The Empress Livia was the most powerful woman of her day — but was she also a murderess? Or have Roman male biases towards women in power maligned her?

Livia’s Early Life

Livia Drusilla was born in 58BC. Although her father, Livius Drusus Claudianus, was adopted into the Livii, he was by birth a Claudian, one of Rome’s oldest — and most notorious — patrician clans.

No important family at this time could avoid becoming embroiled in the violence and politics that marked the end of the republic. Livia’s father was killed at the Battle of Philippi when the forces of Caesar’s assassins Cassius and Brutus met with those of his avengers: Lepidus, Mark Anthony and Octavian — the future emperor Augustus.

By this time, Livia was married to her cousin Tiberius Claudius Nero, a staunch republican. Because of that marriage, she soon found herself in the opposite political camp from her future husband. As the triumvirate faltered, Tiberius Claudius sided with Mark Anthony and fled Italy for Greece, taking his wife and young son, Tiberius. The family remained in exile for several years until the pact of Misenum in 39BC allowed them to return to Rome.

Did Livia share her husband’s political sentiments? This is not known. But she did bravely stand by him. By sharing Tiberius Claudius’s exile, Livia and her son were in real physical danger. Suetonius describes a dramatically tense scene at Naples where the crying Tiberius nearly gave away the couple to their pursuers. Later, in Sparta, he also relates how Livia became caught in a forest fire when attempting to flee with her son. 

Critically, Livia’s behaviour shows the kind of loyalty expected of a Roman wife. Of course, in sticking by Tiberius Claudius, she could simply have been making a calculated move, waiting to see where the balance of power would finally rest. But this wifely loyalty was something she became famous for — but with a different husband.

Relationship with Augustus

On the 17th January 39BC, pregnant with her second son Drusus and not long after returning to Rome, Livia married the man her former husband had opposed. The sources state that Augustus fell in love with Livia and ordered her husband to divorce her. So was it a love match?  

Augustus may have loved Livia, but that would not have been his sole consideration in choosing her as a wife. Although adopted into the Julii by his great Uncle, the former Octavian’s own paternal family was undistinguished. Uniting himself with the Claudii undoubtedly bolstered his own political position.

As for Livia’s views, there is no record. But we can assume she was happy with the union. It seems strange that a man like Tiberius Claudius, with a proven track record of opposition to Augustus, would meekly hand his wife over — unless his wife made it clear it was what she wanted.

 Certainly, once married, Livia threw herself wholeheartedly into her wifely duties.  

Suetonius and Tacitus agree she was the very model of a Roman matron. Although she never provided Augustus with a child, she ran Augustus’s household and brought up his daughter Julia according to the strict traditional values approved of by the emperor. Augustus held his wife in such high regard that in his will, he adopted her and made her his co-heir with her son Tiberius.

 But this was not simply a recognition of Livia’s domestic skills.

Mother of her Country 

Augustus reputedly divorced his previous wife Scribonia because she had nagged him. But Livia was by no means a compliant wife content to sit in the background and spin. In fact, it was widely acknowledged that she was one of Augustus’s most trusted and influential advisors. 

Livia’s influence was such that it continued even after Augustus died. With Tiberius’s ascension to the purple, the senate tried to show his mother equal honour by voting her the title “Mother of her Country”. At the same time, dedicatory inscriptions in the empress’s honour began to appear in towns such as Pompeii. No doubt this was to curry favour with Livia, as well as show recognition for her services to the state. 

But it does show Livia’s continuing power. So how did she acquire such a level of influence?

Scheming Killer

Augustus may not have had a son, but he had plenty of young male relatives who should have inherited the empire from him. First, there was his nephew Marcellus, who married his daughter Julia. Marcellus died young and childless, but Julia remarried and provided her father with a clutch of grandchildren — all of who met tragic ends. Of her sons, the two eldest, Lucius and Gaius, who Augustus adopted, died young. Her youngest son, Postumus Agrippa, was convicted of debauched behaviour and executed after his grandfather’s death.  

It was beyond bad luck to so carelessly lose all your male relatives in such a way. 

But then, maybe bad luck had nothing to do with it. And who benefited from tragedies — Augustus’s stepson, Tiberius. 

 Tacitus lays all these deaths at Livia’s door for this very reason. In his Annuals, he states she killed to clear the path for Tiberius. As well as causing the deaths of his brothers, she engineered the banishment of Posthumous by manipulating his grandfather, ordering his execution after Augustus’s death. Tacitus even claims Livia kept Augustus’s actual death a secret until she was confident of Tiberius’s succession, keeping the corpse of Augustus imprisoned in a villa surrounded by her guards. The perfect matron is gone. She has become a manipulative murderer.

Murderess or Maligned?

Tacitus’s and Suetonius’s accounts were written after Livia’s death and after the demise of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. The chaos of the reigns of the dynasty’s later emperors had taken its toll. Many may have wanted to revere Augustus, but on the whole, the names of the rest of his family were mud. Tacitus’s account could be coloured by this view as it is markedly biased against the original imperial dynasty. This could explain in part why he maligns Livia. 

But why choose her as the scapegoat, especially when elsewhere in his account, he sings her praises as a model wife (although an overbearing mother)? In fact, Tacitus’s view is puzzlingly contradictory. On the one hand, Livia is described as set to ruin all of Augustus’s relatives — but she is also recorded as trying to ease the plight of the exiled Julia the Younger, who, like her mother Augustus’s daughter, was banished for adultery.   

But contradictory though it may be, Tacitus’s stories come from somewhere, suggesting that rumours of Livia the murderer predate him. But why would a woman revered for her morals and hard work by some be reviled by others?  

Livia’s sex could be the key, for wives, no matter how supportive, were not meant to hold power. It threatened the status quo. So for a woman to wield such an unnatural amount of power, she must be resorting to unnatural means — even murder. Thus, the unfortunate fates of Augustus’s family, which benefitted Livia’s son, were laid at her door. 

Indeed, Tiberius came to view Livia’s power as inconvenient. Threatened by the continued support for his mother and her power, he quickly acted to curb her. Besides reputedly moving to Capri to avoid her, he vetoed the senate’s honours of her and gradually side-lined her. His spite continued after her death in 29AD, when he refused to honour her will properly or deify her.

Livia had overstepped the mark with her son. Perhaps others also held that view. But maybe Roman men simply couldn’t accept that a woman could gain political influence through hard work and intelligence.

Resources

The Oxford Classical Dictionary

Cooley, A E and M G L, (2004) Pompeii: A Sourcebook. London: Routledge

Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars

Tacitus, The Annals of Imperial Rome