Julia (daughter of Julius Caesar)

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For other Roman women named Julia Caesaris, see Julia Caesaris.

Julia Caesaris (Classical Latin: IVLIA•CAESARIS) was the daughter of Gaius Julius Caesar the dictator, by Cornelia Cinna, and his only child in marriage.^[1] She was the wife of Pompey the Great and renowned for her beauty and virtue.

Contents 1 Life 2 Julia in popular culture 2.1 Fiction 2.2 Television 3 Notes 4 References

[edit] Life

Julia was born around 83 BC–82 BC.^[2] After her mother died in childbirth around 69 BC^[3]–68 BC^[2], she was raised by her paternal grandmother Aurelia Cotta. Her father wanted her to marry Faustus Cornelius Sulla, but she got engaged to Quintus Servilius Caepio. Caesar broke off this engagement and married her to Pompey the Great in April 59 BC, with whom Caesar sought a strong political alliance in forming the First Triumvirate. This family-alliance of its two great chiefs was regarded as the firmest bond between Caesar and Pompey, and was accordingly viewed with much alarm by the oligarchal party in Rome, especially by Marcus Tullius Cicero and Cato the Younger.^{[4][5][6][7][8][9][10]}

Pompey was supposedly infatuated with his bride. The personal charms of Julia were remarkable: she was a woman of beauty and virtue; and although policy prompted her union, and she was twenty-three years younger than her husband, she pos­sessed in Pompey a devoted husband, to whom she was, in return, devotedly attached.^[11] A rumor suggested that the aging conqueror was losing interest in politics in favor of domestic life with his young wife. In fact, Pompey had been given the governorship of Hispania Ulterior, but had been permitted to remain in Rome to oversee the Roman grain supply as curator annonae, exercising his command through subordinates.^[12]

Julia died before a breach between her husband and father had become inevitable.^{[13][14][15][16]} At the election of aediles in 55 BC, Pompey was surrounded by a tumultuous mob, and his gown was sprinkled with blood of the rioters. The slave who carried to his house on the Carinae the stained toga was seen by Julia, who, imagining that her husband was slain, fell into premature labour,^[17][18] and her constitution received an irreparable shock. In August of the next year, 54 BC, she died in childbed,^[19] and her infant —a son, according to some writers,^[20][21][22] a daughter, according to others,^[23][24]—survived her only a few days.^[25] Caesar was in Britain, according to Seneca,^[26] when he received the tidings of Julia's death.^[27]

Pompey wished her ashes to repose in his favourite Alban villa, but the Roman people, who loved Julia, determined they should rest in the field of Mars. For permission a special decree of the senate was necessary, and Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, one of the consuls of 54 BC, impelled by his hatred to Pompey and Caesar, procured an interdict from the tribunes. But the popular will prevailed, and, after listening to a funeral oration in the forum, the people placed her urn in the Campus Martius.^[28] Ten years later the official pyre for Caesar's cremation would be erected near the tomb of his daughter,^[29][30] but the people intervened after the laudatio funebris by Marcus Antonius and cremated Caesar's body in the Forum.

After Julia’s death Pompey and Caesar’s alliance began to fade which resulted in Caesar's civil war. It was remarked, as a singular omen, that on the day Augustus entered the city as Caesar's adoptive son, the monument of Julia was struck by lightning.^[31] Caesar himself vowed a ceremony to her manes, which he exhibited in 46 BC as extensive funeral games including gladiatorial combats.^[32][33][34] The date of the ceremony was chosen to coincide with the ludi Veneris Genetricis in September, the festival in honor of Venus Genetrix, the divine ancestress of the Julians.^[35] After Julia's death some Caesarian veteran colonies were named after her, e.g. Colonia Iulia (Iulias, later under Augustus known as Livias, near Heliopolis, the modern-day Baalbek).

[edit] Julia in popular culture

[edit] Fiction

• In Dante Alighieri's epic poem The Divine Comedy (14th century), Julia was encountered by Dante in the first circle of Hell, the Limbo (where rest souls who are not in torture, the pagans that lived righteous existences):^[36]

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

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

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

[edit] Television

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

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Appian, Civil Wars.
• Augustine of Hippo, The city of God.
• Cicero, Letters to Atticus.
• Cicero, Oration for Publius Quinctius.
• Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867.
• Livy, Periochae.
• Matthias Gelzer, Caesar, Politician and Statesman, (translated by Peter Needham), Oxford, 1968.
• Plutarch, Life of Caesar.
• Plutarch Life of Pompey.
• Plutarch Life of Cato the Younger.
• Seneca, To Marcia, On consolation.
• Suetonius, Life of Julius Caesar.
• Tacitus, Annals.
• Thomas Robert Shannon Broughton, Magistrates of the Roman Republic, vol. 2, 132, New York, (1951-1986).
• This entry incorporates public domain text originally from:
  • William Smith (ed.), A New Classical Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography, Mythology and Geography, 1851.
  • William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, 1870.