypt Germanicus suddenly became very ill and died. Agrippina was convinced he had been poisoned by either Emperor Tiberius or his mother Livia because of jealousy over her popularity and Agrippina wanted revenge.  ³⁵  Agrippina returned to Rome with her husband's ashes in a grand triumph through the streets of Rome, which was a very masculine role to be taking on. ³⁶  Soon enough, she was leading her own political faction, which made Tiberius nervous. ³⁷  Tiberius may have been emperor, but she was a legitimate bloodline descendant of Augustus, and that made her more powerful than he could ever be, so he had to destroy her. Soon enough, Agrippina was being convinced by advisors who did not have her best interests at heart to make traitorous moves against Tiberius to set up her eldest son for the crown, and Tiberius used that against having her and her three eldest sons arrested and imprisoned. ³⁸  Like her mother before her, Agrippina was sent to an island to waste away and be forgotten about. Agrippina was a power player on par with her step-grandmother Livia Drusilla. However, Agrippina made the fatal mistake of being far too confident in her power and overstepping her place when she didn't have all the cards in hand. Despite this, her son would go on to be Emperor Caligula, and her daughters and namesake would influence Rome in her own time following the strong example of her mother.