Julia the Elder – The Disgrace of the Roman Imperial Court (Part 2)

Julia the Elder, an adventurous and scandalous
daughter of Augustus, and a great
disappointment to the ideal of austere and virtuous
living example he was trying to promote

Before moving on, it is important to note that three years into Julia’s marriage to Agrippa, in 18 BC, Augustus introduced a series of highly controversial laws aimed at promoting virtue represented by Imperial women and stamp out the vice of the Roman aristocracy.

In response to a decline in marriage rate among the Roman elite, leges Iuliae (“Julian Laws”) were introduced strict new measures aimed at deterring laxity and promoting marriage and procreation through offer of incentives. The law also achieves a related agenda of strengthening the social hierarchy through preservation of the integrity of upper class families by restricting marriage between unequal class groupings. Lex Iulia de adulteriis, a centerpiece legislation, made adultery a criminal offence. Women caught having sex with anyone but her husband can be killed by her father along with her lover, and her husband was obliged to divorce her at once. If found guilty, the woman and her lover would most likely face exile as punishment. In contrast, a man will only be guilty of adultery if the woman he was involved with was married. Such was the norm in the society which has always favoured male ascendancy, while women took the blunt of almost all the repercussions. In addition to the law on adultery, other laws existed to offer incentives to married couples, especially the women, who produced three or more offspring. This again encouraged the women of the Roman Empire to imitate Julia’s child-bearing example (Julia already had several children by this time). Overall, the new laws promised a reintroduction to the long-forgotten traditional family values, the “good old days” when women were chaste and virtuous and adultery considered an abhorrence. 

Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa
Augustus' son-in-law and greatest general,
he was Julia's second husband and  the father
ofher five children, two of whom were
considered by Augustus as potential heirs

However, thing won’t be going well for the Imperial family. Augustus found himself vexed with the questions of succession after the death of second his son-in-law and most trusted friend and general, Agrippa, in Naples in 12 BC, the subsequently death of two of Julia’s sons and.  In fact, his real nemesis, an antagonist to his attempt to introduce and revive all the traditional values he deemed crucial to the image of the Imperial family, was quite shockingly, his own daughter. It is indeed irony at its best! The girl whom Augustus has trained to represent his idea of ideal womanhood, the only woman who appeared thus far on coins minted at Rome, turned out to be a good-time girl, a “Clodia” of the Imperial era, who must have held private grievance against her upbringing marked by strict supervision and rigorous education. A register was even kept of what she did and said! If Augustus was anything but extravagant, Julia was a complete opposite, and indeed a great disappointment. Rumours and whispers about Julia’s affairs with various prominent men were flying around Rome while she still was married to Agrippa. When asked how it was that all her children resembled Agrippa when she had so many other lovers, Julia wittingly replied “passengers are never allowed on board until the hold is full”.       

Several confrontations between father and daughter were recorded over the issue of her rather ‘revealing’ dress and ‘unrefined’ deportment. Having admonished her on the extravagance of her dress and notoriety of her companions, Augustus was somewhat disappointed and offended when she visited him one day in a risqué costume. The next day, however, she came in a modest costume with a prim expression. Her father was indeed delighted at this display of proper decorum, and when confronted with a remark that this dress is “much more becoming in the daughter of Augustus”, she replied “for today, I dressed to meet my father’s eyes; yesterday it was for my husband’s”.

Tiberius, Livia's eldest son and Julia's third
husband; his marriage with Julia irretrievably
broke down after the birth of their stillborn son 

After the death of Agrippa in 12 BC, Julia once again found herself widowed. Knowing how she could cause him embarrassment and wishing to increase his options in the choice of succession, Augustus decided that it was now finally time to marry his daughter off to his wife Livia’s eldest son, Tiberius. Tiberius was at the time living in conjugal bliss with his wife, Vipsania, ironically the daughter of Agrippa from his previous marriage. He was enraged at the decision. He was devoted to Vipsania, the mother to his child, Drusus Minor. The arrangement was unhappy, and the sight of Vipsania in the street one day after their (forced) divorce was enough to drive Tiberius into tears.  Some sources suggested that their relationship deteriorated (especially after the birth of their stillborn son) to the point that Tiberius could endure Julia no longer, retiring from public life to the island of Rhodes, a decision much frowned upon by Augustus.

Julia became ever more uncontrollable each passing day. Augustus used to remark that “he had two spoiled daughters to put up with – Rome and Julia”. Indeed, Valleius Paterculus wrote:

“That her immediate family were so distinguished mattered not at all to…Julia. Everything she did was polluted by extravagance and lust, and there was nothing so disgraceful that she did not do it, or have it done to her. She was accustomed to judge the greatness of her fortune by the latitude is allowed for her wrongdoing, and she set no limits on the latitude she allowed herself.”

Julia’s dissipated lifestyle is starkly contrasted with her father’s moral crusade. When chastised about how she kept company with only dissipated young men, she impudently replied “These friends of mine will be old too when I’m old”. When urged to learn from the examples set by Livia, she repeatedly refused to conform to such austere way of living, retorting to a friend one day that “[my father] forgets he is Caesar, but I remember that I’m Caesar’s daughter”.

House of Augustus on the Palatine, from where he projected
the image of his family as a champion of virtue represented
by the Imperial women; sadly, this image would later be
irreparably tarnished after the scandal of Julia

After the last straw was finally spent, Julia’s fall from grace was truly spectacular.  The year was 2 BC, when Augustus was awarded with the title pater patriae (“Father of the Country”) by the Senate. Sumptuous celebrations were held. The mood was overall festive. But no one sensed the approaching storm. No sooner was the event over than Augustus issued a statement to be read to the Senate, disowning his daughter Julia. Words have indeed reached him that she was suspected of committing adultery with a series of men. This included the accusation that she even had sex on the Rostra, the very platform on which her father had proclaimed his laws on marriage and adultery in 18 BC!! Other charges include that Julia prostituted herself near the statue of the Satyr Marsyas in the forum, where she offered to take on all customers. Fortune could not be more cruel to Augustus. Indeed, such was his shame that when a freedwoman of Julia named Phoebe hanged herself in the wake of the scandal, he is said to have remarked that “I would rather have been Phoebe’s daughter”. The scandal dealt a devastating blow to Augustus’ moral campaign. If a man couldn’t keep his daughter under his rein and compel her obedience, how could he expect to rule his Empire? It was a reality check for Augustus that his family is no longer above suspicion in the moral purity stakes. In the end, he had to rest content with having his daughter banished to the island of Pandateria, where she met her end a few years later due to malnutrition (Tiberius had cut all his financial support) a few months after her father’s death.  After all, few could imagine the amount the betrayal Augustus must have felt at his daughter’s failure to live up to the standard he set for his family.

The case of Julia provides a cautionary tale to all other Julio-Claudian women following in her footsteps. Unfortunately, few others would heed this caution (history always repeats itself!). She was the first Julio-Claudian woman to suffer this fate, and unsurprisingly she won’t be the last. Indeed, the cracks in the seemingly impenetrable façade of Rome Imperial family have only begun.