The First Ladies of Rome: The Women Behind the Caesars (43 page)

Julia Domna was the first woman of the imperial age to have her interest and proficiency in both of the ‘male’ subjects of rhetoric and philosophy held up for public approbation.
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But the question of what should constitute a woman’s education was still as much of a contested issue as it was in the day of Domna’s Augustan namesake Julia. One parodist of the second century bemoaned the trend for fashionable women, influenced by Rome’s burgeoning love affair with Greek culture, to hire rhetoricians, grammarians and philosophers from Greece to trot at their heels. Some ladies were even said to have received instruction from their gurus while they were in mid-toilet, if there was no time to go to their lectures themselves.
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Other writers, rather than lamenting women’s frivolity, complained more bluntly that an education in rhetoric turned a woman into an erection killer: ‘You ask me why I don’t want to marry you, Galla? You are so literate. My cock often commits a solecism.’
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Undoubtedly, some elite men felt disgruntled about women’s attempts to enter into certain areas of study. A Roman woman’s job was to steer her son away from philosophy, not engage with it herself; to preside over her son’s oratorical education, not make speeches on her own behalf. Having said that, there were voices, Seneca’s being one, Plutarch’s being another, who supported subjects like philosophy and mathematics as suitable studies for a woman, on the grounds that a fuller education would make her a wiser, better wife and household manager. While it may be that Domna’s example was seen as an eccentricity permitted in the empress because of her exalted and
separate status, it could also signify that, at least among the women of the privileged classes, private study in these intellectual spheres was not as taboo nor as rare as our more vitriolic sources may lead us to believe.

Despite the political witch-hunt being conducted against Domna by Plautianus, a public front of dynastic unity was preserved among the Severans for the time being. Shortly after his ten-year anniversary celebrations had concluded in 202, Severus took the whole family, new members Plautianus and Plautilla included, on a tour of Africa. Included on the itinerary was a visit to his home town of Lepcis Magna. It was Domna’s first trip to the region. Lepcis, which is today one of the best preserved Roman cities in the Mediterranean, was transformed during the reign of its most famous son, with Severus spending massive sums to turn the city into a show-ground for the Roman imperial brand in Africa. When the family arrived in 202, construction was about to get under way on a vast new forum while a colonnaded avenue running from the public baths down to the brand-new harbour was being completed. Everywhere they went, the visitors were met by the gratifying sight of newly completed statues of themselves – Severus, Domna, their sons, new recruits Plautianus and Plautilla, and even the emperor’s dead first wife Paccia Marciana, a fellow native of the city.
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One of the jewels on the city’s magnificent new skyline was a four-way triumphal arch stretching across the junction of the city’s two main roads. Unusually for a triumphal monument, its decorative scheme was as much a celebration of Severus’s achievements on the domestic front as on the military field, showing a bearded Septimius and an adult Caracalla grasping right hands in a gesture of solidarity in addition to a scene of religious sacrifice.
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In both of these panels, the figure of Julia Domna with her distinctive helmet of hair is easily recognisable amid the otherwise male line-up. Her watchful presence both at the ceremony between her husband and her son, and at the sacrifice – a highly unusual artistic depiction for an empress to this point – was a reminder of her symbolically significant role in holding her family together, at a time when strong military leadership was required from her male relatives. Her images incidentally also provide us with a preview of an emerging female clothing trend of the third century that would become increasingly popular over the coming decades. In one panel, Domna wears the gap-sleeved tunic that had
been traditionally worn by Roman matrons up until now. In the other, her shoulders are completely covered, the gaps in the sleeves sewn up – a hint towards greater concealment and modesty in women’s dress that would become increasingly common into the next century.
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After several months in Africa, the family returned to Rome once more, where preparations were under way for the great public occasion of the Saecular Games – a festival held every 110 years to mark the beginning of a new era in Roman history, last held during the reign of Domitian. Domna became the first imperial woman to play a star role on this occasion, hosting 109 married women in sacred banquets on the Capitol in honour of the goddesses Juno and Diana.
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Severus’s increasing determination to portray himself as a natural successor not just to his Antonine predecessors, but to Rome’s first emperor, had already led him to announce a new revival of the strict adultery laws introduced by Augustus – with the amendment that provincial women should be allowed to share in the same legal rights enjoyed by Roman women.
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Similar image considerations were in part behind Domna’s sponsorship of the restoration of the venerable and ancient temple of Womanly Fortune, the same temple whose preservation had once been the pet project of Livia.
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Even the two women’s names were assimilated – Domna was known as Julia Augusta on her coinage, the same nomenclature granted to Livia after her husband’s death.
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Domna’s
bête noire
Plautianus and her daughter-in-law Plautilla, meanwhile, were also now firmly established members of the Severan tableau. Vast numbers of portrait types of Plautilla had been rushed into production in the immediate aftermath of her marriage to the emperor’s eldest son, some of the later ones depicting her with a previously unknown hairstyle, dubbed the ‘skull-braid coiffure’ on account of its tight plaits arranged up the back of her head, a style which became popular among elite women for many years afterwards.
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The faces of her and her father had been included both on the arch at Lepcis Magna and on the Arch of the Argentarii, which was dedicated shortly before the Saecular Games. Yet Severus, if report is to be believed, was growing suspicious of his aide. He was unhappy at the number of statues in Lepcis that he had found set up to honour Plautianus and moreover had been warned by his brother, the elder Geta, who died in 204, to beware his increasingly ambitious praetorian prefect.
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Though the rift over the statues was patched up, the hatred
of one member of the family towards Plautianus, it seems, had not cooled.

Proof of this was brought to bear in violent fashion by the events of 22 January 205. According to the detailed account of Cassius Dio, the imperial family had just gone into dinner that evening, when three centurions arrived at the palace in possession of a letter apparently containing a warrant to kill Severus and Caracalla. Instead, the centurions loyally passed the letter to the emperor, who immediately sent a summons to Plautianus, on the pretext of needing to consult him about some other business. On arriving at the palace, and having been ordered to leave his companions outside, a wary Plautianus entered Severus’s presence alone and was quietly interrogated by the emperor. But as soon as the prefect began to repudiate the charges against him, Caracalla, who was hovering nearby, launched himself at his father-in-law and on being dragged off by Severus, hurled a command at one of the attendants, to slay Plautianus. The attendant duly obliged. Someone – presumably Caracalla himself, though it is left unsaid – proceeded to pluck a handful of hairs from Plautianus’s head, strode into the next room, and triumphantly showed them to Domna and Plautilla, who had been left outside, presumably still waiting for dinner to start. ‘Behold your Plautianus’, came the cruel remark, provoking grief in Plautilla and quiet satisfaction in Domna.
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From the planting of the letter to the enlistment of the centurions, the whole episode had in fact been stage-managed by Caracalla, according to the account of Cassius Dio. Severus’s son now finally rid himself of his unwanted wife Plautilla by having her banished to the island of Lipari, where she was later put to death. Images of her and her father were desecrated. It was their figures who originally occupied the blank space alongside Caracalla on the Arch of the Argentarii, and the inscription on the arch was also doctored to eliminate their names. Domna was the eventual beneficiary of this excision, since it made room on the arch for extra lettering to be added after she was awarded a new title in 211 –
mater senatus et patriae
(‘Mother of the Senate and of the Fatherland’). Some of Plautilla’s statues even show signs of having been physically attacked and mutilated, the young
Augusta
’s eyes gouged out, as though reflecting the vengeful Caracalla’s desire to wreak the same punishment on his wife’s own person.
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Despite the removal of Plautianus, Caracalla was evidently still an angry young man. The focus of his antipathy now switched to another
target – his younger brother Geta, with whom he became co-consul in 205. The two boys were now aged sixteen and fifteen respectively, and the death of Plautianus spurred a simmering rivalry which saw them vie on the field of sexual conquest and sporting competition, even challenging each other to a neck-or-nothing chariot race, which was so aggressively fought that Caracalla fell from his two-wheeled chariot and broke his leg.
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Their father meanwhile had become increasingly restless since his return to Rome in 204, irritated by political trials and petty outbreaks of brigandage in Italy. The delinquent behaviour of his sons had not escaped his attention either. When a letter arrived from the governor of Britain in 208, pleading for help with rebellious barbarians there, Severus snatched at the opportunity to introduce Caracalla and Geta to some much-needed discipline while flexing his soldiering muscles one last time.
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Severus duly packed up his whole household, his wife and sons, and all the bureaucratic machinery of government, and headed for the ‘desolate and swampy’ northern climes of Britain.
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The emperor was now sixty-three and sorely plagued by pains in his legs and feet (possibly due to gout or arthritis) which required the old soldier to be carried in a litter for most of the way and were probably not helped by Britain’s colder climate. For Domna, it was the completion of a journey from one margin of the empire to the other, from Syria in the east to Britain in the west. On arrival, the imperial entourage, which included Domna’s brother-in-law Alexianus, took up residence at Eboracum (York), from where Severus and his eldest son Caracalla led military attempts to subdue northern Scotland while Geta remained with his mother Domna in Eboracum, delegated the task of supervising the administrative affairs of the empire.
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Domna’s activities during the family’s three-year sojourn in Britain go mostly unrecorded with the exception of a bizarre encounter with the wife of a British clansman. After a treaty had been agreed between the Romans and the British rebels, Domna and the wife of one of the Caledonian delegates, Argentocoxus, were apparently standing around chatting about the difference between the sexual behaviour of Roman women and British women. Domna is said to have made a joking remark about British women’s free-and-easy approach to sex with their men. Her companion snapped: ‘We fulfil the demands of nature in a much better way than do you Roman women; for we consort openly with the best men, whereas you let yourselves be debauched in secret by the vilest.’
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The line, which appears in Cassius Dio’s account in the
context of a discussion of Severus’s revival of the Augustan adultery laws, is an amusing subversion of the typical Roman prejudice against ‘barbarian’ sexuality – here the tables are turned on Roman women, discomfiting Domna, many of whose imperial predecessors of course were the worst offenders. Though most probably a fictitious piece of reportage, it does nonetheless add to the body of evidence that suggests part of a Roman empress’s job on tours abroad was, like her modern counterparts, to socialise with the wives and other female dignitaries.

Meanwhile, inscriptions prove that Domna received a new addition to her roster of honorary titles during the stay in Britain –
mater Augustorum
or ‘Mother of the
Augusti
’. This advertised the promotion of Geta to the rank of Augustus alongside his brother. The imperial mint, still churning out new coin designs despite the family’s absence from the capital, issued celebratory gold
aurei
depicting all four family members, Septimius and Domna on one side, and Caracalla and Geta on the other, bearded to advertise their transition from boys to men. But the accompanying legend
Perpetua Concordia
– ‘Everlasting Harmony’ – was a red herring.
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Caracalla’s and Geta’s rivalry had reached new heights of vindictiveness, and stories abounded that Caracalla’s increasingly murderous intentions towards his younger brother had begun to veer towards his ailing father too. Despite these alleged threats on his life, which included an attempt by Caracalla to run his father through with a sword while they were out riding together, Severus was said to have spared Caracalla punishment, allowing ‘his love for his offspring to outweigh his love for his country; and yet in doing so he betrayed his other son, for he well knew what would happen’.
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That ominous prediction was indeed soon fulfilled.