The Women of the Caesars

The Women of the Caesars

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Title: The Women of the Caesars
Author: Guglielmo Ferrero
Release Date: July 18, 2005 [EBook #16324]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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Produced by Al Haines

[Frontispiece: Livia, the wife of Augustus, superintending the weaving
of robes for her family.]

THE WOMEN OF THE CAESARS

BY
GUGLIELMO FERRERO

NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
MCMXI

Copyright, 1911, by
THE CENTURY CO.
Published, October, 1911

THE DEVINNE PRESS

CONTENTS
I WOMAN AND MARRIAGE IN ANCIENT ROME
II LIVIA AND JULIA
III THE DAUGHTERS OF AGRIPPA
IV TIBERIUS AND AGRIPPINA
V THE SISTERS OF CALIGULA AND THE MARRIAGE OF
MESSALINA
VI AGRIPPINA, THE MOTHER OF NERO

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Livia, the Wife of Augustus, Superintending the Weaving of Robes for
her Family . . . Frontispiece
A Roman Marriage Custom
Eumachia, a Public Priestess of Ancient Rome
The Forum under the Caesars
The So-called Bust of Cicero
Julius Caesar
The Sister of M. Nonius Balbus
Livia, the Mother of Tiberius, in the Costume of a Priestess
The Young Augustus
The Emperor Augustus
A Silver Denarius of the Second Triumvirate
Silver Coin Bearing the Head of Julius Caesar
The Great Paris Cameo
Octavia, the Sister of Augustus
A Reception at Livia's Villa
Mark Antony
Antony and Cleopatra
Tiberius, Elder Son of Livia and Stepson of Augustus
Drusus, the Younger Brother of Tiberius

Statue of a Young Roman Woman
A Roman Girl of the Time of the Caesars
Costumes of Roman Men, Women, and Children in the Procession of a
Peace Festival
Bust of Tiberius in the Museo Nazionale, Naples
Types of Head-dresses Worn in the Time of the Women of the Caesars
A Roman Feast in the Time of the Caesars
Depositing the Ashes of a Member of the Imperial Family in a Roman
Columbarium
The Starving Livilla Refusing Food
Costume of a Chief Vestal (Virgo Vestalis Maxima)
Remains of the House of the Vestal Virgins
Bust, Supposed to be of Antonia, Daughter of Mark Antony and
Octavia, and Mother of Germanicus, in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Caligula
A Bronze Sestertius (Slightly Enlarged), Showing the Sisters of
Caligula (Agrippina, Drusilla, and Julia Livilla) on One Side and
Germanicus on the Other Side
A Bronze Sestertius with the Head of Agrippina the Elder, Daughter of
Agrippa and Julia, the Daughter of Augustus
Claudius, Messalina, and Their Two Children in What is Known as the
"Hague Cameo"
Remains of the Bridge of Caligula in the Palace of the Caesars

The Emperor Caligula
Claudius
The Emperor Claudius
Messalina, Third Wife of Claudius
The Philosopher Seneca
The Emperor Nero
Agrippina the Younger, Sister of Caligula and Mother of Nero
Britannicus
Statue of Agrippina the Younger, in the Capitoline Museum, Rome
Agrippina the Younger
The Emperor Nero
The Death of Agrippina

WOMEN OF THE CAESARS
I
WOMAN AND MARRIAGE IN ANCIENT ROME
"Many things that among the Greeks are considered improper and
unfitting," wrote Cornelius Nepos in the preface to his "Lives," "are
permitted by our customs. Is there by chance a Roman who is ashamed
to take his wife to a dinner away from home? Does it happen that the
mistress of the house in any family does not enter the anterooms
frequented by strangers and show herself among them? Not so in
Greece: there the woman accepts invitations only among families to
which she is related, and she remains withdrawn in that inner part of

the house which is called the gynaeceum, where only the nearest
relatives are admitted."
This passage, one of the most significant in all the little work of Nepos,
draws in a few, clear, telling strokes one of the most marked
distinctions between the Greco-Asiatic world and the Roman. Among
ancient societies, the Roman was probably that in which, at least
among the better classes, woman enjoyed the greatest social liberty and
the greatest legal and economic autonomy. There she most nearly
approached that condition of moral and civil equality with man which
makes her his comrade, and not his slave--that equality in which
modern civilization sees one of the supreme ends of moral progress.
The doctrine held by some philosophers and sociologists, that military
peoples subordinate woman to a tyrannical régime of domestic
servitude, is wholly disproved by the history of Rome. If there was ever
a time when the Roman woman lived in a state of perennial tutelage,
under the authority of