Augustus

However, it is likely that Julia’s disgrace had a political dimension. It would not have been the first time that a Roman woman making a political intervention was smeared with charges of sexual license (that is probably what happened to Sempronia). Interestingly, three of the men with whom Julia was supposed to have committed adultery were members of Rome’s oldest families: Cornelius Scipio, Appius Claudius Pulcher, and Titus Sempronius Gracchus. These were once names to conjure with and evoked some of the most famous pages in the history of the Republic. Another of the men had been consul a few years earlier—Quinctius Crispinus Sulpicianus, to whom Velleius attributes “unique depravity disguised by forbidding eyebrows.”

Tacitus has a telling paragraph about Gracchus:

This shrewd, misguidedly eloquent aristocrat had seduced Julia while she was Marcus Agrippa’s wife. Nor was that the end of the affair, for when she transferred to Tiberius this persistent adulterer made her defiant and unfriendly to her new husband. A letter abusing Tiberius, which Julia wrote to her father Augustus, was believed to have been Gracchus’ work.

Here is evidence, admittedly obscure and partial, of infighting between two factions—one centered on Julia and her sons, and the other on Tiberius and, we may suppose, Livia. It is not known when Julia delivered her letter about Tiberius; perhaps she was defending herself against allegations he may have made against her, or alternatively she could have been taking advantage of his withdrawal to Rhodes. Even if the essence of the matter was a difference of personality, the conflicting dynastic interests of the parties meant that Julia’s intervention must have had political implications.

One of the accusations leveled against Julia sounds innocuous, but it especially infuriated the princeps. In the Forum there was a small pool, called the Lacus Curtius, near which stood an enclosure containing a fig tree, an olive tree, and a vine (now replanted for today’s tourists) alongside a statue of Marsyas with a wineskin over his shoulder. Marsyas was a satyr, a companion of the god Dionysus. He was skilled with the flute and challenged the god Apollo, who played the lyre, to a musical competition; he lost and the god punished him by skinning him alive.

The Marsyas story bore two meanings. First, it symbolized the eternal struggle between the Apollonian and Dionysian aspects of human nature. Second, the satyr came to be regarded as an emblem of liberty. That is why his statue in the Forum wore a pileus or Phrygian cap, such as slaves were given when they were freed.

Julia placed a wreath on Marsyas’ head, presumably during one of her late-night sessions in the Forum. Decorating a statue in this way without official permission was not allowed, but, on the face of it, hardly qualifies as a serious offense.

Why did Julia honor Marsyas? According to one report, she prostituted herself in the privacy of the enclosure, so the wreath could simply have been discarded party gear. However, it is conceivable that she was making an antigovernment demonstration, calling for a return to Rome’s lost freedoms. Bearing in mind her father’s expropriation of Apollo as his tutelary favorite among the Olympians, and Marsyas’ association with Dionysus, she could also have been signaling her disapproval of the princeps—even evoking the memory of the “New Dionysus,” her lover’s father, Mark Antony.

It may be no coincidence that in this year the people are reported to have pressed for some (unspecified) reforms. They sent the tribunes to talk with Augustus, who attended an assembly of the people and discussed their demands in person with them. Perhaps the agitation had something to do with his decision to restrict the number of citizens who could receive free grain (Rome’s only concession to state-funded social welfare); and he distributed a possibly conciliatory grant of 240 sesterces to each citizen.

All this is speculation. However, Pliny, writing about Augustus in the middle of the following century, remarks (in passing, as of a fact which everyone knows) on “his daughter’s adultery and the revelation of her plots against her father’s life.” This implies a common opinion that there was more to Julia’s downfall than sexual promiscuity.