Fulvia: life of the week

Summary

History Extra Podcast: "Fulvia: Life of the Week" Summary

Episode Title: Fulvia: Life of the Week
Release Date: April 7, 2025
Host: Jane Dracott
Guest: Spencer Mizzen
Book Mentioned: The Woman Who Broke All the Rules in Ancient Rome by Jane Dracott

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Introduction

In the episode "Fulvia: Life of the Week," host Jane Dracott delves into the extraordinary life of Fulvia, an influential Roman noblewoman who defied traditional gender roles in ancient Roman politics. Through an engaging conversation with Spencer Mizzen, Dracott unpacks Fulvia's significant contributions and the challenges she faced in a male-dominated society.

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Early Life and Background [01:11]

Fulvia was born around 80 BCE into two once-prominent Roman noble families that had declined in influence by her birth. Little is known about her early years due to the limited interest of ancient sources in the lives of children, especially girls. Fulvia enters the historical record upon her first marriage to Publius Clodius Pulcher, a notorious populist politician. However, details about her during this period are sparse until Clodius's murder by his rival, Milo.

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Fulvia’s Marriages and Political Alliances [01:29 - 15:32]

1. Marriage to Publius Clodius Pulcher:

   • Fulvia's first marriage connects her to Clodius, whose assassination leads to significant unrest in Rome.
   • Upon Clodius's death, Fulvia exhibits her political acumen by displaying his corpse to the public, inciting a riot that seeks revenge against Milo ([01:29]).

2. Marriage to Curio:

   • Fulvia's second marriage to another tribune, Curio, is short-lived due to his untimely death in the civil war between Caesar and Pompey ([01:29]).

3. Marriage to Mark Antony:

   • Fulvia's third marriage to Mark Antony, Caesar's trusted lieutenant, marks her rise to political prominence.
   • Both Fulvia and Antony demonstrate a partnership where Fulvia actively engages in politics and military matters, a rare occurrence for women of her time ([01:29]).

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Fulvia’s Political and Military Involvement [15:32 - 24:47]

Fulvia's active role in politics was unprecedented for Roman women. She took on responsibilities typically reserved for men, such as monitoring military loyalty and political maneuvers. When Antony was occupied in the East with Cleopatra, Fulvia managed affairs in Rome, demonstrating her capability and influence.

• Declaration of War on Octavian:

  • Feeling threatened by Octavian's attempts to secure the loyalty of Caesarean soldiers, Fulvia declared war on him, leading to the brief Antonian- Octavian conflict ([08:48]).

• Conflict and Downfall:

  • The war between the Antonian faction, led by Fulvia and Antony's brother Lucius Antonius, and Octavian's forces ends disastrously for Fulvia. She falls ill in Greece and dies, possibly from a broken heart as Antony abandons her in favor of reconciling with Octavian and marrying his sister, Octavia ([08:48], [15:32]).

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Challenges and Hostility Faced by Fulvia [17:55 - 21:45]

Fulvia's prominence attracted considerable hostility, both from political adversaries and society at large. Cicero, an adversary of Antony, publicly criticized Fulvia, undermining her reputation. Archaeological evidence, such as inscribed lead sling bullets from the siege of Perugia, indicates that even rank-and-file soldiers harbored animosity towards her ([15:32], [17:55]).

• Cicero’s Attacks:

  • Cicero disparages Fulvia, depicting her as a manipulative and domineering force behind Antony, which contributed to her negative portrayal in historical sources ([17:55]).

• Public Perception:

  • The aggressive messages directed at Fulvia suggest that her influence was so significant that she was perceived as a direct threat to Octavian, akin to Antony's brother, who was a military commander ([15:32]).

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Fulvia’s Personal Struggles and Relationships [21:45 - 27:50]

Fulvia's personal life was tumultuous, marked by the deaths of her first two husbands and Mark Antony's infidelity. While Antony's affairs, notably with Cleopatra, strained their marriage, Fulvia's response was to assert her political influence, possibly to reclaim Antony's attention and stabilize their alliance ([21:45]).

• Reaction to Antony’s Affairs:

  • The sources suggest that Fulvia’s declaration of war on Octavian was partly motivated by a desire to distract Antony from his affair with Cleopatra and to reinforce her position as his primary partner ([21:45]).

• Conflict with Octavian:

  • Fulvia's assertiveness posed a challenge to Octavian, who would later become Emperor Augustus. Their relationship was strained, with Octavian portraying her unfavorably in his writings, likely to diminish Antony’s standing ([24:47]).

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Fulvia’s Death and Legacy [27:50 - 30:18]

Fulvia's death marked the end of a brief but impactful presence in Roman politics. Her demise prevented the possibility of a united Roman-Egyptian empire under Antony, which could have significantly altered the course of history. Dracott emphasizes Fulvia's legacy as one of the few Roman women with a substantial historical footprint, showcasing her ability to navigate and influence a male-dominated political landscape ([27:50]).

• Historical Significance:

  • Fulvia is noteworthy for being a well-documented Roman woman who actively shaped political events, unlike many of her contemporaries whose lives are scarcely recorded or entirely obscured by their male relatives ([27:50]).

• Speculated Impact of Her Continued Influence:

  • Had Fulvia survived, she and Antony could have leveraged their combined influence to solidify control over both Rome and the Eastern provinces, potentially uniting different regions under a single imperial vision ([27:50]).

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Notable Quotes

• On Fulvia’s Political Prowess:

  "She is a very interesting figure in her own right for the things that she does. She's also a very interesting figure for what other people say about her and what she can tell us about this period."
  — Jane Dracott ([07:00])

• On the Risks Fulvia Took:

  "For Fulvia to step outside this sort of allocated space that Roman women had and to try and directly intervene in Roman politics and in Roman military activity as well as she does with the Perusian war, she was risking quite a lot."
  — Jane Dracott ([08:58])

• On Fulvia’s Legacy:

  "Her greatest legacy is that she gives us a Roman woman who we have her name, we have information about her, we have enough to construct an actual life for her."
  — Jane Dracott ([27:50])

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Conclusion

Fulvia stands out as a remarkable figure in ancient Roman history, breaking societal norms to engage directly in politics and military affairs. Jane Dracott's exploration of Fulvia's life sheds light on the complexities and challenges faced by women who dared to wield power in a restrictive environment. Fulvia's story not only highlights her personal strength and intelligence but also offers valuable insights into the broader dynamics of Roman political life and gender roles.

For further reading, consider Jane Dracott's book: The Woman Who Broke All the Rules in Ancient Rome published by Atlantic Books.

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Note: This summary omits the episode's advertisements and non-content segments to focus solely on the informative discussion about Fulvia.

Transcript

[Spencer Mizzen]

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[Jane Dracott]

Hello and welcome to Life of the Week from History Extra, where leading historians delve into the lives of history's most intriguing and significant figures. She supercharged Mark Antony's rise to power, whipped up gang violence, went to war with Octavian, and maybe, just maybe, abused Cicero's decapitated head with a hairpin. Here, in conversation with Spencer Mizzen, Jane Dracott explores the life of Fulvia, the extraordinary figure who rewrote the rulebook of what a woman could achieve in the cutthroat world of ancient Roman politics.

[Fulvia]

We're here to talk about the extraordinary life of the ancient Roman noblewoman Fulvia. So I wonder, Jane, if you could start by giving us a brief overview of Fulvia's life. Who was she in a nutshell?

[Jane Dracott]

Right. Well, she was the last member of two very significant Roman noble families, or at least they had been significant in the past. By the time we get to Fulvia's birth in around 80 BCE, they do seem to have really lost the shine a little bit. They're not as politically or militarily important or influential as they had been. So she's born in about 80, and we don't know very much about her for the first 15, 20 years of her life, because our ancient sources generally aren't interested in children, male or female. Definitely not female. And so we hear about her when she marries for the first time. She marries the infamous populist politician Publius Clodius Pulcher. And, well, we don't even really hear about her. Then we hear about her when Clodius dies, when he is murdered on the Appian Way by his political rival, Milo. And this murder kicks off a whole load of gang violence. His body is taken home to his house and presented to Fulvia. And this is the point at which she enters the historical record, because she decides that what she's going to do is open her house and display Clodius's battered, decomposing corpse to the people, to the plebs, the ordinary men. And women, the working people of Rome, who had thought that Clodius was their champion. And in so doing, she possibly inadvertently, possibly deliberately starts a riot. And the crowd take Clodius's body, march it down into the Forum, put it in the Senate house, set that on fire. And it kicks off a whole load of violence in Rome, where they are looking for Milo. They are trying to find him because they want to tear him limb from limb and get revenge. And then Fulvia marries again. She marries another tribune, this one called Curio, and they have a very brief marriage because he goes off to fight in the civil war between Caesar and Pompey. He goes off to Africa and he meets an unfortunate end there. And so, having been widowed twice in fairly quick succession, Fulvia then marries a third time to her second husband's friend. First husband's frenemy, perhaps, we should say. And this one Antony, Marcus Antonius, to give him his Roman name. But we tend to know him as Mark Antony or Antony today. He is of course, very important in the next several decades of Roman history. He is the right hand man of Julius Caesar. He is a consul alongside Caesar. He is the one who is on the spot when Caesar is assassinated. He is the one that takes charge of things in Rome, decides that he needs to, for a little while anyway, work with the assassins of Caesar to preserve any kind of civil order. But as soon as it stops serving his purpose to do that, he turns against them. And for the next few years he leads the Caesarean faction against the assassins, the liberators as they call themselves. And he forms the second Triumvirate with Caesar's heir and great nephew, Gaius Octavius. We tend to call him Octavian today. And the third member of the Triumvirate is a man named Lepidus. Nobody really cared about him at the time, nobody really cares about him now. He is largely insignificant because what happens next is a prolonged battle between Antony and Octavian for dominance of Rome. And during all of her marriages, Fulvia seems to have been an equal partner in the marriage. There is a comment made from Cicero that on the day that Clodius was murdered, it was suspicious that he didn't have Fulvia with him because he normally had her with him all the time. So we can take from that that they had a very close and successful marriage. And we know that Fulvia and Antony had a very close and successful Marri gives up his long term mistress for her once they get married. He sneaks into Rome when he's on the run to see her and pretends to be someone else. And then when he enters the house, reveals it's him. And she's very sort of pleased and excited to see him. And she sees herself when he is outside of Rome because, well, first there is the civil war between the Caesarean faction and the liberators. When that is put to bed, the liberators are defeated. Antony then goes off to the east to try and sort everything out because the prolonged period of civil war has been quite disastrous for the functioning of the Roman Empire. So he has to go into the eastern provinces and tidy up. And so he's gone for quite a long time. While he's there, he is romancing Cleopatra, but that is a whole other story. While he's gone, she has to maintain his presence in the city. She has to keep an eye on the politics, she has to keep an eye on the military. And when she feels that Octavian is overstepping and attempting to finagle the loyalty of the Caesarean soldiers and veterans away from Anthony by granting them land without Antony's involvement, she declares war on him. And there is a brief period of just under a year where the Antonian faction, led by Fulvia and Antony's brother Lucius Antonius, who at that time is one of the consuls, they go to war with the Octavian faction. It all goes very badly wrong for the Antonian faction. They leave Italy. Fulvia goes to Greece to meet Antony, and there she succumbs to some kind of illness and dies. And there is a suggestion in the ancient sources that she died of a broken heart because Antony was so angry with her for going to war in his name that he just abandons her on her deathbed and promptly makes up with Octavian, marries Octavian's sister Octavia, to solidify their new friendship. So she has a very eventful life for the 13 or so years that we hear about her in the sources. When we do hear about her in the sources, the sources are predominantly negative about her because how dare a woman step into the spotlight and attempt to be involved in politics, attempt to be involved in the military. She is also catching a lot of flak because of the men that she is associated with, because the sources don't like Clodius, they don't like Curio, they don't like Antony. At least the sources that we have today that are sort of retrospectively quite hostile to them. And also, if you wanted to criticize somebody in the sort of the cut and thrust of Roman Politics. If you wanted to score points against one of your enemies, you criticise the women in his life and you criticised him by suggesting that the women were dominating him and therefore emasculating him. So she is a very interesting figure in her own right for the things that she does. She's also a very interesting figure for what other people say about her and what she can tell us about this period.

[Fulvia]

And so how unprecedented and by extension, how dangerous was it for a woman to be involved in high end politics at this point in time?

[Jane Dracott]

Theoretically, Roman women, especially the elite Roman women, were supposed to be treated incredibly carefully and nicely by Roman society. They were supposed to be respected as wives and mothers and they were not supposed to be interfered with in any way. There are very harsh legal penalties for people who assault Roman women, who even attempt to have adulterous relationships with them, consensual adulterous relationships. There can be very serious consequences for those. And so we have this sense on the one hand, of Roman women being as long as they stay in their sort of allocated position as dutiful wives and mothers and daughters, they are respected, they are treated nicely. And so for someone like Fulvia to step outside of this sort of allocated space that Roman women had and to try and directly intervene in Roman politics and in Roman military activity as well as she does with the Perusian war, she was risking quite a lot. And she's lucky, in fact, that as far as we know in the sources, she never comes to any physical harm. Her reputation is shredded, but her person seems to be unharmed. I mean, there is a period where Antony is on the run and this is the period where he comes home and surprises her. In that period, she was being targeted by his enemies who were attempting to take her property and sue her and tie her up in the law courts and things like that. But that wasn't physical violence. But again, one of the reasons that she gives for going to war with Octavian is that he was threatening her children. And earlier on, when Clodius was murdered, there is a suggestion in some sources that Milo, having murdered Clodius, was then thinking, oh, I've got to murder his son now too, because when his son is older, he will try and get revenge on me for this. So I've got to, you know, take him out so he can't do that. So even if she wasn't personally receiving sort of violent threats, she was very much afraid for her children, who apparently were.

[Fulvia]

So in your estimation, what drove her to enter the political arena and attempt to become Such a high powered player in Roman politics. What gave her the fortitude to do that when it was, you know, clearly such a dangerous arena, made only more dangerous by the fact that she was a woman.

[Jane Dracott]

That's an interesting question because the sources are very clear on their opinions. They think it's because she wanted power for herself, that she wanted to be the dominant partner in a relationship and will power through her husband. And I don't know that I necessarily agree with that precisely as it's presented. Certainly for Roman women, unless you were a Vestal virgin in this period, the way for Roman women to wield power was through their male relations because they were excluded from the formal political process. They couldn't stand for election, hold any magistracies, they couldn't join the Roman army or anything like that. So for Roman women, if they want to wield influence, they do it through their husbands, their sons, etc. And they do it quietly. It's a sort of backroom thing. We have examples in the sources of the women all getting together and talking to each other and then presumably going back to their husbands and passing on information and things like that. So I think for her, one possible motivation is that she wanted to improve her family standing because she came from two once great lines that had become fairly mediocre. So potentially she wanted to sort of bring her family fortunes back to what they had been. Potentially it was a sort of situational thing that because she was married to the men that she was married to, they were people who, particularly Clodius and Antony, they were people who were not really content with the status quo. So they sought popular support, popular appeal, and they do seem to have been untraditional in their approaches to Roman politics. And so what's more untraditional than treating women as relative equals? And so it would seem certainly that with Clodius, he enjoyed her company and having her around and the way that she behaves after his death death indicates that she was very clued up on how to be a populist politician and how to manipulate the crowd and get the crowd to do what you want them to do, thereby sort of keeping your hands clean. And especially for a woman who was not in a position to avenge her husband herself, she gets other people to do it for her. Later with Anthony, Anthony is one of those rare Romans that does actually seem to be quite interested in women as people and enjoys their company and listens to what they have to say and incorporates them into his day to day life. And so the fact that she is Then married to him at this time, where he is the most important man in Rome, it presents an opportunity for her, especially when he's present. She can enjoy the sort of benefits of that. When he's not present, she is his representative. And this is something in this period when Roman senators, equestrians, etc. Were out of Rome, when they had to go off and, you know, govern provinces or undertake military campaigns, their wives can't go with them. In this period, they're not allowed to. So the wives stay at home and they run everything. So we don't hear a huge amount about women's lives and women's activities, but when we do hear about them, for example, when Cicero was in exile a little bit earlier than this, his wife Terentia, is running things. She is trying to maintain their estates, she is trying to arrange marriages for their daughter. She is writing to him and he is writing back, and they are sort of exchanging information about this situation, but she's the one that actually has to do it. So I think for Fulvia, she must have been a very intelligent, dynamic, assertive person. And she saw opportunities and she took those opportunities and it worked for a while. She was successful for a while. And what more can you ask for in this period, really?

[Fulvia]

So would it be safe to say then, when she was married to Antony, that she was genuinely one of the most powerful people in the whole of ancient Rome?

[Jane Dracott]

Absolutely. She wouldn't have been on the receiving end of so much hostility if she was insignificant. There is this practice that respectable women, you don't mention them in the sources, you don't even say their names. So for some Roman women, even though they have very powerful relations, we don't know who they were because they never get mentioned, because they are just not part of any of it. Whereas as soon as you see women being criticized for things, you know that they're doing things because they're putting themselves out there and people know who they are and they know what they're doing. So the fact that Fulvia receives so much negative press from Cicero during her lifetime, this is where it starts. It's Cicero. Earlier on in her life, he only mentions her briefly in relation to Clodius, but later during her marriage to Antony, because he hates Anthony so much and is attacking Antony so frequently, one of the ways that he attacks Antony is by attacking Fulvia. And we also see in the archaeological record, there are inscribed lead sling bullets from the siege of Perugia. And they mention Fulvia, she wasn't in the city under siege, Lucius Antonius and his army were, but Fulvia was somewhere else, not too far away, but not there. But even so, Octavian's forces were taking the time to carve really like rude, aggressive, horrible messages into these sling bullets addressed to Fulvia. So it's not even just the kind of hostility that's happening at the very top level in the Senate or in sort of correspondence between politicians. It's happening all the way down through society. The rank and file soldiers, I mean, presumably they're being directed in this by their commanders. But the fact is, is that she is so visible and she is so active and she is so important that she is considered an enemy on a par with Anthony's brother, her brother in law, who is the actual consul and the actual military commander.

[Fulvia]

Well, speaking of Cicero, the COVID of your book bears a painting by the 19th century Russian artist Pavel Swedomsky, showing Fulvia with a. I think you can only kind of describe it as a kind of manic grin on her face with the head of the recently killed Cicero. Is there any evidence that there is truth to this story? Is this image a kind of an attempt to trash your reputation?

[Jane Dracott]

I have to say, I actually, I believe this is true. Maybe not quite as lurid as some of the ancient sources. They go into a lot of detail about, you know, her abuse of the head with her hairpin and, you know, poking it and everything else. But we have to think about the context in which this happens. So Cicero had been her first husband Clodius's arch enemy, for starters, When Milo Cicero's friend, murdered Clodius, Cicero defended him at trial and got him away with it, basically. And so thinking about that, if someone killed your husband, who you at least liked very much, never mind potentially loved as well, and had threatened to kill your son and his mate, goes out of his way to, during the trial, defend him by saying, well, actually Clodius was lying in wait to murder him, so he got what he deserved and all the rest of it. And then 10 years later, that same person is trying the same thing with your current husband. Cicero and Anthony had a very fraught relationship. Cicero had been responsible for the execution of Antony's stepfather many years earlier, for example. And the stuff that Cicero writes and circulates and says in public about Anthony and Fulvia too, I really don't see the problem with her wanting him dead. Bearing in mind the political context in which people are being murdered for far less, I don't see that as a problem. I think that is completely understandable. And while, I mean, the extent to which the lurid stories about her mistreating the head are true, I can't say. But it was the practice that if somebody was on the prescriptions hit list, you did cut off their head and you brought the head to the triumvirs to prove that it was them and to claim your reward money. So someone's going to bring the head of Cicero to Antony. And, yeah, Fulvia might well want to see it, but it's proof that her nemesis has finally got what he deserved. And as far as the hairpin is concerned, we do have stories in various different types of ancient literature about women defending themselves with hairpins. Because, you know, Roman women aren't armed. If Roman men are not allowed to bear arms within the city of Rome, Roman women certainly aren't bearing any kind of arms. So if you're a woman, the best you can do to defend yourself is use a hairpin or something like that. And so it's not beyond the realms of possibility that she whipped it out of her, you know, fabulous hairstyle and decided that she was going to sort of treat Cicero's head like, well, we would somewhat anachronistically call them voodoo dolls, but the idea that you can stick pens in a colossos is what they're called in antiquity, sort of a clay figurine, and ward off their negativity, their spite, their envy. So it's not a ridiculous story. There are possibilities in every single aspect of it. But I think at the very least, she was thrilled to bits, and I don't blame her.

[Fulvia]

Now, you mentioned earlier that Mark Antony had an affair with Cleopatra while he was still married to Fulvia. Do we know how Fulvia reacted to that?

[Jane Dracott]

Again, this is where our sources, they tell us that this is the whole reason that she declared war on Octavian. It was to cause trouble to get Antony's attention and to extricate him from Egypt and to bring him back. And the timeline doesn't really work. There's not enough time for the news of Antony's dalliance to get to Italy and Fulvia to declare war on Octavian and the news of that to get back to Egypt for it to all have happened in that way. Antony was not a faithful husband, no Roman husband was a faithful husband, because they were allowed to do whatever they wanted with whoever they wanted as long as the person in question was someone of inferior social status. So that could be enslaved people, that could be freedmen or Women could be foreigners. The only people that they weren't allowed to have affairs with were other Roman citizen men and Roman citizen women who were virgins under the control of their fathers or who were married to other Roman citizens. So Antony is not faithful because Roman husbands just aren't faithful generally, that is not part of their worldview. When they were first married, he had had a long standing relationship with a courtesan called Kytheris, and she was well known in the elite circles. She had relationships with other important Romans as well as him. He seems to have given her up at some point during his marriage to Fulvia. Whether that's because Fulvia asked him to, or whether that's simply because he ceased to be interested in her, we don't know. We know when he was in the east, he had an affair with a woman named Glaphyra. He appreciated her so much that he gave her her son, a client kingship. So, you know, quid pro quo. And that is the timing for her finding out about Glaphyra works better than the timing of her finding out about Cleopatra. So it's possible that that was something to do with her actions. She wanted to discourage Antony from this kind of behaviour. But at the same time you sort of have to think, well, why would she have cared within the context? She was his wife, his Roman wife. Legally, that is the only wife that he could have or was recognized as having. She was the mother of his two sons who were his heirs. She was the one that was in Rome and was entitled to work on his behalf and things like that. These women, they're very far away. They are never going to be in Rome taking her place. And because he's moving around from place to place, he's not going to stay there for very long. I mean, in fact, with Cleopatra, he's spent a few months in Alexandria that winter he didn't see her again for three more years. So we sort of have to think about it from the Roman perspective.

[Fulvia]

So Octavian obviously features very heavily towards the end of Fulvia's life and he would obviously go on to become the Emperor Augustus. Do you get a sense he felt threatened by Fulvia?

[Jane Dracott]

Well, he does write a very nasty poem about her that circulates for over 100 years. The reason that we have it is because it's quoted by Martial, who was writing satirical epigrams in the late first century CE. So, you know, 140 years after Fulvia's death. So I think it's fair to Say that Octavian, yes, he had his issues with her. He was for a time her son in law because his first marriage was to her daughter Claudia, the daughter of Clodius. And it seems to have been more of a sort of diplomatic formality than anything else, because Claudia was quite young at the time. And when they get divorced, when Octavian divorces her, he sends her back home to Fulvia and says that he never consummated the marriage, it wasn't really a real marriage. And so there does seem to be some friction between them because, well, we have the sort of traditional mother in law jokes, I suppose, that we could think about in that sense. But also, bearing in mind that while Anthony is away, Fulvia is Anthony's intermediary. She and Octavian probably butted heads quite a bit in the lead up to the Prussian War and the tension's sort of exploding there. There is in his poetry, he seems to suggest that she propositioned him and that he would rather go to war with her than have any kind of sort of physical relationship with her. And I mean, that's also a fairly standard sexist, misogynistic response. Oh, well, you know, ugh, no, I didn't fancy you anyway, you know, that sort of thing. But bearing in mind at this time, she had had two children in quite quick succession. She'd had Anthony's sons, Antyllus and Iulus. And so I don't imagine that while she was busy, you know, being pregnant and having Anthony's babies back to back, that she was particularly interested in a pipsqueak like Octavian. So it does seem to be that he, he doesn't seem to like assertive women. This is something that later on in his life, the women that he appreciates are the ones that are much quieter and more reserved and more malleable than Fulvia seemingly was. So his sister Octavia, his wife Livia, they are both important and they are both powerful, but they are much lower profile and much more subtle about how they choose to use that power.

[Fulvia]

And finally, Jane, what is Fulvia's greatest legacy? What makes her such a fascinating figure, you know, for us to consider today?

[Jane Dracott]

I think her greatest legacy, based on what did happen, not what might have happened, which I'll come back to in a second, but based on what did happen, her greatest legacy is that she gives us a Roman woman who we have her name, we have information about her, we have enough to construct an actual life for her. And this is not. She's not a mythological woman with Fulvia, we know who she is, we know that she did these things. And so we have a Roman woman stepping out onto the stage and acting as part of the political environment of this very important historical period, much more so than any of the other women that we do hear about. So Brutus, Mother Civilia, for example, we hear about her very briefly, but not about herself, more about her relationship with Brutus, her relationship with Caesar, who was her lover. Terentia we hear about entirely through Cicero, not from herself. Whereas Fulvia, we have much more information about who she was and what she was doing. One of the things that makes me the most sort of sad about Fulvia's life is, is what she didn't get to do. Had Fulvia not died when she did, history would have looked very different. Because for starters, if she and Anthony had stayed married between them and Cleopatra, if Anthony had had Cleopatra in the east and Fulvia in the west, he would have had an unprecedented amount of control and influence. He would have had his sons and his stepsons running politics in Rome, running the Roman Empire. He would have had his sons and his stepson in Egypt and the Near Eastern kingdoms that he was going to set up for them. He even had a daughter from a previous marriage who was married into one of the Near Eastern kingdoms. So he would have been able to unite the west and the east and oversee an enormous a Roman empire. And sadly, that doesn't happen because Fulvia dies. That was historian Jane Dracott speaking to Spencer Mizzen. Jane's new book, the Woman who Broke all the Rules in Ancient Rome is published by Atlantic Books.

[Spencer Mizzen]

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