Roman women: following the female line

The Romans had a very clear idea about what a good woman should be. First of all, she should aspire to unimpeachable Pudicitia, the fragile personification of purity – the slightest questioning of a woman’s virtue could destroy her – and she was expected to be fertile, loyal and supportive, both as a mother and a wife. But women were also believed to be especially susceptible to the ‘effeminate’ temptations of luxury and indulgence, failings that were seen as potentially undermining of the state.

When Octavian seized control of the Roman world in 31 BC and took the name Augustus just four years later, he knew he had to reinvent the whole image of the Roman state. He famously claimed to have restored the Republic, and in a sense he had, but he had also established a monarchy in all but name – where none was supposed to exist. However, he was constantly thwarted in his attempts to make the emperor’s position hereditary.

The Julio-Claudian dynasty (1), of which Augustus was the first of five emperors, lasted from 27 BC to AD 68, and the only reason it endured was because it was handed down through the female line.

Women were suddenly more important than they had ever been. Augustus belonged to the Julii family. His mother, Atia, was the niece of Julius Caesar, and when Caesar adopted him, he took the name Gaius Julius Caesar. When he was aged around 23, he married his third wife, Livia Drusilla, after her divorce from the politician Nero Claudius Drusus, with whom she had two children.

Augustus soon realised that women could play a crucial part in promoting his regime, and he was determined that they would live up to the traditional ideals of Roman womanhood, so that their virtues could be synonymous with his rule and the moral reforms he tried to enshrine in law. He played on the fact that his sister, Octavia, and his wife, Livia (2), could be presented as living embodiments of all the female virtues he wanted associated with the state.

Livia contrasted with ‘bad women’ of the times. For example, Fulvia, who had married Mark Antony in 47 BC, had interfered in politics, was involved in her husband’s ambitions, and had outraged Roman historians and the public. More scandalously, Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, had been flaunted in Rome by her lover, Julius Caesar, before she became fatally involved with Antony while he was still married to Fulvia.

The two families had become entwined after Fulvia’s death in 40 BC when Antony had married Augustus’ sister Octavia, who was hugely admired for her virtue. The marriage was part of a political arrangement between the two men, who, with Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, ruled as a Triumvirate following Caesar’s assassination in 44 BC. But when Antony abandoned Octavia for Cleopatra his reputation was severely damaged, while Octavia’s was enhanced.