Julia (daughter of Caesar)

Julia from Promptuarii Iconum Insigniorum. The inscription reads: "Julia; Gaius Caesar's daughter; Pompey' wife."

Julia (Classical Latin: IVLIA•CAESARIS•FILIA), c. 76 BC–54 BC, was the daughter of Roman dictator Julius Caesar, by his first wife, Cornelia, and his only child in marriage.^[1] Julia became the fourth wife of Pompey the Great and was renowned for her beauty and virtue.

Life

Julia was probably born around 76 BC.^[2] After her mother died in 69 BC,^[3] she was raised by her paternal grandmother Aurelia Cotta. Her father engaged her to Quintus Servilius Caepio, who could have been Marcus Junius Brutus^[4] (Caesar's most famous assassin) who, after being adopted by his uncle Quintus Servilius Caepio, was known as Quintus Servilius Caepio Brutus for an unknown period of time. Caesar broke off this engagement and married her to Pompey in April 59 BC, with whom Caesar sought a strong political alliance in forming the First Triumvirate. This family-alliance of its two great chiefs was regarded as the firmest bond between Caesar and Pompey, and was accordingly viewed with much alarm by the optimates (the oligarchal party in Rome), especially by Marcus Tullius Cicero and Cato the Younger.^{[5][6][7][8][9][10][11]}

Pompey was supposedly infatuated with his bride. The personal charms of Julia were remarkable: she was a kind woman of beauty and virtue; and although policy prompted her union, and she was thirty years younger than her husband, she possessed in Pompey a devoted husband, to whom she was, in return, devotedly attached.^[12] A rumor suggested that the aging conqueror was losing interest in politics in favor of domestic life with his young wife. In fact, Pompey had been given the governorship of Hispania Ulterior, but had been permitted to remain in Rome to oversee the Roman grain supply as curator annonae, exercising his command through subordinates.^[13]

Julia died before a breach between her husband and father had become inevitable.^{[13][14][15][16]} At the election of aediles in 55 BC, Pompey was surrounded by a tumultuous mob, and his gown was sprinkled with blood of the rioters. A slave carried the stained toga to his house on the Carinae and was seen by Julia. Imagining that her husband was slain, she fell into premature labor,^[13][17] and her constitution received an irreparable shock. In August of the next year, 54 BC, she died in child birth,^[18] and her infant—a son, according to some writers,^[19][20][21] a daughter, according to others,^[13][22]—did not survive and died along with Julia.^[23] Caesar was in Britain, according to Seneca,^[24] when he received the tidings of Julia's death.^[25]

Pompey wished her ashes to repose in his favourite Alban villa, but the Roman people, who loved Julia, determined they should rest in the field of Mars (Campus Martius). For permission a special decree of the senate was necessary, and Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, one of the consuls of 54 BC, impelled by his hatred for Pompey and Caesar, procured an interdict from the tribunes. But the popular will prevailed, and, after listening to a funeral oration^[26] in the forum, the people placed her urn in the field of Mars.^[27] Ten years later the official pyre for Caesar's cremation would be erected near the tomb of his daughter,^[28][29] but the people intervened after the funeral oration by Marcus Antonius and cremated Caesar's body in the Forum.

After Julia’s death, Pompey and Caesar’s alliance began to fade, which resulted in Caesar's civil war. It was allegedly remarked, as a singular omen, that on the day Augustus entered Rome as Caesar's adoptive son (in May 44 BC), the monument of Julia was struck by lightning.^[30] Caesar himself vowed a ceremony to her manes, which he exhibited in 46 BC as extensive funeral games including gladiatorial combats.^[20][31][32] The date of the ceremony was chosen to coincide with the ludi Veneris Genetricis on September 26,^[33] the festival in honor of Venus Genetrix, the divine ancestress of the Julians.^[34]

Chronology

• 76 BC — Julia's birth
• 69 BC–68 BC — Cornelia (Julia's mother and Caesar's first wife) dies in childbirth
• 59 BC — marriage to Pompey
• 55 BC — Julia has a miscarriage
• 54 BC — Julia dies in child birth, her child only survives a few days

Ancestry

Cultural depictions of Julia

Literature

• In Caesar's Women by Colleen McCullough, Julia is one of the three main female characters depicting in the novel, along with her grandmother Aurelia Cotta and her father's mistress Servilia.
• In Dante Alighieri's epic poem The Divine Comedy (14th century), Julia was encountered by Dante in the first circle of Hell, the Limbo (where rest souls who are not in torture, the pagans that lived righteous existences):^[35]

[...] The foremost circle that surrounds the abyss. [...]

[...] I knew, who in that Limbo were suspended. [...]

[...] Lucretia, Julia, Marcia, and Cornelia, [...]

The Italian Renaissance poet Carlo Marsuppini wrote a eulogy about Piccarda Bueri, in which he compared her to Julia. He names her as an example of great marital devotion.^[36]

Television

• In Julius Caesar (2002 television movie), the role of young Julia is played by Alexandra Morris,^[37][38] while the role of grown-up Julia is played by Italian actress Nicole Grimaudo.^[39]
• Julia's death is portrayed in the premiere episode of HBO's 2005 television series Rome. However, Julia actually died in childbirth in 54 BC, at least 2 years before the events of this episode.

Notes

References

Primary sources

• Livy, Periochae.
• Tacitus, Annals.
• Appian, Civil Wars.
• Cicero
  • Letters to Atticus.
  • Oration for Publius Quinctius.
• Plutarch, Parallel Lives
  • Life of Caesar.
  • Life of Pompey.
  • Life of Cato the Younger.
• Suetonius, Life of Julius Caesar.
• Seneca, To Marcia, On consolation.
• Augustine of Hippo, The city of God.
• Valerius Maximus, Factorum et dictorum memorabilium libri iv.6.4

Secondary sources

• This entry incorporates public domain text originally from:
  • William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, 1870.
  • William Smith (ed.), A New Classical Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography, Mythology and Geography, 1851.
• Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867.
• Thomas Robert Shannon Broughton, Magistrates of the Roman Republic, vol. 2, 132, New York, (1951–1986).
• Matthias Gelzer, Caesar, Politician and Statesman, (translated by Peter Needham), Oxford, 1968.
• Pernis, Maria Grazia and Adams, Laurie (2006). Lucrezia Tornabuoni de' Medici and the Medici family in the fifteenth century. Peter Lang Publishing, Inc, New York.  CS1 maint: Uses authors parameter (link)
• John T. Ramsey, A. Lewis Licht, Comet of 44 B.C. and Caesar's Funeral Games, Oxford University Press US, 1997.