The First Ladies of Rome: The Women Behind the Caesars by Annelise Freisenbruch Page B
Authors: Annelise Freisenbruch
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publication on female criminology, La Donna Delinquente (1893), Cesare Lombroso and Guglielmo Ferrero implied that one could read the empress’s propensity for misdemeanour on her face.
12. The Gemma Claudia, possibly a wedding present to Claudius and Agrippina Minor. The jugate heads of Claudius and Agrippina Minor ( left ) are shown facing the bride’s popular parents, the deceased Germanicus and Agrippina Maior.
13. This relief of Agrippina Minor crowning her son Nero was discovered in 1979 at Aphrodisias, in Roman Asia Minor. She carries a cornucopia of fruit in her left arm, thus associating her with Demeter, Greek patron goddess of the harvest.
14. A story that Nero had his mother Agrippina’s belly cut open after her death, so that he could see where he had come from, gained popularity in the medieval period. This illumination is from a fifteenth-century manuscript of the De casibus virorum illustrium ( On the Fates of Famous Men ) by Giovanni Boccaccio.
15. A second-century terracotta tomb relief from Ostia showing a Roman midwife preparing to deliver a baby while another woman stands behind the birthing chair, supporting the labouring mother. Such chairs had crescent-shaped holes in the seat through which the baby could be received.
16. A jointed ivory doll found in the grave of a girl named Crepereia Tryphaena, who lived in the second century. Notice the adult proportions of the doll, with its wide child-bearing hips, and the hair styled in a fashion made popular by imperial women of the time, such as Marcus Aurelius’s wife Faustina.
17. Roman necklace with amethyst, garnet and topaz elements, dating to the second or third century. The question of how much jewellery a woman should wear was a fraught subject in the Roman imagination. Too much could imply a frivolous and greedy nature, too little could reflect poorly on her husband or father’s status.
18. This painted mummy-portrait of a richly jewelled woman from the Fayum district in Egypt makes a colourful contrast to official portraits of imperial women.
19. An ivory comb from a woman’s grave dating to the third or fourth century. It appears to be engraved with the woman’s name, Modestina. Many such items from Roman women’s dressing tables have been recovered, including scent bottles, make-up boxes and even a calamistrum (curling iron).
20. A portrait bust of Livia, with her hair fashioned in the austere nodus style commonly worn by Roman matrons of the first century BC .
21. The luxurious arrangement of precisely drilled waves and curls sported by Agrippina Maior formed a stark contrast to the rigidly plain nodus worn by her predecessors.
22. This portrait, commonly thought to be of Domitia, shows off to excellent effect the flamboyant style of hairdressing that became popular under the Flavians, during the second half of the first century.
23. The stiff, rigid coiffure of Trajan’s wife Plotina does not seem to have set a fashion among women of the second century.
24. The plaited bun hairstyle of this woman, thought to be Julia Mamaea, was a precursor of similar styles worn by women in the later third and fourth centuries.
25. Howard Fast’s novel Agrippa’s Daughter (1964) casts Berenice as a plucky – and beautiful – flame-haired champion of her people.
26. This image from the Vatican Museums of second-century emperor Antoninus Pius and his wife Annia Galeria Faustina, being borne upwards to the heavens in conjugal unity, represented the first joint imperial apotheosis portrayed in Roman art.
27. The Berlin tondo of Septimius Severus, his wife Julia Domna and their two sons, Caracalla and Geta, is the only painted portrait of an imperial family to survive from antiquity. The obliteration of Geta’s face was executed on the orders of his brother.
28. In Paolo Veronese’s The Dream of St Helena ( c . 1570), two angels carrying the True Cross appear to
12. The Gemma Claudia, possibly a wedding present to Claudius and Agrippina Minor. The jugate heads of Claudius and Agrippina Minor ( left ) are shown facing the bride’s popular parents, the deceased Germanicus and Agrippina Maior.
13. This relief of Agrippina Minor crowning her son Nero was discovered in 1979 at Aphrodisias, in Roman Asia Minor. She carries a cornucopia of fruit in her left arm, thus associating her with Demeter, Greek patron goddess of the harvest.
14. A story that Nero had his mother Agrippina’s belly cut open after her death, so that he could see where he had come from, gained popularity in the medieval period. This illumination is from a fifteenth-century manuscript of the De casibus virorum illustrium ( On the Fates of Famous Men ) by Giovanni Boccaccio.
15. A second-century terracotta tomb relief from Ostia showing a Roman midwife preparing to deliver a baby while another woman stands behind the birthing chair, supporting the labouring mother. Such chairs had crescent-shaped holes in the seat through which the baby could be received.
16. A jointed ivory doll found in the grave of a girl named Crepereia Tryphaena, who lived in the second century. Notice the adult proportions of the doll, with its wide child-bearing hips, and the hair styled in a fashion made popular by imperial women of the time, such as Marcus Aurelius’s wife Faustina.
17. Roman necklace with amethyst, garnet and topaz elements, dating to the second or third century. The question of how much jewellery a woman should wear was a fraught subject in the Roman imagination. Too much could imply a frivolous and greedy nature, too little could reflect poorly on her husband or father’s status.
18. This painted mummy-portrait of a richly jewelled woman from the Fayum district in Egypt makes a colourful contrast to official portraits of imperial women.
19. An ivory comb from a woman’s grave dating to the third or fourth century. It appears to be engraved with the woman’s name, Modestina. Many such items from Roman women’s dressing tables have been recovered, including scent bottles, make-up boxes and even a calamistrum (curling iron).
20. A portrait bust of Livia, with her hair fashioned in the austere nodus style commonly worn by Roman matrons of the first century BC .
21. The luxurious arrangement of precisely drilled waves and curls sported by Agrippina Maior formed a stark contrast to the rigidly plain nodus worn by her predecessors.
22. This portrait, commonly thought to be of Domitia, shows off to excellent effect the flamboyant style of hairdressing that became popular under the Flavians, during the second half of the first century.
23. The stiff, rigid coiffure of Trajan’s wife Plotina does not seem to have set a fashion among women of the second century.
24. The plaited bun hairstyle of this woman, thought to be Julia Mamaea, was a precursor of similar styles worn by women in the later third and fourth centuries.
25. Howard Fast’s novel Agrippa’s Daughter (1964) casts Berenice as a plucky – and beautiful – flame-haired champion of her people.
26. This image from the Vatican Museums of second-century emperor Antoninus Pius and his wife Annia Galeria Faustina, being borne upwards to the heavens in conjugal unity, represented the first joint imperial apotheosis portrayed in Roman art.
27. The Berlin tondo of Septimius Severus, his wife Julia Domna and their two sons, Caracalla and Geta, is the only painted portrait of an imperial family to survive from antiquity. The obliteration of Geta’s face was executed on the orders of his brother.
28. In Paolo Veronese’s The Dream of St Helena ( c . 1570), two angels carrying the True Cross appear to
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