Home -> Articoli -> Donne

Fadia the daughter of a slave that his master made free

by Eugenia Salza Prina Ricotti

Fadia


If Augustus’s love life was quite calm, very active was Mark Anthony’s one. For what we know not only he was a great success with women, but his beauty attracted also many depraved men.
Really the grotesque profile we find in his moneys can’t be described as handsome and if we had only to judge him by it we could never understand how he could have had such luck in love. Thank god there are also two bust in full relief that honor his good looks. One of them treated in a realistic way, present the same kind of profile depicted in his coins, but it looks as a better one; then his strong full face without any wrinkles, the straight nose, the strong chin, the full lips, the hair short which, brushed back, bend a little forward without never falling on his forehead, show us a handsome man and a really very pleasant one. There is still another bust sculpted in black marble: It was certainly made by an Alexandrian sculptor who gave him a Hellenistic majesty and an Olympic calm, a portrati that was certainly made during his long stay in Egypt, when he was Cleopatra’s lover and maybe even her husband. Both those marble portraits confirm his beauty and masculinity and explain his success with women because of them he had many.
As many as he wanted, in fact, only he never dominated them. On the contrary he always ended to let them do whatever they chose. While Caesar and Augustus were always master of the situations, he left his mates free to run wild as much as they wanted. The point was that to be able to satisfy his hedonism he always did his utmost to gratify them. This was one of his worst errors and also one of his worst misfortune. Besides while Augustus and Cesar never let shady persons entice them, Anthony always showed a strong preference for tarts. Also when later one he had to marry he always consorted with lady of dubious reputation. To sum it up it was evident that Anthony was never interested in honest women and if, at a certain moment, he was obliged to marry one of them – Octavia, Augustus’s sister – he did it because he had no possibility to draw himself back. As for the other upper set ladies who became his wives it is evident that he did not chose them because they were noble and prestigious, but because they were beautiful and dissolute to such a point that they could beat any whore at her trade. However all these upper class gentlewomen were for him a terrible ruin. It would have been a boon for him if he had confined himself to the little mimes and dancers whom he liked so much
However his first wife didn’t belong to the upper class: she belonged to the category of nice and pleasant little women without problems. She was a certain Fadia, daughter of a rich slave who had been set free. Cicero could hardly believe his luck: To find a story of this kind and thus to be able to defame Anthony accusing him not only to have made such a low marriage but also adding that he had sons from it: children of a slave whom her master had just left free! It was really a juicy scandal which he could play for a long time and about which he could entertain everyone. However there are many doubts on the possibility that the rakish young man had really married poor Fadia. For a patrician it was not necessary to marry a woman of her state nor he had to do it to have children by her. The fact that Cicero called father-in-law Fadia’s father is not important. Cicero wanted to present Anthony in the worst light possible. “Omnia comperi” - “I know all” a phrase that Cicero always repeated and with whom he was often called by everyone who wanted to laugh at him - declared openly his intention in one of his letter to Atticus “ ........But I will pinch our Anthony....... it will be enough to tell to the sons of our sons that Anthony had children from the daughter of Caius Fadius and I will not even put in it some of the Lucilian gall .....................”. However this is the only thing that we, “sons of their sons”, now know about poor Fadia. Both her and her children soon vanished on the horizon, and some people think that even before the fatal 44 B.C. they were all dead . What is sure is that they disappeared from Anthony life, but the fact that we can’t know anything more on them doesn’t mean that they were dead. It can only indicate that, as it was customary in case of concubinage among persons of different social classes, whatever “Omnia Comperi” could say, the children had never been recognized by Anthony and therefore took the name and the legal state of their mother. Of course in this case they ended by being swallowed up in the darkness of a social class that did not make history



BIBLIOGRAPHY

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

Libro
E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI, - Amori ed amanti tra la repubblica ed il principato, Casa editrice. L’Erma di Bretschneider, Rome, 1992