What Influence If any Livia, Agrippina, and Julia Domna had on their Husbands: Ancient History and Archaeology Assignment, TCD,

Question 1: What influence if any did the imperial empresses have on their husbands and sons.

Question 2: Did they have political agency?

INTRODUCTION

In this dissertation, I will be discussing what influence if any Livia, Agrippina, and Julia Domna had on their husbands and sons. The issue of what constitutes influence in these contexts is a contentious one. For the purposes of this dissertation, I will be defining it as women using their influence through their family connections by which politics was conducted in Rome. Even in the Middle Republic, it was widely understood that the elite women, though barred from holding political magistracies, could wield political power and influence. For example, Cornelia the mother of the Gracchi brothers interceded and succeeded in persuading her son Gaius against introducing a law to prevent a deposed magistrate from holding office. Cornelia received a statue honoring her as the mother of the Gracchi, the first confirmed statue of a woman in Rome.

The concentration of power into the hands of the princeps and his family meant that the potential of a small group of women to influence political events increased even further in the imperial period. Since power was transferred dynastically and not through election, there was an increasing emphasis on the women of the imperial household, both as conduits of dynastic legitimacy and as exerting soft power. This dissertation is an exploration of this shift, comparing ancient literary accounts, many written much later than what they describe and with considerable biases, to the appearance of three imperial women on contemporary coinage.

I am aware I have taken a huge leap from the Julio-Claudians to the Severan dynasty, I have chosen these three women, in particular, to investigate, as Livia and Agrippina set the bar and Julia Domna because she is later echoing it. A key issue is our reliance on the misogynistic writings and constructed ideas of elite writers such as Tacitus for our understanding of these empresses. These writings from the literary sources do not get us close to what these women thought and what they actually did. The sources are weaponizing these women and using them as weapons against their male relatives.

This does not mean that historical narratives are to be discounted, as this is the environment in which these women operated in. The problem we have is how on earth can we possibly understand these women when our main sources for them are written so long afterward and written from an elite male viewpoint who are using these women in a particular way. For this reason, I will be including not only literary sources but also coinage which was a contemporary product of the Roman state, to give a better and unbiased understanding of the role of these women in the Roman empire.

CHAPTER 1: Livia

Livia and her marriage to Augustus

Livia’s part in influencing the Augustan principate has been given little thought, the most likely cause of this neglect is the overwhelming attention paid to Augustus himself at the expense of all his associates. Women could not play a public role in the Roman state, no matter how much power and influence they might exercise informally behind the scenes. The fact that Livia survived for over sixty years at the very heart of Roman power, and was admired for many generations after her death, shows her ability to win the support, and affection of her contemporaries.

CHAPTER 2:

AGRIPPINA

After her marriage to Claudius, the country was transformed and complete obedience was accorded to Agrippina, who was according to Tacitus both “masculine and austere and generally arrogant in public, and her passion for money was unbounded, that she wanted it as a stepping stone to supremacy”. This is setting the tone of the writings of Tacitus and his misogynistic approach towards Agrippina. Tacitus sees Agrippina as both feminine and masculine and in both roles is portrayed as overstepping the mark, while being feminine is stating that Agrippina is in control of everything rather than being under the control of her husband.

In the writings of ancient sources, Agrippina is the representation of Claudius, who is portrayed as a man and emperor who is both weak physically and in character, and because he is weak in character, he allows himself to be controlled by his freedmen, his slaves, and his wife, if Claudius could not control his wife how could he be capable to manage the state. One of the construction of Agrippina in Tacitus as a dux feminaisAgrippina’s desire to secure power for herself through her husband and son, this is designed to imply the weakness of the emperor and a political system that could not control its women.

CHAPTER 3:

 Julia Domna

The harmony of the domestic life of the Severan Dynasty was of the utmost importance to the emperor, as Severus wanted to establish a continuity from the Antonine’s adopted predecessors and the earlier Augustan period. He wanted to emphasize the return to stability and renewal of the Roman state. As he claimed his right to the throne by means of civil war (not ancestral right) which followed a dubious adoption from Marcus Aurelius, this was to legitimize and to justify his place on the throne. Septimius Severus ultimate goal was to reassure the people that the empire was in safe and capable hands and one of the ways he did this was through the coinage he portrayed. It was essential for Severus to make the connections with the Antonine’s to achieve his ultimate goal.

CONCLUSION

The study of these women and what influence if any they had on their husbands and sons is not a question that can be answered with any satisfying degree of certainty. These women had no official political role to play and so invested in their sons, the ancient evidence relating to these women is often highly contradictory, the coins seem to recognize their position and influence as completely legitimate yet these women provoked strong emotions. These coins were designed not to honor these historical women but to publicize them as wife of the emperor and mother of the future emperors.