Livia: Mother of Rome

Ancient Lives

by Caitlin C. Gillespie

A bold new portrait of Livia, ancient Rome’s first First Lady, who shaped the empire from behind the throne

Livia was no ordinary Roman woman. As wife of Augustus and mother of Tiberius―the first and second Roman emperors―she stood at the heart of the first imperial dynasty, wielding extraordinary influence in a world that denied women formal power. In this vivid biography, Caitlin C. Gillespie reclaims Livia (58 BCE–29 CE) from centuries of scandal and rumored villainy, tracing her journey from elite birth and early traumatic exile through her rise to wealth and influence as the matriarch of the imperial household, the Domus Augusta.

Drawing on literary and archaeological sources, Gillespie explores Livia’s inner life through her personal losses, including the death of her son Drusus; her political savvy; and her later life as Julia Augusta, high priestess of Augustus’s divine cult. Though she never held an official political position, Livia emerges as a complex figure whose story of ambition, resilience, and maternal power resonates over millennia, captivating audiences from antiquity through today.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Biography Memoir, Ancient History, Biography

240 pages, Hardcover

First published July 21, 2026

About the author

Caitlin C. Gillespie is a Lecturer in Classics at Columbia University. Previously, she was an Assistant Professor of Instruction at Temple University, and a Lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania, where she earned her Ph.D. in Classical Studies in 2012. She received her B.A. in Classics from Harvard University (2005) and her Master of Studies in Greek and Latin Languages and Literatures from the University of Oxford (2006).

Reviews

[Arianne X · Rating 5 out of 5]

First, before I forget to mention it, Caitlin Gillespie’s playful writing style makes the book fun to read.

The Real Heroin

The real heroin of the story for me is Julia (Julia the Elder) daughter of Augustus from his first marriage with Scribonia. She was intelligent, kind, gentle, full of vivacity, free of vindictiveness, a lover of art, and a promoter of literature. Being popular, smart, witty, and clever were among her moral failings in right-wing Augustan Rome as they are today for a woman in MAGA America. Among her detestable and appalling traits were her vivacious love of life and free love as well as being lighthearted and playful, sexual and otherwise. Julia was a woman who went out to see and to be seen as in one of her diaphanous going out gowns. I own a few myself. Julia had her own ideas about what was morally acceptable in terms of her personal conduct. Julia was not interested in Imperial Roman ideals or its idea of ideal Roman morality. She was very much a woman after my own heart. But in the imperial household, family matters were imperial matters. This is a world where family and friends were political and politics was a family matter and this destroyed the beloved Julia.

Right-Wing Rome

It really is no wonder why the idea of “Rome” and the Roman Empire is fetishized by the American political right. Then as now, female morality is thought to be an appropriate area for legislation by men and regulation by the state. Right-wingers are Roman Empire wannabes who can never stop comparing themselves to their Roman heroes. They want to be Roman or create a new American Roman Empire. This is the story of how upright and uptight over-moralization justifies exclusion, oppression, and violence. It fuels patriarchy and hierarchy and leads to female oppression. This is what the modern right idealizes in Augustan Rome. It embraces the same oppressive ideology and fear of female emancipation. Tiberius especially could not deal with strong woman such as his mother Livia, his wife Julia or his daughter-in-law Agrippina the Elder no matter how positive their contributions to the state. This is an ideology of fear; a fear that female empowerment will lead to civilizational decline. The fear of decline is as old as western civilization, and it is trotted out every so often to justify immigration crackdowns, racial oppression, patriarchy, misogyny, and violence. The people who use this ideology are convinced that they are living in a more corrupt, weaker and softer age than in a mythical past. An age weakened by racial equality, equal rights, and female empowerment. In this ideology, ancient and modern, tradition needs to be respected to maintain greatness and prevent comfort from corrupting the youth. The Romans saw decline all around them in the form of their own imagined moral decay, decadence, and foreign influence. Cicero lamented the collapsing values of the Romans, Sallust said that greed was destroying the Roman state, and Seneca talked about corruption eating aways at Rome from the inside out, and all this before the Empire really got rolling.

Livia Contra Julia

Both Livia and Julia were the femme fatale victims of patriarchy in different ways. Julia for her vivaciousness, physical presence, and sexual qualities and Livia for her pragmaticism, political skills and intellectual qualities. We see the same misogynistic drama played out in the Jewish mythology of Adam and Eve; it was all Eve’s fault for being a woman.

Of course, Julia was made to suffer the most under the oppressive yoke of right-wing Roman prudishness. She was banished from Rome, for life, and sent to the tiny island of Pandataria, now known as Ventotene. This was basically a prison sentence complete with harsh living conditions including a complete ban on wine, luxuries, and the company of men. She was never forgiven for being herself. Augustus was unmoved by the suffering he was causing for the sake of his moral purity laws. Augustus could be extremely cruel when he wished yet it is Livia who gets the reputation for underhanded cruelty. He caused the death of a great-granddaughter and banished the poet Ovid for offending his prudish proclivities. Later Julia was moved to Rhegium (modern-day Reggio Calabria) on the mainland of Italy, possibly through the positive intervention of Livia, but when Tiberius became emperor, she was put in solitary confined and deprived of her allowance and support where she died of malnutrition and slow starvation in 14 CE. Whereas Livia went along to get along but as a prominent woman in her own right, always a problem for Roman men, Livia was perpetually under suspicion. Since she was under moral suspicion same as Juli, but Livia was suspected of skullduggery and murder, e.g., in the unfounded rumors that she had a hand in death of Marcellus and in the death of Augustus himself no less. After Tiberius became emperor, she was conveniently accused of scheming to make him the emperor after Augustus from the very beginning and then blamed for killing Augustus. The murders and schemes of which she has been accused are unsubstantiated and would have been nearly impossible carryout. We can even see in Livia the age-old accusation of “wicked stepmother”. It is noteworthy, that co-rule, or sole female rule, was not a problem in the immoral east, e.g., Cleopatra. As such, Livia, as a noble Roman matron, was duty bound to support and follow the lead of her husband and this had to be done within the strict moral framework laid down by Augustus who strategically used her elevated status as matriarch of Rome to enhance the dynastic ideology and protect his family as well as subtly contrast the virtue of traditional Roman matrons in his household with the foreign influence of Cleopatra, the queen of his political rival Mark Antony. Augustus’s objections to Cleopatra were as much moral as they were political.

Life Inside the Center

As with Cleopatra, being a woman of intelligence and ability was a threat to the Roman male moralists. But unlike Cleopatra, at least Livia was Roman. But as a noble Roman woman, virtue, chastity, and propriety, or at least the appearance of them, were an absolute must. Her armor was her virtue in patriarchal Rome where independent women with their own opinions such as Julia were perceived as a threat. Livia managed to thread the moral purity tests as an advisor to Augustus and as an advocate for others. In upright and uptight moral Rome, a woman could exert political powers but only from behind the scenes in the roles of advocate or intermediary and not as part of the official political system unlike in the immoral and exotic east where a woman could be the at pinnacle of political system and power. In Rome, female beauty and intelligence was also secondary to domestic duties such as mothering and maintaining a household as well as domestic skills such as weaving and spinning. A show of moderation was a must for a Roman woman and Livia mastered this while Julia rejected it. But many noble Roman women could not avoid politics as it often invaded their homes through the actions of their fathers and husbands.

The Vicarious Empress come Goddess

Cleopatra stole Antony’s heart and Livia stole Augustus’s heart. In a world of complicated alliances Livia had to thread the needle between two men who made the wrong choice. Her father allied with Brutus and Cassius after the assassination of Julius Caesar and her first husband allied with Mark Antony against Augustus in the civil war to follow. So, she threaded needle by incorporating Augustus into her spinning loom. Ironically, Augustus was as much in the thrall to Livia as Antony was in the thrall to Cleopatra in the patriarchal male dominated empire. Livia went on to be the wife of the first emperor and the mother of the second emperor lending essential support and counsel to both but for this she has been labeled as the devious manipulator of both. The other female power broker was Octavia, sister of Octavin and wife of Mark Antony, for a time, who may very well have prevented another civil war through her efforts to broker peace between her brother and her husband.

Vilified and Deified

Livia became the essential and visible symbol of peace and stability that was to characterize the Pax Romana. The Augustan Peace began in the imperial home with Livia at the center. This was a self-made position with no real precedence and of course it was not an official position with a job description – basically Livia had become First Lady of Rome, she had to invent the position and define the role as she filled it. She had to become an innovator and a trendsetter as she created a model follow. She turned out to be a brilliant public servant and benefactress of society without having an official public position. Livia did not have any children with Augustus in an imperial culture that worshiped motherhood, but she did not need to as she became the matriarch of the Roman state on a much larger stage. After the death of Augustus, it was Livia who ensured that the first imperil Roman dynasty continued. She came to symbolize domestic peace, imperial concord, and republican harmony. She was the new Roman woman, public, wealthy, with her own identity but chaste, pure, and domestic. There was no room for the openness and freedom of Julia in this ideal Pax Romana. Livia went on to become a Roman divinity with her own cult which lasted until the late second century. Livia became the model for future female ascendancy in Rome before Christianity slapped them down again. Livia was admirable rather than ambitious. For this she was at once vilified and deified. She became the patron goddess of marriage and family in much the same way the Catholics look to Mary to this day.

Coda: The Christian Apocalypse

Christianity adds to the moral imperialism and fuels the fire of decline. This is the story of how history ends. The apocalyptic imagination fueled by Christianity seeps into the culture. Even non-Christians have absorbed this narrative of eventual decline and fall. This has people on the lookout for the warning signs of decline which turn out to be things like equal rights under the law, immigration, free trade, racial equality, and female emancipation, i.e., ordinary social change and signs of progress. This is the beginning of the end for the right-wing moralists. Any cultural change becomes an existential threat to western civilization. Decline anxiety becomes a religion or even a pseudoscientific decline theory. Somehow emancipating and empowering 50% of the population will weaken the economy.

Conservative governments pass laws and moral codes to police sex and to regulate intimate relationships, marriage, family composition, and reproduction itself all in the name of keeping the empire strong or the nation safe, vital, and of course viral. These ancient ideas were crystalized in twentieth century fascism and twenty-first century MAGAism. It has set in as a permeant feature of modern culture which must be arrested at all costs. The decline narrative does not emanate from actual decline. Instead, it serves deep psychological needs. The right-wing, ancient and modern, builds an entire martial identity and a dangerous political ideology around the mythical golden age and the mythical decline. Ordinary social progress such as racial equality, gay rights, and female emancipation is turned into a civilizational threatening crisis. The rightwing goes into demographic panic and uses white replacement theory, mass deportations, family separations, and the internment of children to defend civilization.

Just a Note: A Symbol of the Times

A great symbol of how Greek freedom was transformed into Roman prudishness can be seen in art. The statues of appropriately naked male athletes by Polyclitus became the model for the up armored and militaristic Augustus of Prima Porta. I prefer naked male athletes to armored warriors any day.

Questionable Historical Claim

On page 63. Much to my surprise, the author treats the story about the Dance of the Seven Veils by Salome for Herod Antipas, where she asked for the head of John the Baptist as a reward for her dancing, as a real historical event. It is true that Antipas had John executed, but this was a matter of local political expediency. No doubt, Salome found occasion to dance, veils on and off and all, but tying the two together in a cause-and-effect sequence of events is just another Christian Gospel fiction and should not treated as real history. The claim is not footnoted in the book.

[Will Simmons · Rating 4 out of 5]

Easy and engaging read, thoughtful and detailed that did a good job painting a picture and giving enough context to help set the stage, without getting distracted. Really distilled the sources well.

[History Today]

Livia – wife of the first emperor, mother of the second – is a symbol for her unsettled times. Her father sided with the ‘liberators’. So did her luckless first husband, Tiberius Claudius Nero, who then changed his allegiance to Antony. He survived and ended up back in Rome, only for Octavian to fall in love with his wife. Octavian was married to Scribonia at the time; Livia was already pregnant with Nero’s second son. No matter. They each divorced in order to marry. Livia would then spend six decades at the centre of power politics, but there was no name for her position. That did little to slow down one of the most remarkable figures in Roman history. Gillespie (taking advantage of previous scholarship such as Anthony Barrett’s biography of Livia) nimbly sorts through the extreme contradictions we face in the surviving source material. Either Livia was an overbearing schemer with a penchant for orchestrating murder, or a ‘quasi-divine, perfect specimen of Roman womanhood’. Gillespie gives an empathetic view of Livia’s inner life, including her personal interests (gardening, for example).

Read the review at https://www.historytoday.com/archive/...
Kyle Harper is the G.T. and Libby Blankenship Chair in the History of Liberty at the University of Oklahoma.

[annabel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this! Definitely one of those books designed to get you interested in a topic. I definitely would’ve been pulled in by the figure Livia cuts in this book, had I not already been pulled in a while ago 😅

[Bungaku Shoujo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Livia, alongside her contemporaries like Cleopatra and Fulvia and her imperial relations like Messalina and Agrippina the Younger, is often cited as an example of a woman unfairly vilified by male writers both past and present. I have never fully agreed with this; while some Roman writers, most notably Tacitus, did indeed denounce her, her image in antiquity was far from universally negative, and the biggest hit to her posthumous reputation (in the form of I, Claudius and other media following in its footsteps) came rather recently. With the rise of feminist scholarship, she seemingly has more admirers than ever, and Gillespie is one of them.

The Ancient Lives series is meant to hold appeal for the elusive species of the “general reader”, and thus the book contains some of the vices of popular history, such as a conversational writing style replete with pithy turns of phrase (like Livia being burned as a young mother in exile being a “core memory”, that she deserved “self care”, or that the presence of a pearl setter among her household staff indicates that the lack of jewelry in her statuary did not reflect her “lived experience”), as well as not always marked speculation about Livia’s thoughts and emotional state, some substantiated and some less so. There were also a couple of minor errors, such as Fulvia being the only female triumviral relation to not rebuff Hortensia when the opposite was true, Agrippina the Younger’s age at her first marriage being mistaken as the age when she gave birth to Nero, and Cleopatra being said to speak Latin when Plutarch does not record such a thing (Gillespie also describes her as a “military tactician”, which might technically be true but also obscures the fact that her military career was far from successful). Sometimes, she reads ancient sources too uncritically, such as Antony alleged being hopelessly in love with Cleopatra, although it’s possible she thought that giving a deeper look at how these sources probably reflect distortions would have slowed the book down with academic debates the average person has no desire to get into. For similar reasons, no doubt, the discussion of Republican-era politics was rather vague.

Of course, while background is important, Gillespie never intended to write a general history of the Roman world during Livia’s time, and when unknowable aspects of her life and emotions weren’t being presented as fact, her portrait of Livia herself was solid; she clears her of her alleged murders but does not wholly ignore some of the less savory things she’s accused of doing. In particular, she strikes a good balance around Livia’s agency in her representation, noting that while much of her statuary and other honors were imperial policy that she had little control over, there is evidence that she took great pains to carefully cultivate an image beneficial to her family’s regime by herself. Gillespie's short discussion of Plutarch’s claim that Cleopatra tried to offer gifts to Livia and Octavia in hopes of lenient treatment (one of the handful of mentions of Livia in relation to triumviral-era politics) was also interesting. Gillespie takes advantage of the comparatively large amount of evidence about her subject to profile Livia’s life outside of politicking and managing the imperial household, such as her interest in health, horticulture, and cultural patronage, her extensive property holdings, and that couples in Egypt prayed to her years after her death in hopes of a prosperous marriage. Sometimes, I found myself wondering how this woman ever got a chance to sleep in her busy life.

Ultimately, despite some misgivings, this is an interesting portrait of an often discussed and sensationalized figure.

[b · Rating 4 out of 5]

drank this one like jesus with water after the desert

[Vinsmoke Sanji · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this one.