Julia (daughter of Caesar)

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Iulia (* between 83 and 76 BC; † August or September 54 BC ) was the only daughter of Gaius Julius Caesar and his first wife Cornelia .

Life

After the death of her mother in 69/68 BC Iulia was raised by Caesar's mother, Aurelia . It was born in early 59 BC. Eng. To a Quintus Servilius Caepio (who can possibly be identified with the later conspirator Marcus Junius Brutus ), but was surprisingly betrothed by her father after this engagement was broken in April 59 BC. Married to Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus , who was 23 years older than her. The marriage was a political alliance of convenience in order to bind Caesar and Pompey more closely to one another through family ties, and thus the end of 60 BC. To strengthen closed first triumvirate . Accordingly, the optimates like Cato the Younger and Cicero , who feared too great a concentration of power, viewed this marriage (which Cicero mentions in the same breath as the agricultural laws introduced by Caesar as consul). The anti-triumvirate historiography polemically claims that Julia was torn from her fiancé's arms in order to be able to be married to Pompey, while Caepio was appeased by the offer of marriage to a daughter of Pompey.

Despite the large age difference of the spouses and the purely political motivation of the marriage, the sources assure that Iulia and Pompey were very happily married. The triumvir is said to have neglected his political commitment due to his intensive coexistence with his young wife. Presumably, Julia's concern for her husband also contributed to her death so young. Because when it came to the aedile elections in the summer of 55 BC When there was a commotion and Pompey's toga was splattered with the blood of those killed in the process, he changed his robe and had the blood-stained toga carried home. From the sight of them the pregnant Julia in her first dismay mistakenly concluded that Pompey had been murdered, passed out and suffered a miscarriage. Since then, her health has been poor. The next year she was pregnant again, but died in August or September 54 BC. Chr. In childbed . The child, who, according to the ancient historian Friedrich Münzer, was more of a girl than a son, died just a few days later. According to the philosopher Seneca , Caesar received the news of his death when he carried out his second campaign in Britain , but was extremely calm about the loss of his only (legitimate) child.

Pompey wanted to bury his wife's ashes on his Albanian estate, but the people who mourned Julia managed to have their urn buried on the Martian field , also against the resistance of the incumbent consul Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus , who, according to Cassius Dio, through the tribunes wanted to prevent because this honorary testimony would have required a burial in a holy place of an express Senate resolution.

Juliet's death paved the way for civil war , as Pompey's family ties to the Julier , especially Caesar, were extinguished. The ancient tradition emphasized this fact. Caesar had wanted to continue the triumvirate policy, as his offer shows that his great-niece Octavia Minor should now be Pompey's new wife, which Pompey refused.

In fulfillment of his promise to the people in honor of his daughter, Caesar addressed in 46 BC. He carried out extensive funeral games including gladiator fights, for which he had a new arena specially built in the Roman Forum . The date of the funeral games was deliberately chosen in September so that it coincided with the ludi Veneris Genetricis , the celebrations in honor of the divine ancestor of Julier, Venus Genetrix . Octavian , heir to Caesar, repeated this model in 44 BC. When he organized the ludi funebres for Caesar and deliberately moved the ludi Veneris Genetricis from September to July. When Octavian after the murder of the dictator in early May 44 BC BC moved into Rome, two omina are said to have announced his future fame, on the one hand the appearance of a sun halo and on the other hand the strike of lightning in the tomb of Juliet.

literature

Web links

Commons : Julia Caesaris  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ^ So Iulia [5]. In: The New Pauly (DNP). Volume 6, Metzler, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-476-01476-2 , column 1.
  2. ^ Suetonius , Divus Iulius 1, 1; Plutarch , Caesar 5, 3.
  3. ↑ Suetonius, Divus Iulius 21, 3 ; Plutarch, Caesar 14, 3 and Pompey 47, 6; Appian , Civil Wars 2, 14; Cassius Dio 38, 9, 1.
  4. ^ So Sempronius [I 15]. In: The New Pauly (DNP). Volume 11, Metzler, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-476-01481-9 , column 465.
  5. ↑ Cicero, Epistulae ad Atticum 2, 17, 1; Velleius Paterculus 2, 44, 3 and 2, 47, 2; Suetonius, Divus Iulius 21, 27 and 50; Aulus Gellius , Noctes Atticae 4, 10, 5-7; Plutarch, Caesar 5, 3 and 14, 3; Plutarch, Pompey 47, 6; Plutarch, Cato Minor 31,3; Appian, Civil Wars 2, 14; Cassius Dio 38, 9, 1.
  6. ↑ Plutarch, Pompey 47, 6; on this Luciano Canfora , Caesar: the democratic dictator . Beck, Munich 2001, p. 79.
  7. ↑ Valerius Maximus 4, 6, 4; Plutarch, Pompey 48, 5 and 53, 1f .; Plutarch, Crassus 16, 1.
  8. ↑ Plutarch, Pompey 53, 3; Valerius Maximus 4, 6, 4 (who falsely claims that Julia died from this miscarriage).
  9. ↑ Friedrich Münzer: Iulius 547) . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume X, 1, Stuttgart 1918, column 895.
  10. ^ So Plutarch ( Pompeius 53, 4) and Cassius Dio (39, 64, 1).
  11. ↑ So Velleius (2, 47, 2) and probably Suetonius ( Divus Iulius 26, 1) and Lucan ( Pharsalia 5, 474 and 9, 1049).
  12. ↑ Seneca, De Consolatione ad Marciam 14, 3; dating: Cicero, Epistulae ad Quintum fratrem 3, 1 and Epistulae ad familiares 7, 9, 1.
  13. ↑ Cassius Dio 39, 64; Suetonius, Divus Iulius 84, 1; Plutarch, Pompey 53, 4 and Caesar 23, 4; Livy , periochae 106.
  14. ↑ Compare, for example, Lucan, Pharsalia 1, 111–120; Velleius 2, 47, 2.
  15. ^ Suetonius, Divus Iulius 27, 1.
  16. ↑ Suetonius, Divus Iulius 26, 2; Plutarch, Caesar 55, 3; Cassius Dio 43, 22, 3.
  17. ^ Suetonius, Augustus 95; on this Jochen Bleicken , Augustus , Berlin 1998, p. 64.
personal data
SURNAME Julia
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Julia Caesaris; Julia; Julia Caesaris
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Daughter of Caesar
DATE OF BIRTH between 83 BC BC and 76 BC Chr.
DATE OF DEATH August 54 BC BC or September 54 BC Chr.