Livia Drusilla, Ancient Rome’s (Allegedly) Murderous Empress

Vulgar History Podcast

Livia Drusilla, Ancient Rome’s (Allegedly) Murderous Empress

July 25, 2025

Hi everyone, before we get into today’s episode, I just wanted to acknowledge that I know there’s a lot of listeners in the United States. A lot of messed-up things are happening right now, and so I just wanted to share some ways you can help.

So, right now, in the United States, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE, has been overseeing a mass deportation campaign affecting hundreds of thousands of people through detentions, confinements, and expulsions. Their stated goal is to arrest 3,000 people per day. To attain this number, people are being taken from public places like churches, schools, and hospitals. The people being targeted are predominantly from a Hispanic background. Families are being separated, and people are living in fear. This is a horrific campaign affecting people all across America.

I want to highlight some organizations working to help those being affected. Today, I want to highlight CHIRLA, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights in Los Angeles. This is one of the largest and most effective advocates for immigrant rights, organizing, educating, and defending immigrants and refugees in the streets, in the courts, and in the halls of power. The work includes helping with legal fees for migrants, and lately, they have also been helping with fees for those arrested during anti-ICE protests. You can donate to support their work at CHIRLA.org.

Enjoy today’s episode.

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Ann:Hello, and welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women’s history comedy podcast. My name is Ann Foster, and this is part two of a duet of episodes. Our voices are so melodic, you’d think we were trained in ancient Rome. Last time we were talking about what was ancient Rome like, especially for women living there? And that was really setting the stage for this, part two, which is where we’re talking about one specific woman from the Roman era, and her name is Livia. And my guest is Gina. Welcome back, Gina Berry.

Gina:Thank you.

Ann:So, we’re talking about Livia, and before we get into explaining her whole deal, I need to… Longtime listeners of the show will know that about a year ago, I got really obsessed with this 1976 British miniseries called I, Claudius. Have you ever watched it?

Gina:I have not, because I haven’t been able to find it. So, the couple of places I looked, I couldn’t find it, but it is absolutely on my list of must-see.

Ann:I believe it is on Acorn TV, app. So, I watched that, and I was like, “Wow! This is so good.“ And I loved… It was just so, like, messy and trashy, but all the actors in it are, like, the finest Shakespearean actors. So, it’s kind of like Downton Abbey in that way, where you’re like, oh, this is just like a messy soap opera, but the acting is so good, you’re like, “This feels like Shakespeare or something!” Where it’s like, no, this is just like people, these are ridiculous plot twists. Anyway, in that show, I, Claudius, the miniseries, it’s from 1976 and it’s based on a 1934 novel by Robert Graves, also called I, Claudius. And you’ll understand why I’m explaining this in a second, because this all sets up what the modern understanding of who Livia is comes from.

So, in 1934, Robert Graves was like a penniless author, and he’s like, “I need to get rich quick. I need to write a book really quickly, and it needs to sell a gazillion copies. I know!” He could read Latin, so he’s like, “I’m going to translate these old sources and I’m going to write a history of ancient Rome, but I’m going to include all the messiest, sexiest, most debaucherous rumours, and I’ll make it seem like that’s true.” So, this was his salacious novel he was writing just to make money, and he made it as salacious as possible to make as much money as possible, which he did. But then—to the surprise of, I think, him—it became accepted as kind of like, “Wow, this is what ancient Rome was like.”

It became a popular book. And then in 1976, this miniseries came out. It was the Bridgerton of its time; everybody in every country was watching I, Claudius, and it really… Like, since then, people, like teachers, show it in their history classes and in their Latin classes. The book I, Claudius, and then the miniseries I, Claudius, presents Livia as this straight-up serial killer, murderess. But her performance in the miniseries is by this Welsh actress called Siân Phillips, and it’s amazing. I think she won the BAFTA for it. Like, she’s so good at this character. So, when you and I decided to talk about Livia, I was like, “Amazing! I love this murderous, badass killer.” And then I started reading, and I was like, “Oh no!” Yet again, the sources… [Gina chuckles] The sources, it’s Cleopatra all over again.

Gina:I love the “Yet again…” [laughs]

Ann:Yet again, yet again. Just, like, the male historians of ancient Rome hated women so much. And then, this was really exacerbated by… Robert Graves did this translation in 1934, and Robert Graves had a really fucked up relationship with women, especially the strong, powerful women. So, he took these rumours from ancient Rome, and then he added even more salacious detail to it. Like, he added some more murders to her dossier that weren’t even in the original sources. Then that book became popular, the miniseries was popular. You were telling me just a minute ago there was this new series called Domina that also, like… So, it’s like the understood narrative of Livia’s whole life, because of these sources, is that she is this, like, murderess who just cleared a murderous path so that her shitty son Tiberius could become the emperor. And it turns out, the story is more complicated than that.

Gina:It is. Very much more.

Ann:So, part of me is disappointed [Gina laughs] because I thought we’d just be talking about this badass, poisoning murderer, but I’m even more excited because we can talk about how and why her reputation became what it was. Her story is so much more nuanced and so much more interesting than just, like, she was this lady who murdered a bunch of people.

Gina:I would not put it past her that she did murder a few, but it is definitely not in the way or on the level that men have tried to portray her over the years.

Ann:We’re going to go through her life, like, birth to death, basically. But what one of the sources I was reading suggested, and this rings true to me, is other women from this period, other imperial women who were written about by the haters— And this is, like, this period of time, people 200 years later look back at it as like this debaucherous, awful time so they really tried to like really build up how horrible it was, so they tried to make everyone sound as horrible as possible. And where there were other imperial women—like Messalina and like Livilla—who had documented adulterous situations, they just made that even more extreme. But Livia was the perfect Roman wife; there was never a whisper that she ever had an affair. So, they’re like, “Well, we can’t slander her by calling her a slut.” So, what they did but they ended up doing was like “Well, let’s just slander her by calling her a secret, you know, nagging wife behind the scenes, murdering all these people,” because she portrayed herself so perfectly, as a perfect Roman wife, like, there was nothing else they could use against her.

Gina:She really was the epitome of what a Roman woman should be, and nothing I’ve ever read tells me differently. It would be quite a burden to me, it’d be quite a burden to have everyone always say, basically, how perfect you were, at least when it came to that. And so, I think that there were probably times where in other areas, she may have slipped up because she was so tired of the burden of being the perfect Roman wife, perfect Roman woman, and more power to her…

Ann:She was Empress for 50 years!

Gina:Yep!

Ann:Like, she survived, she made it work. And what I want to say before we get into really talking about her story is where I feel like Gina, you and I would not have survived in that role…

Gina:Oh, hell no.

Ann:Is because you and I both have a real resting bitch face problem.

Gina:Yes, we do.

Ann:We both have a situation of, like, our feelings are portrayed on our faces. When someone’s being foolish in front of me, or asking me something ridiculous, like, I’m not smiling pleasantly. I look fully like Dorothy from the Golden Girls, just like, I have no poker face, and I think you’re the same.

Gina:My mom used to tell me when I was a kid that nine times out of ten, when I got punished for something, it was just because of the look on my face, because she just… They would know what was going through my head; they would know that I probably wasn’t regretful for whatever it was I had done. But that goes to the point of they’re always trying to keep people in their place, and so they knew that I had a rebel spirit. They knew that it was always going to show on my face. And that happened, I think a lot, with a lot of women throughout time that we might not verbalize it but we don’t necessarily have to, because you’re going to see it in our eyes, you’re going to see it on our face, you’re going to see it in our body language, and I would have never survived then. They would have strung me up so fast because I would have been a complete rebellious woman, and we can’t have that in our society.

Ann:Even if I was pretending to be not myself, it would be like, “I see on your face that you think I’m wrong, and now I’m going to kill you, Ann.” Like, you and I could not do this, Livia, like, she was a survivor, and I think part of that skill was she could put on that smiling, like, “I’m the good wifey” mask.

Gina:You know what? I admire people that can do that because that’s never been me. I’ve actually seen pictures of myself as a kid, and I’m like, yeah.

Ann:Me too! [laughs]

Gina:That right there, that was the “Why the hell are you taking another picture of me?” look.

Ann:I saw like just a family video of something from, like, a class trip. It’s this class and we’re, like, listening to a tour guide or something. I’m like, 12 years old, and the look of utter disdain on my face, I was like, “I didn’t know that’s what I look like.” [both laugh] Oh no!

Gina:Just think about the level that you would have to put that mask on back then. I mean, we can get away with that now because people are just like “Oh, she’s just a bitch, whatever,” and they keep it moving. But back then, you had to always keep that mask on, and it had to always be at that pristine level of masks in order to be able to survive the way that she did, and basically, get away with some of the things that she did. If there was ever a crack in the armour, that was it. To have to be that on all the time, I just wouldn’t be able to handle it.

Ann:Well, and the fact it’s like… Like, it makes me think about someone in today’s world, like Kate Middleton, for instance, she was just at Ascot a couple weeks ago, and it’s, like, she sneezed and people are like “Oh my god, she sneezed.” And I’m like, can you imagine being at such a level of scrutiny of having to appear perfect for so long that you sneeze in public and it’s, like, international headlines? Like, “Why is she sneezing? Is she sick again? Is she allergic to horses? Why is she sneezing?”

Gina:Or maybe she’s allergic to him. [chuckles]

Ann:Hah! Hope so. And that’s the level of scrutiny she’s at now. But for Livia, the level scrutiny she is at it’s like, “If you don’t keep this mask on, you will be executed.” Like, your husband is a tyrannical madman, and he will kill you if you let that mask slip.

Gina:And the sheer number of years that they were married, and she wasn’t even married to him all of her adult life, but she was married to him for, like, what? 50 years? 51 years? That’s a very long time to have to play that role. I would fail within two months, if I even got that far.

Ann:Absolutely. Most people would. So, if nothing else, like, this is impressive about her.

Gina:Yes. You have to be impressed with her, just off of that fact alone.

Ann:We’re going to explain who she was, where she came from, but I think in the last episode that you and I just recorded, we were talking a bit about people in ancient Roman times. They were living, like us, in unprecedented times. There is kind of, like, constant war, chaos, all this stuff happening, and for some people, that just, like, broke them entirely. And for Livia, I think she had this strength of character that it just gave her these survival skills to develop this mask, to be able to, you know, hide what she was really thinking or doing. I think she lived through all this stuff, and it made her… It helped her develop these skills, where other people just destroyed them.

Gina:I don’t want to say that it hardened her because that kind of turns her into an uncaring person, and as we’ll see later on, that just wasn’t her. But definitely, she was very good at compartmentalizing, and I think that she really kind of was one of those people that was able to accept the fact right away that “There isn’t anything I can do to change what just happened, so I need to put that aside, and I need to keep moving, but I need to learn from that thing that happened, and I need to keep moving.”

I think she was a master at that and, like you said, not everybody could do that; they would just crumble. You know, there’s some things that has happened in people’s lives where you’ll find them in a corner just curled up in a ball and they can’t handle it. And then, there’s other people that you think, “Oh man, they’re just so cold, they’re so distant, they’re acting like it didn’t even happen.” But it’s just a matter of how you’re able to separate things in your mind, and I think she was a master at separating things in her mind is what kept her going, what kept her moving forward and continuing to make things happen because she realized what she couldn’t could not control, so she just did the best with what she had.

Ann:And I think part of it, too, is that she’s growing up in this ancient Roman culture we talked about last time, where she knew, like, as a woman, she could never have independence, she could never have true power on her own. But knowing that, it’s like, “Well, how can I leverage my situation to my benefit? How can I work within…” She wasn’t trying to break society around her; she wasn’t trying to be a rebel because she knew that would get her killed. But it’s just kind of like, “How can I work within this and be true to myself, and try and accomplish some stuff?” and she did. So, I think that’s also a sort of like… It’s admirable to see. You know, it’s like, what is the thing? It’s like “Grant me the power to change what I can’t,” or whatever. It’s like, she knew she wasn’t going to change Roman society.

Gina:Exactly.

Ann:One woman was not going to do that, but she knew that she could work within it, and that’s what she figured out.

Gina:And she was at a ranking level to where she was able to work within it, you know? We talked about the class system the last time, and you know, if you were at a lower class within ancient Rome, there was nothing you could do; you had to just live your life, hope for the best. She was at a high enough class, a high enough station, high enough everything, to where she was able to figure out ways of working within it.

Ann:Yeah. So, we’re just going to go through, like, you did your research, I did my research. We’ll just interrupt each other, like, when you have a fact, please throw it in there. So, what I’ll say is that her name is Livia Drusilla, she was born in 58 before Common Era, so like, 58 years before year 0. And she was a member of the Claudian family. We mentioned last time, that was one of the major, long-standing, powerful families in Rome.

Gina:She was part of more than just that, though, because her father was actually adopted into the Drusus family, and Drusus was just a step below the Claudian family, because Claudian and Julian were the top two classes of families. Drusus was right below them. Her father was already Claudian, and he was adopted into the Drusus family, so he kind of had prestige, and his family roots went way back to, like, the beginning of Rome. So, that really set her up to be, I mean, just born into a high station, just right off the bat.

Ann:Well, and if we’re talking about—like we talked last time, and I’m so glad we did, about the society and the culture—it’s like, this is a young woman who people are going to want to marry. Marrying her is going to elevate whatever man she ends up with because this important like bloodline was everything, the family name was everything, and she came from the family.

Gina:Yes, exactly.

Ann:Oh, I do want to mention that this book that I got a lot of information from, and I really enjoyed, it’s called Unfortunately, She Was a Nymphomaniac. Wait, let me look up the author’s name, I forgot to write that down, because it’s really good. Unfortunately… My computer auto-completed it. I’ve typed in that sentence so many times. It’s a book by Joan Smith, A New History of Rome’s Imperial Women. So, it’s like, a group biography of various different women from Roman history, and what I appreciated about it is that it’s looking, the way that I try to do history is like, from the woman in, using them as the focal point, and then the men are in the background. So, I got some good information here about the, well, just the trajectory of the writing about Livia through to I, Claudius, kind of how she developed the reputation she developed.

A lot of that is from a writer from ancient Roman times called Tacitus, who another writer described is like “He hated women the way that most people hate wasps.” Like, Tacitus just hated women. So, he never actually said “Livia was a serial killer. She killed all these people,” but he’s always like, “Some people said perhaps Livia had a role in this.” He’s always just kind of like “Ehhh, ehhh?” [both chuckle] So, he was the one who really hated her, and then Robert Graves translated that, and then here we all are, assuming this.

So, part of what I got from this book, Unfortunately, She Was a Nymphomaniac, was just sort of the context of, like, teen Livia. And this kind of puts it in a place and time that people might be familiar with, which is the assassination of Julius Caesar. So, she was 14 years old when that happened, and that just sent everything into chaos because this is where Rome… We didn’t get into this last time but like, it was the republic, right? It was led by these three guys, then Julius Caesar is killed by Brutus, then the other two guys are left, one of them is Mark Antony. Julius Caesar’s heir was his adopted nephew, Octavian, who is later known as Augustus. And just, everything suddenly turns into, like, a civil war of, like, who supports Octavian? Who supports Mark Antony?

Gina:Which caused the vast majority of everything that we are currently taught about Roman history, is it really does start at that point, when Julius Caesar is killed. We obviously know things that happened before then, but the height of what is taught about ancient Rome takes place at the time that he’s killed on the Senate floor, because that’s when, basically, all hell broke loose in Rome, and that’s when everything started to shift for everyone.

Ann:And where this eventually ends is that Octavian, AKA Augustus, ends up taking over, and this is where Rome shifts from a republic to an empire. So, instead of having these, kind of, three guys, the consuls, leading it, you have one guy and then his heir, and then it becomes… He becomes a king, like, it becomes a dynasty instead of just an elected position anymore. So, that’s a major shift in Roman history.

Livia, so she’s 14 years old when Julius Caesar is killed, and that’s around the same time that she is married to her first husband, because as we said last time, like, 40-year-old men marrying 14-year-old girls, that’s what Rome is all about. But also, I think it’s just like, she was such a valuable wife.

Gina:She was because she brought so much family history, so much stature, so much class with her that, I mean, I would assume she probably had quite a few suitors, so the fact that Tiberius won out, because it was ultimately her father’s choice on who she married. So, I’ve always wondered, what did Tiberius bring to the table where he won? Because he could not have been her only suitor, it’s just not possible.

Ann:I think, and I do want to clarify for everybody that ancient Rome (and this drives me crazy), has like three names. Everybody has the same names. So yes, her husband is named Tiberius. That is also the name of her son she’s going to later on have. So, Tiberius One, he’s the dad.

Gina:We can call him Tiberius Nero.

Ann:Oh my gosh, wait. So, no, I think her dad… Oh no, sorry. Her dad is not called Tiberius, her husband is called Tiberius. There’s a lot of repeated names. Anyway, so it’s just like, in the wake of the assassination of Julius Caesar, she, a 15-year-old girl, is married to this guy. So, her father at that time sided with the assassins, like, he sided with killing Julius Caesar. But then, as the politics kind of played out, it’s kind of like, that’s not the side that you should have sided with, and then the whole family has to flee, basically. They’re on the run.

Gina:So, the reason why they had to flee was because they were unprescripted. What it was is Octavian and Antony, and Lepidus, I believe, was the other guy that was part of the newly created council, they decided that they needed money to fight the war that they knew was coming up to chase down and kill the killers of Julius Caesar. And so, what they did was the rich noblemen that sided with the killers, they had their wealth taken from them, and they were killed. The family was basically thrown into poverty, and their family name was dirt, and so on and so forth. What happened was Livia’s father was one of them that was very popular, very wealthy. He sided with the killers, but they didn’t kill him. They just took his money.

Ann:I think, I would assume because he’s so rich and powerful, they wanted to keep him around for political reasons or something?

Gina:They probably didn’t kill him because of the families that he belonged to.

Ann:The Julio-Claudian, yeah.

Gina:And so, he left and joined the armies to fight against Octavian and Antony. She was left with her husband, but her husband also backed the wrong side.

Ann:Sorry, side note: She’s left, 16 and pregnant.

Gina:Yes. And now, since they backed the wrong side, they had to leave too. So, her father ended up going someplace completely different than she did, but at that point, what we talked about before was that women weren’t in charge of anything, so either your father was in charge of your life or your husband was in charge of your life. So, the two men that would have been in charge of her life all of a sudden have to be on the run, and she’s 16 and pregnant. And it’s like, how does that not break a person, number one? I’m sorry, me, at 16, pregnant, and both people that I would look up to to protect me are on the run. How does this even work?

Ann:Exactly. This is where we started seeing just, like, what a remarkable strength of character, what an unusual person this is. She goes through this, she has the baby, it’s her son, his name is Tiberius (the same as his dad), and they’re on the run. This was happening.

Gina:I believe they were in Sicily, I think they went to Sicily. But again, you’re on the run and you have a baby. Your husband and your father could be killed at any time because they’ve backed the wrong people. You don’t know for sure if you can even trust the people that you’re staying with, basically in a foreign land, because Sicily is not Rome; she wouldn’t have known anyone there, her husband wouldn’t have known too many people there either. So, it’s just like, you would be in constant fear of your life, of your baby’s life. She might not have cared about the guy, who knows? Because I’ve never read anything where they were in love, so she probably was like “Screw that mother fucker. He can die, I don’t care. Just somehow protect me and my son.”

So, that… I mean, talk about serious postpartum depression after going through all of that. The fact that she didn’t even she didn’t have a miscarriage during all of that is amazing in and of itself because that would have been a hard trip to take. Now, you hop on a plane and go somewhere. You were on horseback or you were in some sort of wagon, and you’re going that distance, I mean…

Ann:You’re pregnant, or you just gave birth, or you have a baby. And this is not just like she had to make one run for her life, and it took one night. This is, like, a very long period of time it goes place, to place, to place, to place. During the midst of all of this, her father kills himself.

Gina:Yes, he lost a battle at Philippi, and he realized that it was just never going to work out for him. So, he did what he was he considered to be the honourable thing.

Ann:It’s that noble Roman thing, right?

Gina:And he took his own life, and I don’t even know, I don’t know that I’ve read… I don’t know how long it took for her to find out that that happened. But from what I’ve read, from what I know, she actually had a pretty good relationship with her father. So, she was allowed to do things that a lot of girls her age weren’t allowed; she was allowed to learn at a higher level than others were, she was able to study a lot more of Greek history and learn other languages. She was allowed to be smart beyond what women were expected, and that could have only happened if her father allowed it. So, that would have been devastating to find out that her father… I mean, she would have understood why he did it, but that still would have hurt her deeply that her father was gone in that way.

Ann:Yeah. And she’s still, just to keep track, like, still on the run. So, this is a year. A year on the run, she’s got a year-old child. So, just like, Gina, you’re a mother. Imagine being on the run with an infant for a year.

Gina:I can’t because I think I barely survived that first year with both of them. [laughs]

Ann:No, I mean, just emotionally, physically, everything. On top of that, to just be on the run for a year of your life.

Gina:I mean, Ann, I think about this as well, a lot of women in her position they probably would have abandoned the child and went off to survive on their own because it’s a lot easier to survive without a child. It’s a lot easier to survive without another person, period. But to have a small child like that, an infant like that, kudos to her that she didn’t abandon the kid because a lot of women in that position would have.

Ann:Well, and in her sort of like wealthy position too, ordinarily, she would have a lot of assistance. Like, if she was not on the run for a year, she would have had all these household servants. But because she didn’t want to be identified as who she was, and who her father was, and who her husband was, she had to travel with just one servant so she wouldn’t look like she was as important as she was. So, she had some help but not as much as she would have ordinarily had, and as much as I would argue any new teenage mother…

Gina:Would need.

Ann:… would need. I just want to give you this tidbit. Towards the end of 41 BC, so her baby is a year old, she spends her 18th birthday, she’s trapped, there’s a siege of the city of Perusia. So, Octavian seizes the city, cuts off all of their food supply, so everyone in the city is just starving, it’s a shitty situation. Eventually, they enter the city, they slaughter 300 of the city’s leading citizens and burn it to the ground. She’s there with her baby, and somehow she escapes. This is her 18th birthday!

Gina:She was a survivor.

Ann:And it’s at this point, then they go to Sicily. Maybe they were there before as well. But anyway, this is her teenage origin story. Like, she’s 18 and all this has happened already, and I am not sure if she’s pregnant again at this point, but she does become… Oh my gosh! Sorry, I was just looking at this screen capture I have from this book, and…

Gina:The second child comes along, I think, after they’ve gotten back to Rome.

Ann:I just wanted to mention they left, at one point, while they’re on the run with the baby, “They left Sparta by night on a cup of darkness and walked into a sudden outbreak of forest fire that came so close that part of her robe and her hair were scorched.” This is like, I was going to say trial by fire, but like, literally.

Gina:It really is. [chuckles]

Ann:Anyway. So, the child that she’s got with her, Tiberius, grows up to be a profoundly disturbed, rotten individual, and perhaps his entire childhood being on the run and escaping forest fires could have added to that, or caused that.

Gina:We’ll get to it eventually, but he played the part for quite some time until he just said, “Screw it,” and decided to turn into the Tiberius we all know and love.

Ann:So, she’s pregnant again, and this is the point at which Octavian, I think he’s sort of solidifying his power at this time, and I don’t know where they first met each other, and I don’t know if they had met each other, but he’s like “Guess what? I’m already married to somebody else, I want to marry her.”

Divorce, we didn’t talk about this before, was very, very, very, very straightforward in ancient Rome. You basically just are like, “We’re divorced.”

Gina:It was so easy, and when you think about it, because that didn’t change, I read, until Constantine—we all know about Constantine, we don’t even need to get it deeply into that one—but it was really easy for either a man or a woman to get divorced back then. What was really even more interesting to me is in a marriage, with the exception of the dowry, everything that woman came into that marriage with, she left with. She did not have to give it over to the man. The man didn’t have to give her anything either. He got to keep the kids. The woman could not take the kids, but they always kept everything that she had before marriage separate from the husband, so if there was a divorce, she got to go back to that.

To me, that is completely unheard of in ancient times because we all know that, I mean, it’s even sort of like that now, the woman loses everything. Once she gets married, she loses her name, she loses the kids, she loses the money, she loses everything. She’s basically destitute if she divorces; that’s why so many women didn’t divorce back then. But it wasn’t like that for a woman back then; they could divorce a man, and they could take everything that they had, and then just hope for the best, would be able to get visitation with the kids. That’s weird to me because with how they were against women so much in that society but yet they let them have that?

Ann:It feels weirdly progressive to me.

Gina:It does!

Ann:Having just been reading about the French Revolution a lot, like, one of the things that they were… Like, some women who were in shitty marriages were fighting for was like “Can we have basically no-fault divorce? Can we just make divorce possible?” And it’s like, French Revolution, you want to be like ancient Rome? Take on this part! This was maybe a good thing they did.

So, Octavian, he’s like, four years older than her, he’s in his early twenties. He’s married to a woman who is also pregnant. Livia is 18 years old and pregnant, ready to give birth. And Octavian is like “I want to marry her.” So, his wife gives birth to a daughter named Julia, and then he divorces her. He marries Livia, I believe it’s three days after she gave birth to her second son, Drusus.

Gina:And in that wedding did you read what I read that her—

Ann:About her husband, Tiberius?

Gina:He actually gave her away at the wedding. I’m sorry, you what? You have to get a divorce because Octavian has decided he wants your woman, and you willingly just give her away at the wedding. He claimed the baby as his, so I guess kudos to him for that.

Ann:Well, I feel like if he hadn’t done that, Octavian would have killed him.

Gina:Probably. And so much of that, we talked about this before, where there was just so much death, just the slightest thing could get you killed. And one major thing that would get you killed is going against the person in power, and Octavian was the person in power. But I mean, how shitty would that man have felt to give away his wife to another man? I just… that had to hurt in some way.

Ann:Three days after she gave birth. So, even if we’re like, “Oh, the Romans, they were debauched, whatever,” this sequence of events, like, even Roman historians were like, “Oh, this was the abduction of a pregnant woman. This was kidnapping, this was rape.” Like, at the time, they were like, “What the fuck?” This was not done.

Gina:Because he had to get, like, a whole lot of permissions from multiple people and areas to make this happen. Granted, like you said earlier, if you went against him, you were probably going to end up dead. But there were a lot of people that questioned it, and you know that the society that she belonged to probably always kind of looked at her out of the corner of their eye for the rest of her life like, “Yeah, bitch, what were you doing?”

Ann:Yeah. And just to be clear, like, she had no choice. She was her husband’s property, and now she’s his property. But the fact that at the time, people were like, “Oh, this was the rape and abduction of a pregnant woman,” like Mark Antony, who’s a man who left numerous wives for numerous other wives, he was like, “Bro, this is a lot.” Mark Antony. People are just kind of like…

Gina:If he’s telling you you’re wrong, dude, you should probably pivot.

Ann:So, potentially, one of the reasons why Octavian… Marrying her kind of legitimized him in terms of now all of their potential children would have the Julio-Claudian heritage that she brought to the party. So, it’s like, I think that’s a lot of why he wanted to marry her.

Gina:She sort of elevated him, in a way.

Ann:She did. And also, she was actively pregnant, she’d had two children, and he, in a real Henry VIII vibes way, wanted a son. He’d had, I think, two wives before. The first wife didn’t have any children before he divorced her. The second wife, as I said, like, gave birth to a daughter and then he divorced her. So, he’s just like, “I want a son. Here’s this fertile 18-year-old with all these connections that’s going to elevate me. Yeah, she’s technically married and so am I, but that won’t get in the way. Let’s do this.” So, this is where it’s, like, her survivor instincts are, like… This is the situation she’s in. She can’t get out of this situation, so it’s, like, how is she going to survive this situation?

Gina:But let’s take a moment to talk about what was it about her that intrigued Octavian the most. Because, like you said, she’s married, she has a kid, she’s pregnant with the other one, she’s not that much younger than him, so the age gap wasn’t really an issue. But what was it that drew him to her? Her father went against him. Her name and money got restored after she married him, but there was a whole lot about her, this should have been off-putting to him. What was it that drew him in? I have a theory. [laughs]

Ann:Oh, please. Was it the poker face?

Gina:So, you and I have both read, I’m sure, that people considered her to be fairly beautiful. Whether we can believe that or not, I don’t know, because they thought Cleopatra was beautiful, yet we’ve seen the coinage, and that did not look like a beautiful woman. I think that he fell into the same trap that Caesar did; he was intrigued by her intelligence. Because everything I’ve read talks about how intelligent this woman was, how well spoken she was, how quick she was with her answers to things. I think, given the type of person that Octavian has been portrayed to be, I think that’s what intrigued him the most. She wasn’t just some flighty, “I’m just going to sew your clothes and make sure the house will take care of,” kind of Roman woman.

Ann:She was like, “I am going to do those things because I am perfect, but I’m also going to, like, give you advice.” I think that’s written down. We said last time, like, the Romans wrote down everything, but I think there’s stuff like Octavian went to meetings, and he’s like “I just need to talk to Livia about this. I just need to get her take on this.” He was clearly getting her advice.

Gina:And I think that he saw early on that she would be someone that he could go to about that, that he would always have… Because, you know, he had his advisors, his guy advisors, but I think she probably always gave him another way to look at things. She was going to look at it like a woman; she wasn’t going to look at it like his buddies that were running the military. They all had kind of a one-track mind when it came to doing things. You can see that by how they would always kind of run their campaigns the same, and how they always had the same suggestions. She would come at it from a different angle, and I think that he really appreciated that, being able to see it from multiple sides before making his ultimate decision.

Ann:You’re so right. I think that he came to her for advice. She got pregnant pretty much— I mean, she just gave birth. When she was next able to, she got pregnant pretty much right away, and then it was a stillbirth, like the child did not survive, and she never had another pregnancy again. Octavian, in a real Henry VIII vibes, obsessed with having a son, clearly physically incapable of doing so. But this is where, like, his first two wives, he’d cast aside because they couldn’t give him the son. She couldn’t give him the son, but he stayed married to her until his death, like 50 years, and I think that’s because she was bringing something else to the party.

Gina:Exactly. And I really think that that’s why he pushed so hard to be able to marry her is because he saw those other things. He saw the value in her being able to possibly give him a son, but he saw the immense value in all the other things that she could bring to the table and, you know, with being as perfect as she was and having all of that, and there was no way any man in his right mind would get rid of a woman like that.

Ann:This is a quote I want to read. This is from Cassius Dio, who was one of the other people who wrote about this whole situation, and this is where, according to him, Livia explains— Because someone was like, “How did you keep him married to you when he was like…” We don’t need to talk about it a lot, but Octavian was a tyrant, huge temper. Like, he would just randomly point at a person in the crowd and have them killed. He was a terrifying, abusive tyrant, yet he turned to her for advice and support, he never got mad at her. He never was like, “How dare you tell me what to do?” They’d figured out some sort of relationship.

Anyway, here’s how she explains how she’s able to stay married to him, according to a historian:

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, doing gladly whatever pleased him, not meddling with any of his affairs, and in particular, by pretending not to hear or notice the favourites and were the objects of his passion.

So, I think she’s smart; she’s giving him good advice, but she’s also not pushing up against him. She knows that he’s violent, he can be, like, uncontrollable. So, she knows like, “I can give him this good advice, but I’m never going to step out of line.” The mask is perfect, and it’s 24 hours a day. She’s like, “I’m the perfect little wifey, and also I’m super smart.”

Gina:Yeah. I mean, she learned how to play the game quickly, and it definitely worked to her advantage. You know, I kind of wondered who was it that really pushed the agenda of women should be seen and not heard? Who pushed the agenda that they weren’t really smart enough to be giving any kind of opinions or anything? And in my research, I discovered that it was actually Cicero that pushed that agenda.

Aw:He was the one who hated Cleopatra, as I recall.

Gina:Oh god, with a passion, which is probably why he got killed the way he did. But it was Cicero that pushed the thought that women were just incapable of proper thought, they had weak judgment, they should never be trusted to make any sort of major decisions, they can’t be trusted to really keep any sort of anything in line, even though they were the ones that were entrusted with the keeping the home going and the home finances. They were trusted with all that, but according to Cicero, they couldn’t be trusted with anything because they just were not smart enough.

And honestly, when I discovered that, I’m like, how did she not have him killed? That went against everything that she was. You know, she was extremely learned; she was actually smarter than the vast majority of men she was ever around. I just don’t know how Cicero lasted that long because me, in her position, would have had him disposed of quickly because he was making a mockery of her intelligence, really.

Ann:I think this is, again, where it comes up to, she had figured out or what worked for her, and it worked because she lived to be 86, was to not push things. And maybe she did bring this to Augustus, maybe she brought it to Augustus several times, but she knew if that was a no, like, “I’m not going to push this. This is not worth it, it’s not risking my life.”

Gina:Again, I would not survive that.

Ann:No. Our faces, [Gina laughs] if Augustus was like “I’m inviting Cicero over for dinner,” like, my Dorothy from the Golden Girls, like… I would be murdered.

Gina:Yes. Yes, absolutely, because Cicero ain’t steppin’ foot in my house.

Ann:So, how do we get from Livia, who’s this super smart, she’s supporting her man (who is a chaos nightmare person, but the most powerful person in the ancient world), perfect wifey, not having any more children. Actually, I want to mention, her husband Tiberius, did die of, like, whatever; people died of lots of things. Some people allege she killed him. Why?

Gina:Why?

Ann:[laughs] She’s fine. Anyway, so he died and then, like you said before, when there was a divorce, the husband would keep the kids, so he did. But when he died, her older son was like 5, and then they came to live with her at the palace. And so, her two sons, Tiberius, the oldest one, and Drusus, are her two sons.

Yeah, so how do we get from this kind of like perfect, ideal in every way Roman woman to this myth of this, like, murderer? Part of it is people looking back at it afterwards because, like, at the time that her first husband died, no one was like “Ha-ha! Livia killed him,” because why would anyone think that? It’s just, like, after the fact, after you know that her son Tiberius becomes the next emperor and he’s awful, and he’s succeeded by Caligula, awful.

Gina:Awful.

Ann:Then you have Claudius, and then he’s followed by Nero, awful. So, when people are just looking back at this era with retrospect, they’re like “Okay. So, how can we blame a woman for these awful emperors? Oh, let’s say that Livia schemed.”

Gina:There’s a whole lot that happens in between Augustus being in charge and Tiberius taking over after his death. People completely gloss over everything that happened in between there. They just automatically say, “Oh, she did everything in her power to make sure that Tiberius would be named heir,” even though he was not the first person named heir. There was, like, three or four of them in between there.

Ann:Shall we go through? Because this is the rumour. This is the, like, after-the-fact rumour. Tiberius was, like, I’m going to say fifth in line to be the next emperor.

Gina:Yes.

Ann:The people in between all die, and that’s where the conspiracy theory comes in, where it’s like, she must have murdered them to make Tiberius be the next emperor, because she wanted her son to be the emperor. And that’s the whole plot line of I, Claudius.

So, the people, just to quickly go through them… First, there was Octavian’s nephew, Marcellus. He was really being raised to be the next heir; he was leading armies when he was a teenager, he was the crowned prince of the city, like, everybody loved him, everyone knew he was going to be the heir. And then this disease swept through that so many people died of, and he was one of them. Like, not suspicious at the time, he just died of this disease at the same time everyone else was also. And then, the next heirs were Augustus’s two grandsons, who were Gaius and Drus— Dias— I forget, they’re all called the same thing. There’s two grandsons. They both died of things people die of in ancient Rome; one of them, I think, had a disease, and one of them was leading an army, and he got stabbed so much that he succumbed to his wounds. Like, they both died of just…

Gina:Infections, probably.

Ann:Things people die of, like, not actually suspicious for a young man at the time. But then it’s like “Huh, three people ahead of Tiberius all just died.” I think they all died within, like, a year or two of each other.

Gina:Yeah, it was pretty close in succession, yeah.

Ann:And if you’re not thinking of this as a conspiracy, then you think of, like, this is a huge tragedy to this family, to have three basically healthy, young men, one after another, all die at the same time.

Gina:And you know Octavian is just sitting there like, “What the entire hell is happening here?” You know he was pissed because he’s never liked Tiberius.

Ann:That’s the thing. So, that’s why if Livia wanted Tiberius to be emperor, he was never going to do it if there was any other option. So, the only other option was a guy, his name was… I don’t know. In I, Claudius, they just called Postumus. I forget, his name was, like, Marcus Posthumus.

Gina:Oh, what was his first name? Agrippa? No.

Ann:I think it’s Agrippa. It’s like, Marcus Agrippa Posthumus, because Agrippa was his dad.

Gina:Agrippa was his dad, yeah. Because he was Julia’s son? Was he Julia’s son from her second marriage?

Ann:I think he was Julia’s youngest, yeah. Yeah. So, this is the only remaining grandson. This is the only other person ahead of Tiberius, and Octavian is just like “Literally anyone other than Tiberius.” Even from a young age, Tiberius is just like a dork, he’s just the worst. It’s like “Oh, this is a nightmare person, and Rome will be destroyed if he’s the emperor.” Also, he’s an asshole. It’s like, “Sorry, Livia, your son is an asshole. You’re great, sometimes this just happens.”

Gina:“But you’re offspring? Not so much.”

Ann:Maybe he took after his dad, I don’t know. [Gina laughs] Anyway, Posthumus dies, and I think he was, I forget what the situation… I think he had, like, an anger problem, and so Augustus sent him off to live in this isolated island somewhere, and then people went to fetch him, and he fought those people, and then he was stabbed to death. Something like that.

So, by this point, several people have died, and suddenly, Tiberius is like… I think that Tiberius and Posthumus were both named co-heirs at the same time because Augustus was like, “Who’s left? I guess these two.” And then Posthumus dies, and it’s like, “Fuck, it’s just this kid. Fucking little kid.”

Gina:He probably would have taken Drusus at that point if he had survived. [laughs]

Ann:Oh, and that’s true, yeah, because Drusus, Livia’s other son, that’s another alleged murder of hers.

Gina:But I don’t believe that she would have had anything to do with that one because she seemed to really adore him. After his death is when she became a lot more active in the public, started building a bunch of statues around, she built a huge market in Rome, she would give money to people that needed it, if she saw people in need.

Ann:She would never kill her own son. Also, of all of them, Drusus died, he was on a military campaign in, like, Germany, and he fell off a horse. So, like, how would you propose Livia made that happen? Through poison? Because it’s alleged that she killed all these people through poison, which is like, people did kill people from poison at this time.

Gina:They did. People also died from infections and plagues and…

Ann:Bad wheat.

Gina:… dirty water and all that. Because from what I understand, she pretty much mourned Drusus for the rest of her life.

Ann:Well, here’s the thing, here’s the thing. She had one good son and one shitty son, and unfortunately, the good son is the one who died, and she’s stuck with goddamn Tiberius. [Gina laughs]

So, at this point, when all these people have died, even within her lifetime, it’s just kind of like, we talk about the Romans, they’re superstitious people. So, they’re just like, why? This is so many deaths in quick succession…

Gina:In one family.

Ann:Every time Augustus names a new heir…

Gina:They’re gone.

Ann:He dies. [laughs]

Gina:Yup. I can see how it would be completely suspicious, but honestly, back then, you didn’t have forensic evidence that you could prove this, that, and the other, and people really did kind of just drop like flies back then. So, I could see how they would just kind of let it go, because that really was just a part of life back then, where at any time, anyone could die from anything, and that was just the way it was.

Ann:Unfortunately, in this family, it affected a bunch of people in this family all at the same time, and I’m sure other families were affected similarly. But also, it’s like, if Livia had secretly poisoned these people, what are you going to do about it? She’s Augustus’s wife. He’s never going to turn on her.

Gina:I mean, think about it. There were three women that were elevated to very high positions within Rome under Augustus: Octavia, his sister, Julia, his daughter, and Livia, his wife. They were all granted privileges that no other woman in Rome was granted. Octavia and Livia had their faces on coins; Octavia was the first one ever in Roman history to have that done. So, clearly, he held her in high regard. He held all three of those women in high regard. Any one of those women could have gotten away with anything they wanted because there was no way he was going to hold that against them; it just was never going to happen.

Ann:Also, this environment of just, like, the whole thing about family is everything. What is your family name? What’s your heritage? Like, he just felt like his family was so important and sort of godlike. He turned against his daughter Julia only after…

Gina:For a while.

Ann:… Yeah. But he exiled her to an island which is, like, exile me to an island in the Mediterranean, I’m fine.

Gina:And I have to deal with all this bullshit that’s going on in the city? Send me, I don’t care. Because the thing is, fine, you exiled her, but you know what? She was still living like a princess. She still had her servants, she still had everything she could possibly want, and she lived out the rest of her life… I actually read at one point, it’s assumed that she had a female lover. Fine, whatever. But she got to do what she wanted to do; she was not held to that standard of having to have that mask on in Rome all the time. So, I can’t imagine she put up much of a fight. He’s probably like “You know what bitch? I’m done with you, go to this island.” She’s probably like “Deuces! I’m out!” You know? [Ann laughs] I sure would have been.

Ann:Yeah, if the options are, like, either you’re going to be suddenly stabbed by an angry Octavian, or it’s like, go live on this Mediterranean island. I choose the island. Could be a lot worse.

Gina:Because unless she’s gone, you don’t hear anything about her anymore, not really. But I just can’t imagine she was living a rough life, honestly. I don’t see that happening.

Ann:Yeah, just because of who she was and her pedigree. She wasn’t like, what is it? Tom Hanks in that movie where he’s on the island by himself. It’s like, she’s got servants, she’s fine. But Livia, she was given, I don’t have it in front of me, but I know that she was given various, like, sort of like titles. Augustus was called, like, “The king of everyone,” or something, she’s called “The queen of everyone.”

Gina:Right, she’s the “Mother of all mothers” and “Mother of Rome,” and all of that.

Ann:Because she’s, like, the perfect domestic wife. I’m trying to think of something equivalent. It’s somebody like Queen Elizabeth II, where it’s just kind of like “Oh, she’s all of our grandmother.” Queen Elizabeth II, someone who’s always just like, “I’m a wife, I’m a mother, I’m also queen, but I always look smiling and perfect.” Even in her latter years, Queen Elizabeth II, apparently she needed a wheelchair and stuff, but she would never appear in public in a wheelchair. It’s like “I always only ever look perfect,” and that was kind of what Livia was up to. Because that was important to Octavian as well, that his family and his marriage were, like, the model for how everybody should be in Rome.

Gina:And you know, another thing that she was given that is really sort of interesting to me is women back then that had three or more children were added to a list…

Ann:You got like, bonus status or something when you had three or more children.

Gina:You did. You were basically allowed to do whatever you wanted at that point because, think about it, it was probably sort of difficult to get pregnant back then. It was even more difficult to carry to term because you just never know what was going to happen. And then it was a bit more difficult to keep that child alive into adulthood. So, even though she only had two children—because the baby that she had with Octavian didn’t make it—she was still listed. It was like a public listing of matrons or something like that. She was still put on that list and given all of those freedoms, even though she technically didn’t belong on that list. And I’m like you know, that just shows just how highly revered she was amongst everyone, because I haven’t read anything that anyone really opposed her being put on there. I’m sure that would have showed up in some of those writings somewhere if people were against it.

Ann:Oh, one of the haters would have mentioned that for sure. And that’s the thing, the haters who wrote about her were like, “Oh, and some said maybe she was responsible for this murder.” But during her life, no one ever said anything against her because she was only ever seen as being the perfect wife and mother, the perfect empress. What she was doing behind the scenes, we don’t know. But no one ever spoke out against her during her life because they knew that Octavian would kill them if they did.

Gina:There was a certain level of status that you could be given, can’t think of the name of it, but it protected you from being physically or verbally abused or harassed, so basically kind of protected you against cyberbullying. And she was given that status, which is probably why we don’t see very many negative things written about her in the height of what she was doing, because she had this protected status, and if you wrote something like that about her, you were going to get killed. So, not saying that she would have deserved to be written like that in any way, but she did have that protective status.

Ann:That no one could, yeah. Well, and that’s where when you start seeing stuff about, was she really a murderer? For instance, the next alleged murder that she did is Augustus himself, who died age 77. At the time— Wait, let me see what this says. So, one of the sources, like, there was no… At the time, nobody was like “We think she killed him,” but like, 200 years later, when people are looking back at this dynasty and all these, like, debaucherous things that happened, they’re like, “Yeah, she might have killed him.” So, it’s like, they could never accuse that during her life because she would have them killed.

Gina:Yeah, she would. Yes. And the funny thing about it is, after his death, she pretty much kept all of her statuses. But after Tiberius finally got over himself, came back to Rome to be emperor, he really, I think, stifled her.

Ann:Let’s just take this piece by piece. So, Augustus dies, seemingly natural causes, allegedly from eating a poisoned fig, allegedly because Livia went out in their fig orchard and painted poison on the figs and then fed it to him right off the tree. Because there’s, like, you know, food tasters and stuff around the palace, which is like a great scene in I, Claudius, but is also a pretty unlikely sequence of events to happen.

Tiberius becomes the emperor against his will. He’s just cranky. He wants to be like a military commander and not be emperor, but he is emperor, and Livia is like, “I was kind of co-emperor with Augustus, so I’ll be kind of your co-emperor as well. People respect me,” and he was always bumping up against that. He didn’t want her to have any responsibility. She would go around his back to get stuff done because he was so bad at it, and then he would get mad at her, and eventually, he just storms off to Capri to just, like, again, just like “Augh, I’m just going to go live on this island.” So, he’s the emperor, but he’s not even there because he just hates it so much.

Gina:And they wanted to bestow so many different titles and this, that, and the other on her, and he was like “No.” Senate would vote on it, they’d pass it, and he’s like, “No, she doesn’t need that.” They wanted to bestow things on him too, and he’s like, “No, I don’t need that.”

Ann:They wanted to give her like different titles, or statues, or temples, and he was always like “No, don’t do anything nice for my mother.” It’s like, “Your mother, who saved you from a forest fire when you were 2? That mother? Like, fuck you, Tiberius. Goddamn.”

Gina:She did everything she could possibly do to ensure the life he ended up with, and the ungrateful wretch storms off to an island, and then tries to withhold everything possible from her. Now, I get it, history is full of overbearing mothers. You know, Henry VII had one with Margaret Beaufort; she was probably the epitome of overbearing mothers. You know, Queen Tiye was, from what I’ve read, slightly overbearing with Akhenaten until he kind of put her in her place. There’s no lack of overbearing mothers in history. I’m not so sure I would probably list her as overbearing as much as I would, she realized that he was a fucking idiot, and she did what she needed to do.

Ann:Somebody had to step in because he was useless.

Gina:Exactly! And she was just doing what she had to do to keep the Roman Empire going and really just keep him from suffering the same fate as Caesar, because they would have gotten fed up with him.

Ann:Exactly. It’s like, she was 14 years old when Julius Caesar died. She lived through everything we talked about, like being on the run, which faction is with who? Like, living in that city that was razed to the ground. She knows what happens when a civil war breaks out, and Octavian was emperor for long enough that stability came back in, but she knew how easily it could all be upended again if there wasn’t a strong person at the head of the empire. And Tiberius was just like a bitch [Gina giggles] and didn’t listen to her even though she was the smartest person in the room, she had all this life experience, she knew, personally, the damage it can cause when things are chaotic, and he just like “Meh. No.”

Gina:But I also think some of her driving force was her lineage, her family name, because they held that in such high regard, everyone did. If you were part of any of those families, that was like the end-all be-all of stature within society. I think that, in a way, she was trying to protect the lineage of the family as well with some of the things that she probably did all of those years, because she didn’t want to see her family line, she didn’t want to see the Julians or the Claudians or the Drusus just die out like that.

Ann:Right. Like, it’s personal to her. Saving Rome is like, her family. Rome is her family’s…

Gina:She is Rome. Yes!

Ann:Yeah, exactly. Rome is her.

Gina:And Tiberius threatened that, like, to the core, he threatened that. So, I don’t blame her one bit if she tried to step in and keep that from happening.

Ann:I’m going to read, listeners, but also Gina, some highlights of Tiberius being the worst.

He avoided private meetings with her, refused to listen to her advice, and responded furiously when the Senate proposed to honour him with the title ‘Son of Livia.’ He also warned her to keep out of matters unbecoming to a woman.

So, you mentioned before that she was not a frigid person; she did a lot of charitable work, she did outreach stuff, she was, like, Princess Diana-esque in that way. So, at one point, there had been a fire near the Temple of Vesta, and she directed rescue operations. She’s in her seventies, she’s going to the site of this temple that’s kind of in her honour and, like, directing firefighters. Anyway, he was really mad that she did that, and then eventually, he removed her entirely from public life.

And then, in the final three years of her life, he only saw her once. She fell ill with whatever, she’s 86 years old in ancient Rome, and he refused to come back from Capri to even visit her. When she died, he took so long leaving Capri—I don’t know, maybe you know about this, the funeral processes and stuff—but they kind of kept the body out so he could come and visit, but he took so long to visit that the body started to rot, so they had to, like, put the body away. “She was denied a proper funeral and had to be hastily buried in defiance of tradition,” because her son was the worst.

Gina:He definitely was, and there was probably, I mean, there could have been an actual mental illness there, we don’t know because they didn’t know about that back then. But like you had mentioned, he had some seriously deep-rooted PTSD, and obviously there was something not right in his bloodline because you ended up with Claudius… Well, Claudius.

Ann:Those weren’t his children, though.

Gina:They were in his bloodline.

Ann:Oh, I guess you’re right, yeah.

Gina:So, it’s just like, I want to give him slight benefit of the doubt that he might have been battling some mental illness in there, because I don’t think PTSD would turn you into that big of an asshole… It could, but I want to say there was something else working in there. But I think he also really was jealous of her because…

Ann:Absolutely, absolutely.

Gina:From the get-go, when Octavian met her and decided, “I want that person there,” she clearly was always going to rank high with him, in his mind, in his heart, just always rank high with him. Tiberius, I would assume, probably wasn’t hugged enough as a child. I mean, honestly, look at all the drama that was happening. I think he really grew up to have jealousy of her. If anyone had anything to do with Drusus dying, I would say it was him because she clearly loved the hell out of Drusus and for all we know, Tiberius could have had something done to him and then been like, “Okay, say he fell off a horse.” You know? I wouldn’t put that past him.

Ann:Yeah, I think the Tiberius thing, like you mentioned the bloodline and stuff, you’re right. I can’t keep track of the bloodline of who’s related to who; everyone’s related to everyone in this family, or they adopted somebody and then suddenly that’s in their bloodline as well. But yeah, like the fact that you have Octavian who is, I will give him the credit of saying he was a successful emperor for 50 years during an extremely contentious time. Was he, like, a nightmare asshole, chaotic tyrant who was the worst? Yes. But he was a good at being the emperor for the time he was the emperor. Tiberius, disaster. Like, Caligula…

Gina:Complete disaster.

Ann:Disaster. Nero, disaster. And this is why maybe Rome was better off with elected leaders instead of the heir because, like, four in a row, the heir of the previous emperor was not suited for the role.

Gina:But think about the inbreeding because you have this person who’s a cousin, or this one was a sister of this person but now we’re they’re marrying the brother… It was a very roundabout way, but you had quite a bit of inbreeding going on there…

Ann:You do. And it’s like, the only trait that passed through the inbreeding was, like, being a terrible emperor was coded into their DNA.

Gina:Because I mean, in the podcast we did about Hat, all of the male heirs that her father had, whoever, they didn’t really survive. The one, Thutmose was the third, second? Third? Her stepson, his mother was part of the harem.

Ann:Right, she brought in some new DNA, yeah.

Gina:Yes. She wasn’t of royal blood. You look at Tut and his sister, Ankhesenamun, they didn’t have any surviving children. They were brother and sister, that wasn’t going to work. History shows inbreeding really is just not going to work, and I think some of those people were just too closely related because they wanted to try to keep everything in the Julian family; they wanted to keep everything in the family.

Ann:Exactly, they’re like “This family is so important.” Well, yeah, because even I think Livia’s first husband was a Claudian as well, which means Tiberius was the product of some level of incest as well, and Drusus. Yeah, and we see this over again, like in ancient Egypt we see that, but then also you get into that with like the Habsburgs and European history, like, when the family lineage is so important and everyone marries within the family, eventually this does not work out eventually everyone becomes infertile and you have to switch to another family anyway.

Gina:And I think that that might have played a part in that succession of really terrible leaders. I think they really had some not-so-great things happen, and look in their DNA.

Ann:That’s the risk you get, like, in any of the history that I look at, where it’s a dynasty, where it’s just like, who’s going to be the next monarch? Oh, it’s the son of the guy. You never know if that’s going to be a good king or a bad king, and more than often, it’s a bad king. So, like, maybe this isn’t a good system of pretending that one family is, like, pure and godly? Because then we just get stuck with, like, the worst.

Gina:Yep. I’m not trying to make excuses for Tiberius because he was a jerk, but there might have been other things at play. I mean, obviously, genetics just wasn’t something they thought about back then; all they thought about was keeping things pure. I mean, it even happens within dogs, purebred dogs, they have the most medical issues. It just doesn’t work.

Ann:Yeah, exactly. When it’s just eventually, what’s the one? It’s like, their face is so short they can’t breathe properly? Some of those dog breeds. Yeah, Tiberius was kind of that.

Gina:[chuckles] You just called him a dog breed.

Ann:A purebred, overly purebred. But yeah, I mean, that’s the thing, and on the podcast too, when I encounter somebody where it’s just, like, I try to have empathy for people, but at the same time it’s like there’s lots of people with lots of health conditions and lots of mental health conditions who would have been a much better emperor than Tiberius. Like, ultimately, he was a shitty person, and maybe that was exacerbated by some of these other things.

Gina:You know, another thing that contributes to that is the lifestyle that you live. If you’re always kind of told you’re special, you’re treated like you’re special, you start…

Ann:We see that a lot, don’t we?

Gina:Yeah, you start getting those asshole actions about you because you’re always told you can do no wrong, so you know…

Ann:Well, and like, Octavian, if anyone dares to challenge you, you just kill them. So, everyone around you always tells you great. And like we were talking before about, there’s a good scene in I, Claudius, the series, where it’s Tiberius and his astrologer and the astrologer was always like “Great news! It looks like your life is going to go great!” because the astrologer knows if he gives bad news, Tiberius will murder him. So, like, everyone around you is like “You’re favoured by the gods!” No one ever calls you in, and then you just get more and more extreme until you’re just barely even a person anymore.

Gina:Yep. So, there’s a lot of of contributing factors to how he ended up the way he did, but, like you said, there are a lot of people that have a lot of things going on in their lives, and they don’t grow up to be complete assholes. It’s a matter of what type of mentality did you have? What is your actual deep-down personality? Are you going to latch onto the ugliness, or are you going to try to make it better? And he latched onto the ugliness.

Ann:And it’s just, this is where, like we talked so much the last time about Roman society and stuff, but it’s like if Octavian had died and then Livia could have taken over, everything’s great. She was doing the job for 50 years anyway. Everyone respects her, she’s so smart. But it’s just like a woman could never do that; it has to be the son. And then it’s just nightmarishly… If, maybe… No. Maybe one day I’ll read a biography of Tiberius. No, I’m never going to read a biography of Tiberius, [Gina laughs] but maybe some of the stuff that’s written about him was also overblown by the haters later on.

Gina:Very much so.

Ann:There’s a lot of stuff about his, like, sexual habits, but what we do know is that he treated his mother really badly, he ran off to Capri because he didn’t want to be emperor so much.

Gina:I mean, I would rather be at Capri right now too. So, I can’t fault him for that. But he totally just shirked his responsibilities, because I mean, and it wasn’t the first time he had done it. You know, while Octavian was still alive, he was like “You know what? I don’t really think I want to do this.” I mean, he had been elevated to such levels, given so many titles, this, that, and the other, and he was like, “You know, uncle, stepdad, I don’t really like this, so I’m just going to go ahead and bounce. I’ll catch you on the flip side.”

Ann:It’s like, the worst kind of nepo baby. I won’t name names, but sometimes when you look at the adult sons of some celebrities who are just bouncing from like so-called career to so-called career, it’s just like, they’ve been handed everything their whole life, they don’t know how to stick with anything. And so, there’s clearly some sort of like, soul emptiness where they just want to find a reason to, you know, they want to find a passion. So, it’s just like, “Now I’m a chef… Now I’m a photographer… Now I’m a rapper.” And it’s just like, when you’re given everything your whole life, like, sometimes there’s just this emptiness, and I think Tiberius is a cautionary tale of that.

Gina:And I’m not sure… I’m not going to sit here and say that Livia was a bad mother because I don’t know that I really read too much about what her mothering skills were, but if she was like a typical Roman woman, she didn’t pay that much attention to her kids because she was busy with society things, you know, having lunches with the other high society women, and doing all that kind of stuff. They really did have servants that raised the kids, and the servants weren’t allowed to tell the kids, “Stop being an asshole and do what you’re told to .”

Ann:Because they’re servants, yeah.

Gina:Right. And so, you know, her or her mothering or lack of mothering probably had a lot to do with how he ended up because she wasn’t there to put her foot in his ass and tell him to stop being a dick, and he just kept doing it, and she wasn’t paying attention to it, or she’d just be like “Oh, he’s just being a boy,” or “It’s his right to be able to act that way because this is the status level that he’s going to get to.” So, you know, some of it might have had… It could have been her mothering, I don’t know.

Ann:It could have been, but, you know, lots of people were raised in ancient Rome— Well, we don’t know about all the other people who were…

Gina:Yeah, because no one’s going to write about anyone unless they felt they were important. And the funny thing is, they didn’t even write about some of the people that really actually were important so, you know, who knows how it really truly was. Because, like I said, everyone that wrote that stuff down had an agenda, and if you didn’t fit the agenda, you weren’t getting put in. So, I don’t know. I think she might have dropped the ball on some things when it came to him; she didn’t call him out when she saw things were happening. I’m not so sure Octavian paid enough attention to him to really, kind of…

Ann:Octavian always disliked him, that’s what I read.

Gina:That’s right. And so, because he had other successors in line…

Ann:He kind of didn’t have to worry about him, yeah.

Gina:He probably didn’t really call him out on any of his BS because he’s thinking, “I’ve got all these other people that could take over for me. I’m never really going to have to worry about you taking over.”

Ann:Like, who would have thought these four, healthy, young men, boom, boom, boom, boom, all just died of mysterious circumstances.

Gina:Exactly. And, you know, Livia was probably thinking the same thing to a certain extent, where “I probably don’t really need to harp on Tiberius because there’s all these other people.”

Ann:Like, “Who cares?! This kid, whatever. He’ll grow up, and he’ll be like a Twitch streamer or whatever. [Gina laughs] He’ll just do his own little incel podcast and, like, you just stay over there.” But then, unfortunately, everyone else died, and he became emperor, and no one had prepared him for that because they were just kind of like, no one wants to deal with him.

Gina:Yeah, I think, to some extent, the same thing happened with Akhenaten because his brother, Thutmose, was first in line, he was raised to be the next pharaoh. Amenhotep IV was not; he was allowed to do things that… It’s just kind of like you know William and Harry. William was raised to be the next king, Harry was not. You always have that. This person is held to this standard; this person could maybe, possibly become the successor, but is highly unlikely, so we’re going to just let you be over here and do your thing.

Ann:No, and that’s the Henry VIII thing as well because he had an older brother. Henry VIII was being trained to be the next archbishop or whatever, and then suddenly, he’s thrust into becoming the king, where it’s like, that was not what you were raised to do.

Gina:You always have this thing of the heir and the spare kind of…

Ann:You’ve got to raise the spare! You can’t ignore the spare, everyone. [laughs] To all the monarchs out there listening.

Gina:Exactly! Because the spare usually ends up being the better person, but you know…

Ann:Seems like. But maybe that’s because they’re left alone.

So, I don’t know if you recall, Gina, at the end of these biographical episodes, I have the four categories to score the people. I forgot to remind you about this, but we’ve done this before. So, every score is out of 10 and there’s four categories.

The first one is Scandaliciousness. How scandalous was Livia? And usually, I try to say that in the time in which she lived, but I’ll say, people weren’t allowed to say anything against her in the time in which she lived. So, all we can look at is, like, after… How people treated her, what regard she was held in when she lived. But then, how people look at her after. Now, because of Tacitus and because of I, Claudius, there’s a high level of scandal associated with her. But like, would there have been during her life? What do you think?

Gina:I don’t think so.

Ann:No, I think she was, like, the perfect Kate Middleton, wife and mother, always pretty.

Gina:My first exposure to her was by all the hater men that wanted to label her this, that, and the other, then when I really actually read up on her, I’m like “That… I don’t think that really fits her.” I think that she was genuinely just… I won’t say she was a good person, but I just think she just really wanted to see Rome thrive and try to fit the societal expectations as much as possible. So, I don’t think I would really call her scandalous, really at all.

Ann:I mean, the fact that the haters… Like, who knows what she was really like, or what she did behind closed doors, but the fact that they couldn’t even pretend that there is anything scandalous about her during her life, that all that they could do is like, “Well, all these people mysteriously died at times, and in other countries… Maybe she poisoned them.” It’s like, they couldn’t find anything to use against her. She didn’t let there be anything to use against her because she always portrayed herself…

Gina:And I think Octavian was an extremely smart individual, and if he thought that she was conniving like that, he would have ditched her.

Ann:Yeah, absolutely. He was so paranoid. He was so paranoid. There was one story I read where he was in a group of people, and he thought that a guy had a weapon, and he’s like, “Arrest that man!” And then the guy was like, “No, it’s just this tablet. I’m just taking notes,” and he still had him executed. Like, that was the sort of person he was. He went from zero to execution, like, right away. So, you’re right, if he had suspected anything about her… Yeah. I’ll say on a scale of like 0 to 10, I’m going to give her 1 for Scandaliciousness.

Gina:I completely agree.

Ann:Yeah. Like, I think she really lived her life—again, we don’t know what’s happening behind closed doors—but she just ensured that she always, like, the mask was always on, she was the perfect Roman woman, and that allowed her to live to the age of 86.

Gina:And that was the feat in and of itself, in that day and time, to live until 86, as a woman.

Ann:How many plagues were going through there, giving birth on the run, like, all the stuff she went through.

Here’s the next one. So, the next category is Schemieness, how schemey was she on a scale of 0 to 10? And that’s not just, like, literally murder schemes, but also just the way that she knew, “This is how I’m going to survive. This is how I’m going to get by.”

Gina:I truly believe she was in Octavian’s ear quite a bit, and that’s just kind of shown by him saying, “I need to run this by my wife first before I come up.”

Ann:Like, not being embarrassed to admit that.

Gina:I would actually put her at at least a 5, maybe.

Ann:Oh, I would give her much more for a Schemieness. I think just her, like, survivor’s ability.

Gina:Yeah, because she would have had to have played her cards right in many different situations to get out of some of the things that she got out of.

Ann:To live as the empress of Rome, married to Octavian for 50 years. That’s not just someone being passive and like “Okay, dear.” That’s someone who’s like, every day… What about like an 8? Something like that?

Gina:I can go with that. I can go with that.

Ann:Yeah, I think again, like, we don’t know specifically what her schemes were, but clearly…

Gina:They were there.

Ann:Yeah, like, just presenting herself in this perfect way all the time, that takes so much energy.

Her Significance.

Gina:Oh, I think she would have to rank really high in that. Again, because how many times does he say, “I’ve got to run this by Livia first.” I mean, I think she ranks really high in that one, at least an 8 or a 9, because I really don’t think that Rome would have become what it did if it wasn’t for her being a part of things.

Ann:Yeah, if it was just Octavian. If it was just him and all his different wives.

Gina:Because all the chaos that was happening at that time, no, she’s not the one that expanded the Roman Empire to the extent that it was, but at that one point where it could have gone either way for Rome, it could have gone the way it did or it could have just completely collapsed, I think she had a lot to do with that. So, I would rank her really high in that.

Ann:Yeah, I think that marrying her was the smartest thing Octavian did, both for himself. He’s remembered as this very significant leader, but it’s like, he wasn’t making all the decisions by himself. He was running everything by her, she was so smart. Also, we mentioned just a little bit, just the charitable work she did during her life and stuff, just building temples and giving to the poor and stuff. Like you said, she was Rome, and she made it… Like, Rome could have fallen at this point, but it didn’t.

Gina:And I think she had a lot to do with that.

Ann:Yeah, and the Roman Empire is like, the most famous, people still talk about it today, and she’s like in the background, but so important. So, her significance now is mostly people like “Oh, she’s just a murderer,” or whatever, but like, people know her name. She’s not forgotten. Like, I’m content, I’m happy to give her a 10 for a Significance…

Gina:Oh, absolutely.

Ann:… because I mean, like, saving the Roman Empire? Yeah.

Gina:Because if you think about it, people talk about Julius Caesar, they talk about him all the time. They sometimes talk about Augustus, even though he was the first emperor, he doesn’t get talked about as much as Julius Caesar. He was the emperor, why? A lot had to do with her. He started some of the basic things that were core parts of Roman society that continued on for hundreds of years. He was just as important as Julius Caesar, and because of her is why he was that important. I really believe that he would have angered his way right out of that position; he would have killed so many people, pissed off so many people, done so much dumb stuff that they eventually would have just killed him. She kept him sane enough to stay in power that long.

Ann:Because she knew that they needed that stability. Rome needed this period of 50 years with the same emperor to just sort of like, calm down from the whole Julius Caesar assassination thing, and to get people used to the fact that, like, now there’s an emperor. We’ve pivoted. It’s an empire now, guys.

Gina:Because in that 50 years, look at how many… You could have gone through maybe three generations of people because not everybody made it to adulthood. Or if you got to adulthood, you didn’t get that far into it. You know, by the time some of these young ladies were 14, 15, 16, they were already having kids. Well, you know, by age 25, that woman could be dead, the next kid comes along. So, you could have had a number of people where if you didn’t have that 50 years of stability, of having that same person in charge that whole time, imagine the chaos that could have happened.

Ann:Just speaking of, like, the giving birth and stuff, Livia had her children so young, like, when she was 16 and 18. And then just reproductively, she and Octavian, they had the one stillborn child, and that was it for them. But it’s like, the fact that they didn’t have any more children, I think kept her able to have her eye on the prize and, like, stay… Because she wasn’t busy with, like, pregnancy and postpartum and breastfeeding and the danger of giving birth. She was just… she was like a retired Vestal Virgin in that way.

Gina:She was just living her life.

Ann:Yeah. She had her time freed up, like, her kids were… By the time she was, what? 30? Her kids were, like, basically independent, so she could just be doing her own thing.

So, the fourth and final category is what we call the Sexism Bonus, which is just like, how much more could this person… How much did the patriarchy and sexism hold them back? How much more could this person have accomplished if not for that?

Gina:20. [laughs]

Ann:[laughs] If she had been able to be in charge? Yeah.

Gina:I think that there probably would have been no limit to what she could have accomplished if she’d had the backing of the Senate and Rome, the way the men always had the backing. I don’t think that she would have gotten involved in any wars. If she did, it might have been just a couple. I think she really would have had a very straightforward way of accomplishing the goals that she saw as being the best for Rome overall if she just had that backing, if she had the trust, if they didn’t look at her the way Cicero did and say, “Oh, she’s weak in judgment can’t figure anything out for herself.” If they would have let that woman just be her, man. Rome would be a bit different, I think.

Ann:Here’s what’s amazing. Her total score then is a 29, and you know who else has a 29? Is Hatshepsut.

Gina:[laughs] Because had they just let her be her, she could have accomplished so much more!

Ann:Exactly the same reason! Exactly the same reason! She’s also Schemieness, she’s also got the Significance, but then it’s just, like, let her be actually in charge! Not having to be like “Oh, I’m co-pharoah with my baby brother,” or whatever she had to do.

Amazing. Gina, thank you so much. There’s no one else I could have done this with. And now I understand ancient Rome so much better. Thank you.

Gina:Well, I appreciate you having me back on. I know, all the listeners, this is not what you’re used to hearing me talk about, but I am multifaceted when it comes to ancient whatever, so I’m really glad we had a chance to talk about ancient Rome. It definitely is where I started out my fascination with studying ancient history, and there’s just there’s so many different ways of understanding ancient Rome. You know, you can look at what was written shortly after someone died, you could look at what was written in the centuries after someone died, you can look at it just combining it all and coming up with your own opinion, which is usually what I ended up doing. But there’s just so much to it, and there’s just so much that we don’t know because, again, they weren’t really stakeholders in what this person was trying to get across and their agenda.

Ancient Rome is just so fascinating because it involved so much more than just the city of Rome. You know, you talk about ancient Egypt, and it revolves around mostly Egypt; you’ve got the Nubians and then the Syrians, but for the most part, everything you really think about it just revolves around Egypt. It’s not that way with Rome. Rome involves so many other countries, so many other different people, and if you really dig into it, it’s just kind of a little bit overwhelming because it’s just so much information. But ancient Rome is still going to be near and dear to my heart, and it’s always going to be my first love when it comes to studying ancient history. Anytime you want to talk about it again, just let me know.

Ann:Hell yes, I think I think we’ll make this at least an annual event [both laugh] because we both need the time to research, right? Thank you so much for coming on the podcast again, Gina.

Gina:Thank you.

—————

So, I’m so excited, well, I’m just so happy that I got to hang out with Gina in the form of recording the last podcast episode about ancient Rome, as well as this one about Livia. I love getting to learn all this stuff about Livia, and what could be more timely than to let you know if you want to celebrate Livia through beautiful jewelry, then I should mention our brand partner, Common Era Jewelry.

So, Common Era Jewelry, it’s a small business that’s owned by a woman named Torie who recently had a baby—congratulations, Torie!—and all the designs are inspired by her love of the ancient world. She and Gina very much have that in common. So, the jewelry that they make is inspired by women from history, but also kind of classical history in general. But there is specifically a Livia design from Common Era. So, you can get this on a beautiful pendant, it’s just Livia’s gorgeous face. So, the design of their Livia necklace is based on a famous statue of Livia made during her lifetime in 31 BCE and this Livia piece, this Livia design, is part of Common Era: The Difficult Women Collection. I love the name, I love the concept. It’s a whole collection inspired by powerful women from history whose reputations were affected because the history was written by the haters. So, as Torie from Common Era says about Livia:

Livia’s impact on the Roman Empire cannot be denied. Her shrewd political maneuvering and cultural influence shaped the foundations of Augustan Rome, as she embraced a role that was unlike that of any other woman in Roman history.

So, if you want to get Livia in a beautiful pendant necklace, it’s available in solid gold as well as in more affordable gold vermeil. And Vulgar History listeners can always get 15% off your items from Common Era Jewelry by going to CommonEra.com/Vulgar or using code ‘VULGAR’ at checkout.

I want to mention, also, I wrote a book! It’s called Rebel of the Regency: The Scandalous Saga of Caroline of Brunswick, Britain’s Uncrowned Queen, and the subtitle might change. The book has not been printed yet, we’re still going back and forth. But for sure, my book is called Rebel of the Regency, and it’s about another woman who, like Livia, was misunderstood by a lot of historians and is being re-examined now by people, like me, who want to celebrate Caroline of Brunswick, who was this iconic queen from British history.

Anyway, my book comes out next February, but you can pre-order it now. When you pre-order things, first of all, if you order it from an online retailer, that means the day it’s published, it just shows up at your door, amazing. Or, if you pre-order it from your local bookstore, you can go into your bookstore and pick it up that day. You’ll get a happy message from them being like “Guess what’s here? Your book you ordered months ago,” and you’ll be like “I don’t even remember ordering a book months ago! How exciting!” Anyway, right now, the book is available for pre-order in Canada and the U.S., and we are actively figuring out how to make it available in other countries. Once we figure that out, I will let you know, as well as when there’s news about the audiobook. At the moment, it’s available as a print book and as an e-book in Canada and the U.S. So, you can pre-order it at your local independent bookstore, or you can go to online retailers to order it.

I have a bunch of links to order it at RebelOfTheRegency.com, the website. You can also add it to your “To be read” list on Goodreads or StoryGraph if that’s where you track what you’re reading. That also is so valuable and so important just to show my publisher and everybody that there’s hype about this book because I want them to let me write another book, and an important part of that, as I have come to learn, is for this book to do really well.

And then also, if and when you pre-order the book, you can get some nice treats from me, like you can get one-year free Patreon access, one-year free paid membership to my Substack. And also, a beautiful Caroline of Brunswick-themed paper doll. So, you can submit your receipt from your pre-order at RebelOfTheRegency.com as well.

Next week, we’re still sticking around in Ancient Rome because there’s more ancient Roman ladies that we need to talk about. That’s what it’s going to be next week because overall this theme, Vulgar History, French Revolution, leading up to talking about Marie Antoinette but, like, it all connects. Even Marie Antoinette was compared in, like, a defamation-like way to some of the women from ancient Rome. French Revolution people were obsessed with ancient Rome. Next week, we’re going to talk about another woman from ancient Roman times, with another very special guest. And until then, my friends, keep your pants on and your tits out.

Vulgar History is researched, scripted, and hosted by Ann Foster, that’s me! Editor is Cristina Lumague. Theme music is by the Severn Duo. Transcripts of this podcast are available at VulgarHistory.com by Aveline Malek. You can get early, ad-free episodes of Vulgar History by becoming a paid member of our Patreon for as low as one dollar a month at Patreon.com/AnnFosterWwriter. Vulgar History merchandise is available at VulgarHistory.com/Store for Americans, and for everyone else at VulgarHistory.Redbubble.com. Follow us on social media @VulgarHistoryPod, and get in touch with me via email at VulgarHistoryPod@gmail.com.

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