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Clodia Augustus' baby wife

by Eugenia Salza Prina Ricotti

Clodia
Women and love were naturally part of Augustus existence, but were less romantic and much fewer of the ones that cheered up his uncle Caesar’s life. Really for Octavian only a woman existed: his great love, Livia Drusilla. Before they met, other women took part of his life but not many, and notwithstanding all the rumors about him, his life was quite moderate and quite similar to the one led by any honest young man of his age.
He was still in his teens when he got betrothed to the daughter of one of Caesar’s generals, Publius Servilius Isauricus, anyway when, after their first clash, Antonius and him were pacified, it appeared absolutely necessary to stabilize this reconciliation. To solve a question of this kind the best thing to do had always been to resort to the ancient, and never enough praised, old system of a marriage. Thus the first betrothal was quickly dissolved and Isauricus’ daughter disappeared behind the horizon. Up to then nothing much had been herd about her, and nothing was herd afterward. Historians didn’t even put her name in their texts and the little fiancée passed through Octavian life as a meteor who doesn’t leave any trace.
When with the birth of the second triumvirate on the ait in the Reno river the meeting with Antonius and Lepidus ended, Octavian had just the time to set his foot on the river’s bank that he was surrounded by the troops who bade him to marry Claudia, the daughter of Fulvia, then Antonius’ wife, and of Clodius her deceased first husband. Claudia was very young, and Suetonius defines her “vixdum nubilem” which means that she had just reached the lower limit of the age that girls did have to be allowed to marry.
For some reasons the marriage was never consummated. Probably the two didn’t have any intercourse because Claudia was just a child. Then, as Suetonius tells us, after two years of chaste life Octavian sent her back still virgin and intact. To prove it Octavian dispatched to her mother, Fulvia, a paper written and signed by him with which he warranted Claudia virginity. In his histories Dio says that he didn’t care of the malignances that were diffused to explain why the little wife was still in these conditions– of course impotence was the principal accuse - nor was he preoccupied if people said that he didn’t touch the girl because from the beginning he was in bad faith and was planning to resume war with Antonius.
However this unconsummated marriage is a heavy question mark in Octavian’s history: of course at her marriage the bride was still very young but in the two years she spent with him she must have at least reached fourteen years, a time in which many of her contemporaries were already mothers and with babies in their arms, therefore the question of how old she was at her marriage couldn’t have been an impediment to regular intercourses. Moreover she was also the child of two very handsome parents and she could not have been so ugly to repulse her husband. To send her back still virgin was really very strange. At those times a divorce or a repudiation was absolutely not tragic. It is clear that Octavian did not have any necessity to have the young girl sent to his home to be assailed by all those doubts. And in the same way it is also highly improbable that arriving there the young bride had fled off the handle in such a way to show how it would have been difficult to live with her. At the beginning they must have been just a young couple as any other in the town, and, at least during the first times, they must have been in civil terms. But it is really possible that two persons young and, what is even more, married, did live under the same roof for two years, and that nothing had happened? Nothing. Not a moonlight evening, not a hot summer afternoon, not a cold winter night? This is really unconvincing, unless from Octavian part there had not been a very strong and cold determination, a valid reason to push him to such a behavior that offended not only Antonius but the even more dangerous Fulvia. It would certainly had been less unpleasant for everybody if from the start he had refused this arranged marriage, and if he hadn’t kept the girl in his house for two years to end abruptly the cohabitation in such a scandalous manner.
Why did Octavian behave in such a way? Suetonius suggests that at the basis of the unconsummated marriage was the mother in law. As a matter of fact it was Fulvia (Antonius was not in Italy) who, in coincidence with Claudia’s repudiation, gave rise to the Perusian war. It is however probable that Octavian and his mother in law had always been in disaccord. From the start Octavian had been perplexed about this marriage which set him in tight contact with Fulvia, a mother in law who was not only troublesome, but the most troublesome of all. It is evident that he never liked Fulvia and the facts proved that he was absolutely right.
Apart from his idiosyncrasy for his mother in law Octavian could not miss to realize that if the daughter had taken from her mother side, she would never have been a sweet and submissive wife. Also from her father’s side the girl didn’t descend from an exemplar family. Clodius had been a wicked sacrilegious and a violent man, and he never had any moral scruple. If also then, as today, blood is no water, heaven knows how would the young wife behave in the future.
Her three aunts offered ghastly examples to the eyes of any aspirant bridegroom. One was the beautiful Clodia, wife of Metellus Celer, and mistress, among many others, of Catullus, the poet who, during the happy period of their life, called her Lesbia and for her wrote his best love verses, topped, after she deserted him, by violently hard injures. Clodia was a very interesting woman but certainly not a reliable wife. Among the other things it was widely whispered that with a good poison‘s dose she had quickly disposed of her poor husband. Of the other two aunts - the wives of Lucius Lucullus and of Marcius Rex – the only thing that may have been said about them was that they had lots of lovers, and to top all this over the three sisters weighted the accuse of incest with their wicked brother.
Therefore it was certainly not the kind of family in which to pick a bride. She would not be the right kind for a man and particularly for one like the young Caesar who probably, as once had been declared by his uncle, thought that his wife should always be above any suspect. Maybe those were the reasons which persuaded the young husband to repudiate his baby-wife. However two years to arrive at those conclusions seems really a lot of time.
Yes Two years had certainly been a lot of time, but now the story was closed and at the right moment, just when Octavian wanted to take his distance from Antonius. Then all that had been said in Rome, to wit that he was in bad faith and was planning to resume the war with Antonius, was true? And was it also true that he did all those things because he was a cold calculator who wanted to cut the ties with his colleague and wanted to provoke him and Fulvia? It certainly seems so and what probably give more faith to the reliability of what had been said was that just at this moment Octavian decided to create a bridge-head in their political enemy group and in the 40 B.C. he, by then 23 years old, married Scribonia, widow of two consuls and who had children from both marriage.
And this puts an end to Claudia interlude.


Bibliography
Scientific divulgation
E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI, L'amore a Roma in Archeo, VII, 10 (92) October 1992, pp. 54-99

Books
E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI - Amori ed amanti tra la repubblica ed il principato, Editore. L’Erma di Bretschneider, Roma, 1992