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2 -Livia and Octavianus. The birth of a great love.

by Eugenia Salza Prina Ricotti

When Livia came back to Rome, the life in the great city was reverting to normal and, as it always happen after a war or other kinds of tragedies and deaths, there was a greater desire to lead a full life and enjoy it. There were parties and banquets, and there everybody met. Romans who till the days before had tried with all their means to cut other people’s throats, now shared with them their meals and entertainments. Ready of course to resume the killings at the first occasion.
Also Augustus and Livia met and looked at each other with interest. Livia saw in him the man who had embittered her life and had obliged her to flee away with a baby in her arms; a man whom she had hated with all her heart. But this added a pinch of curiosity and interest. To look at the young boyish Octavianus who had tried to cut her throat and to sense the new effect that she produced on him every time they met added a pinch of excitement and interest. It was amusing but little by little it caused her to burn her wings.
From his side Augustus saw in her the wife of one of his enemies, a man who just at this moment was with Pompeius in Sicily, and was certainly plotting against him. After his second marriage with the older and more experienced Scribonia, Augustus knew much more of the facts of life and was experimenting his boyish charm on his opponents’ wives. This allowed him to find from them what their husbands were scheming. At first Livia certainly looked to him as a good source of fresh news, but little by little she began to enter in his blood and he began to understand that she would never be a passing meteor crossing his life. He saw Livia as she really was: a true woman, a woman to love with all his soul, a valid companion who would always been at his side. Thus the cold and calculating August ended by completely falling in love.
What did he see in her at their first meeting when beauty is the most important thing? Extremely beautiful, contradicting what Carcopino says in his text, Livia wasn’t. Her aquiline nose was just a little too long for her round face and the short distance between her nose and her mouth was no part of the beauty’s rules; moreover her mouth which was very small, was thin lipped. Of course no one could say that Livia had not her good points with her beautiful eyes and the perfect lines of her brows, but certainly she was not the kind of stunning beauty that overwhelms men and take their breath away at the first meeting.
However Livia had lots of other gifts: she was very intelligent, had a attractive personality, a pleasant conversation and an innate kindness that created a kind of subtle fascination which was very persistent. To sum it up she had the kind of charm that would last for ever; a touch of magic that little by little attracted the men attention and captured them. This is what Augustus saw and soon he realized that he had been caught and was deeply in love with her. But also Livia now loved him with all her heart. The consequences were inevitable and they ended by throwing themselves into each other’s arms.
For Livia this love was a shocking revelation. The young Caesar was very different from her old husband, the man that she had loyally followed in the good and in the bad fortune. “Ubi tu Gaius ego Gaia” was what the young bride said at the moment of her marriage, but not much time elapsed after meeting Augustus before Livia was forced to realize that her real Gaius was this young boy and not Tiberius Nero.
It is highly probable that Livia got this revelation before the courtship’s ended and before they had any sex. Livia was a very serious and moral woman and such she was for all her life. She was not the kind of person that falls in the arms of the first man who cross her way. It is evident that when she decided to yield to the young Caesar proposals she was completely sure about her feelings and she completely confided in him. But she sure yielded and she did it in a complete way. We don’t know what the two young lovers had in their mind for their future. The only certain thing is that they did not take any precautions and that very soon Livia was pregnant.
That the baby was Augustus’ son looks quite evident, but notwithstanding all this there have been people like, for instance, Carcopino, who attributed this son to Tiberius Nero’s. Of course on Octavianus’ and Livia’s marriage Carcopino always had very original ideas, and on her pregnancy he doesn’t have any doubt: Livia had to give birth of a son from her husband. Carcopino bases his statements on the date in which Tiberius Nero arrived from Sicily, and we know that this was at the middle of September of the 39 B.C. Disregarding the fact that no historians says that Livia was in Sicily with her husband, the French archaeologist declares that he can’t accept no other idea. Following his principle Carcopino is sure that a pregnant Livia came back with her husband on September 39 B.C., and as the young Caesar, who had spent in Gallia the month of August, came back at the same time, Octavianus with the baby’s birth could have had nothing to do.
However these statements don’t take in consideration a series of simple facts. Good sense tells us that when Livia - who had been left in Lacaedemonia - came back bringing with her little Tiberius, she must have taken the first boat sailing to Brindisi. This was what everyone coming back from Greece did. It would have been very strange if, in the 40 B.C., the tired young woman who, at last, had got back to Italy, could decide to set out on an uncomfortable and long journey and to sustain the hardships of the bad mountainous rough roads leading to Sicily. It is evident that, as soon as she could, she took the good Appian way and brought the baby to their comfortable home in Rome.
It is always the common good sense that tells us how it is absolutely not possible what Carcopino suggests, when he adfirms that having just had a quick look to one another, Livia and Octavianus decided to marry and to do it very quickly. If both had arrived in the same days, if Livia did not even had the time to undo her bags, or the young Caesar to dismount from his horse, how could Octavianus, at his first look to the young matron already disfigured by her pregnancy, declare “Either her, or death”?
It is evident that it was only Tiberius Nero who joined the Antonians, while in the 40 B.C. Livia was in Rome and here she met the young Caesar. Only thus we can understand how she could have built such a strong bond with Octavianus, and how she became pregnant. Apart of anything else, only those facts could explain what could have pushed the young Caesar to a rapid divorce from Scribonia and moreover to do it in the same day in which the poor woman had given birth to their daughter. Only those facts could explain why he immediately asked Tiberius to divorce from his wife and give her to him. A wife who was six month pregnant!
Of course the historians wrote a lot about it and it is from them that we know what happened. Octavianus brought Livia to his house on the 14 of October of the 39 B.C., and he did it just three months before Drusus birth. Then it was only around the 14 October that the woman went to live with the young Caesar with a marriage “per usus”, something very similar to our modern cohabitation. The ceremony was delayed to allow Livia to be in better conditions and the marriage was celebrated on the 17 of January 38 B.C. three days after the birth of Drusus.
It is evident that if Livia had returned to Rome only at the middle of September, the frantic succession of the happenings reported by the historians would not have given to the young lovers an instant to outline the least sketchy acquaintance and not even a moment to think about it. As from history we know that the young Caesar shaved for the first time when he began to fall in love with Livia, the young man would have had just the time to set his eyes on her, run back home, shave, and quickly divorce from Scribonia who, just on this day. had given birth to Giulia.
Then, lets say that a fortnight after - and already too much time had been lost between shaving, births and divorce - Octavianus went to Tiberius Nero’s home to tell him that his intentions were honourable and that he wanted to marry Livia. After this very courteously he asked him to give him his wife as she was, unborn child included, and he earnestly requested him not to argue or made a fuss about it because he was in a hurry. Of course Tiberius Nero could not forget the lists of proscriptions and all the Antonians’ killings in Perugia where the young Caesar had cut their throats on the Caesar’s altar. All those bloody facts must have decided Tiberius to abandon any discussions: better a Livia divorced than a Livia widowed. Thus the two went immediately to the Pontefices to know what the holy men thought about a passing a pregnant woman from a husband to another without even waiting the childbirth. The Pontefices - tells us Dio - answered that
“If there was a doubt that the fecundation had taken place, it was necessary to wait, but if it was evident, there was no need to lose time and the two could be immediately married. Maybe – adds Dio – they read this rule among the ones fixed by their ancestors, but – considers the historian – also if they didn’t found it, they would have said the same.......”
And due to the precedents, and the dangers they could incur opposing the will of the triumvir, there could not having been a more sagest remark.
After the Pontefices’s answer, everything was smooth. Tiberius Nero divorced from his wife and not only he did this, but, as if he had been her father instead than her husband, he established for her a dowry, took part of the marriage’s ceremony and gave the bride away. To top all this, he gave a banquet to celebrate the nuptials.
How is it possible after all this to rule out that, apart the proscriptions, Tiberius Nero had been forced to assume such a compliant attitude toward his rival by the certainty that the child that Livia was expecting was not his? A certainty which was also shared by all the Romans, who at Drusus’ birth sang in the streets
“ To the lucky ones, sons take only three months to be born”
Of course nothing could move Carcopino from his idea and he was more than ever persuaded that the child was Tiberius son. But, then, how could he explain what Dio tells us, that is to say that, at Drusus birth, the baby was brought at Augustus feet and there left on the floor? This was what was usually done when a son was born: the father, and only the natural father could take the baby in his arms and with this action announce that he recognized him and would bring him up. It was just to be able to do this that Augustus had brought Livia in his home. Of course after having accomplished this task he was obliged to send back the children to Tiberius Nero. I am sure that he hated to let them go but what else could he do? To proclaim that this son was his own was something that he could never do: it would have been as accusing himself and Livia of adultery and this in Rome would never be excused. Then better keep mum about it. After all since the world began these things were always done, but never been told.

Bibliography
Scientific popularization
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