Home -> Articoli -> Donne

Scribonia. How old was she?

by Eugenia Salza Prina Ricotti

Scribonia
After the end of his marriage with Claudia, Augustus did not lose much time to marry again and, in compliance with the traditions of the Iulian family, he contracted another political marriage. The bride Scribonia was a relative of the family of Pompeius Magnus and with her Augustus hoped to approach Sextus Pompeius, the son of the deceased leader, and his power group. Anyway, if Claudia had been a too young bride, the problem was now different: Scribonia was older than him and this for the Romans was not normal. Romans always married very young girls.
How old was Scribonia? A lady’s age should never be discussed. As everybody knows it has always been a well guarded mystery. But Scribonia’s age pushed historians to spend their nights and burn their candles over it. Thus pages and pages were written and dates were calculated again and again. As the historians Dio and Appianus said that she was the sister of Sextus Pompeius’ father in law, some of them hypothesized that she must have been born between the 90 or 80 B.C. Seneca however gives us a very important datum when he says that in the 16 A.D. she was still alive. Now if she had really been born between the 90 and 80 year B.C she would have been more than a hundred years old and, at least she would have been 96. Now, if she had really reached this age, Pliny the Elder would certainly have included her name in the list of the women who lived more than 93 years, and he didn’t do it. Then we can exclude 90-80 B.C. as her birth’s date. Probably Scribonia must have been 10 or 13 years older than the young Caesar, and that means that she was a woman of circa 33-36 year old, a bride not very young but still handsome and, what is more, with two marriages behind her, she must have had a vast experience of love making, a knowledge which, until then, the young Caesar lacked. It was probably from her that he learned how a woman company could be pleasant, and it is also a matter of fact that only after this marriage he began to have a very active sexual life. He was married of course but this didn’t hamper him in his research of love. It was a sure, also if unwritten law, that Roman husbands had the right to have how many affairs they chose. Romans wives had to be nice about them and only smile and look as if they ignored the fact. To do otherwise would be considered bad form and a good reason for a divorce.
Maybe at the beginning Scribonia behaved in the right way, however afterward, suspecting that one of the Young Caesar’ affairs was becoming too serious, she wasn’t able to hid her displeasure and, instead of making what any well behaved Roman wife might have done, she began to quarrel with him. Thus the young Caesar waited until she bore the child she was expecting, then, without even profiting of the fact that Scribonia with her endless bickering about his love affairs had given him one of the best reasons for a divorce, he repudiated her declaring that he did it because he was “disgusted by her perverse instincts”. In Rome however not many were the ones who believed that Scribonia had such perversities. What everybody whispered was that when Scribonia had noticed that among all the Young Caesar’s affairs one had become not only serious, but rather too much serious, she had began to protest and, quickly, the Young Caesar acted.
The question was that he had a very important and pressing reason to send her away. There was another woman whom he loved dearly, and who, unluckily for him, was married. Just then he had a very good reason to take her away from her husband, and to bring her under his roof: she was six months pregnant and the child she bore was his. It is evident that if he had still been Scribonia’ husband he could never have gone to her husband, Tiberius Nero, and asked him for his wife’s hand. Triumvir or not Triumvir bigamy would never have been accepted, not even for him. Without taking in account that if Tiberius could be so nice to “sic et simpliciter” pass his wife to a dangerously menacing Octavian, he could do it only for an Octavian free from any matrimonial tie, but he would certainly have refused if the young man had still been married. Of course in the first case Romans would have rumored (and they did it) but in the second one they would have stoned him to death.
Thus Octavian got back his freedom while Scribonia, who like Claudia had passed like a meteor in his life, was branded to fire. But later on when Octavian’s famed and infamous Giulia, his only legitimate descendant gave him a practical example of what “perverse instincts” could be, he had the time to regret all the mud he had reversed on his second wife. From Giulia as from Pandora’s vase all the ills which persecuted the Iulian dynasty were born

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