January 17, 2010

Source

Livia, as history most often knows her, was the wife of Augustus for over fifty years, from this day in 38 BC until his death in AD 14 , an astonishingly long time in view of life expectancy in ancient Rome. Although certainty about their inner lives and proof for what we would consider a loving relationship is necessarily lost to us, we can infer genuine loyalty and mutual respect between the two. They remained married despite the fact that she bore him no child. Livia's position as first lady of the imperial household, her own family connections, her confident personality and her private wealth allowed her to exercise power both through Augustus and on her own, during his lifetime and afterward. All the Julio-Claudian emperors were her direct descendants: Tiberius was her son; Gaius (Caligula), her great-grandson; Claudius, her grandson; Nero, her great-great-grandson.


By all accounts, Livia played the role of a loving, dutiful and even old-fashioned wife. She cooperated with Augustus' encouragement of upper-class women to behave in the austere fashion of an earlier age when she and other female members of his household spun and wove and provided him with clothing. She sometimes accompanied him when he traveled from Rome and always served as a trusted confidante and advisor. When a beloved great-grandson of Augustus died (a son of Germanicus, a toddler named Gaius), she saw to it that the child's statue was placed in his private quarters. She ignored his notorious womanizing, and so Tacitus called her an "easy wife". "When someone asked her how and by what course of action she had obtained such a commanding influence over Augustus, she answered that it was by being scrupulously chaste herself, doing gladly whatever pleased him, not meddling with any of his affairs, and, in particular, by pretending neither to hear of nor to notice the favorites that were the objects of his passion". Her tolerance need not surprise. The goal of a Roman marriage was the formation of a household and the production of children, not sexual gratification, which could be found elsewhere. Unfortunately, she never bore him any living children; a premature infant died. Heirs would have been desirable, and it is a tribute to their relationship that Augustus did not divorce her because she failed to produce them. The two were a partnership.

The claim, however, that she did not meddle in his affairs is disingenuous. The dutiful wife, who appeared in public only as a model of traditional propriety, exercised a great deal of private power. In 35 BC, Livia received her first official marks of status, the right to manage her own affairs (i.e., control her own financial resources) without a guardian and a grant of sacrosancitas, the inviolability that tribunes enjoyed; it gave her the same protection that Augustus had. She also received a public statue, an honor almost unique for a woman at that time. In 9 BC a second statue followed, ostensibly intended to console her on the recent death of her son Drusus and to call attention to her as a mother of important sons. Both Tiberius and Drusus had become more prominent because of their military commands. At the same date she was given the ius liberorum, the collection of rights given the mothers of four children, although she already possessed the emancipation that it conferred.