CHAPTER SIX HISTORICAL F1GURES: I.MA, AGRIPPINA AND OCTAVIA

The three most famous portraits of a Roman stepmother--Tacitus' portrayal of Livia and Agrippina, and Plutarch's of Octavia, sister of Augustus, are all heavily influenced by the literary stereotype of the saeva noverca. The depiction of Livia as a poisoning stepmother is pure fiction; the stepmotherly qualities of Agrippina, though she closely resembles the stereotype in many ways, are exaggerated; in the case of Octavia, by contrast, the fact that she does not act in accordance with the behaviour expected of a stepmother is exploited in order to tum her into a paradigm of womanly and stepmotherly rectitude.

A. Livia

In the first book of the Annals Tacitus describes Augustus' wife Livia as "an oppressive mother to the nation, an oppressive stepmother to the house of the Caesars." 1 Although the historian is here ostensibly reporting criticisms made against Augustus after his death, the re• mark is consistent with his portrayal of Livia in general, and receives some support in the accounts of Dio Cassius2 and, to a lesser extent, Suetonius. Seen from the advantage of hindsight, Livia's family circumstances certainly resemble a classic 'stepmother' situation. 3 Married to a man with a child (Julia) from a previous marriage,4 having two sons from her own first marriage5 but no surviving offspring from the second, she lived to see the elder of her two sons, Tiberius, enter into the

1 Ann. 1.10.5 "gravis in rem publicam mater, gravis domui Caesarum noverca". 2 For Dio presenting Livia as stepmother: 55.32.2 (Agrippa Postumus spoke ill of Livia as a stepmother). 3 For the historical Livia see Kornemann (1942) 179---221, Balsdon (1962) 68ff., Purcell (1986), Bauman (1992) 102-5, 124-29, 131-38. 4 On her marriage to Octavian in 38BC, Livia became stepmother to a one• year-old girl, Julia, the child of Augustus' first marriage to Scribonia. 5 At the time of her marriage to Augustus, Tiberius was three years old, while the younger son, Drusus, was born three months after the wedding. HISTORICAL FIGURES: LIVIA, AGRIPPINA AND OCTAVIA 177 inheritance of his stepfather. In the meantime, others with greater claims died young and unexpectedly: these included two sons of her stepdaughter Julia by her second husband Agrippa (Gaius and Lucius) who had been adopted by Augustus when young and brought up in his household as his heirs, and twenty five years earlier, Julia's first husband Marcellus, the nephew of Augustus, rumoured at the time to be his choice as heir. Tiberius achieved supremacy, then, because of the deaths of his competitors. Moreover, after he became emperor in 14 AD his position only became secure after the demise of two others who were potential threats to himself and, as successors after him, to his son Drusus: Agrippa Postumus, younger brother of Gaius and Lucius, adopted by Augustus at the same time as Tiberius (4AD) but exiled in 7AD, and Germanicus, son of Tiberius' brother Drusus, whom Tiberius had himself been compelled to adopt. Of these, the former perished in exile as a result of a mysterious letter which had been sent from the Palace ordering his execution, while Germanicus' death occasioned accusations of murder, one of those involved (Plancina, wife of Piso) being a close friend of Livia. Clearly much circumstantial evidence was available which could be exploited by the enemies of Livia and Tiberius.Tacitus, Dio and (to a lesser extent) Suetonius, all bear witness to a tradition hostile to Livia in which she becomes a scheming murderess who promotes the interests of her son by systematically destroying all those who stand in his way.6 Rumours are reported that she was responsible for the deaths of Marcellus, Gaius and Lucius, Augustus himself (to provide Livia with a motive, there was a story that he was about to reinstate the exiled Agrippa Postumus), and Agrippa Postumus. In general, the case against Livia is decidedly suspect. 7 Accusations are always

6 The tradition probably started early: see Goodyear (1972) 111; Levick (1976) 271 n. 32, says that most of the crimes imputed to Livia may be credited to the imagination of Scribonia and her supporters, and to other detractors of Tiberius: Livia needed only to exist to incur hatred. Hostility towards Livia would also have been found in the memoirs of Agrippina the Younger, which we know Tacitus to have used in describing an incident in the life of Agrippina's mother (Ann. 4.53.2; cf. Questa (1963) 173 and n. 60). This source may underlie especially Tacitus' de• scription of the antagonism between Livia and Agrippina the Elder; in fact, given that the latter was Livia's step-grandaughter, the idea of presenting Livia as a rwverca may have come from there (cf. Koniger (1966) 47). 7 In the case of Marcellus, the accusation that Livia murdered him is recorded only by Dio (53.33.4), and in the form of a rumour. Tacitus does not even hint that Marcellus was murdered: had he found in his sources any suggestion at all that Livia may have been responsible, he would surely have seized on the opportunity to