The real Livia must have had a similar strength of character. As Livia reminds him, they each have something to gain from a partnership, in his case a connection to her illustrious family, in hers a chance to re-establish her wealth and status following her flight from Italy. I don't even mind that she's clever," he muses. Refreshingly, Domina gives Livia rather more agency in this episode of her life by having her pursue Octavian, while he sits pining for her dreamily: "Her family connections… she's obviously fertile. The ancient sources suggest that Octavian took her away from her husband, despite her being pregnant, because he was struck by her beauty and tired of his own wife, Scribonia, and her hostile manner. In a peculiar twist of fate, Livia later returned to Rome with her husband, young Tiberius, and a second son growing in her womb, only to get divorced and marry Octavian. Tragically for Livia, the Liberators were defeated, leaving her father, who fought on their side, to take his own life. The historians record that the young family sought refuge in Sicily and Greece.
Suetonius gaius julius caesar summary series#
A little while later, as Octavian's forces pour into Rome, Livia and her husband (cast in this series as a charmless brute with a lingering STI) flee with their baby, Tiberius. Playing fast and loose with the known historical facts, the young Octavian (Tom Glynn-Carney) turns up at Livia's wedding, where they secretly enjoy a passionate kiss. Livia's father, meanwhile, supports the Liberators' cause. Among those leading the campaign to avenge Caesar's death is his adopted son Octavian. The so-called Liberators, who saw themselves as rescuing the Roman Republic from the hands of the dictator, are now on the run. The wedding plays out against the backdrop of impending civil war following the assassination of Julius Caesar. Her father, scion of the powerful Claudii family, has matched her with a cousin almost three times her age named Tiberius Nero. In the opening scenes the doe-eyed teen (Nadia Parkes) is busy making preparations for her wedding day. For a start, she is, at 15, considerably younger than the woman of the world we've come to picture. However, in the first episode, we meet a very different kind of Livia from that of I, Claudius. Now Livia is the subject of a new drama series, Domina, which premieres on Sky Atlantic in the UK next week. The Livia of Robert Graves and Siân Phillips was in some ways even crueller than the Livia of the ancient history books.
Suetonius gaius julius caesar summary tv#
Playing the role in the 1976 TV adaptation, Siân Phillips captured magnificently the ease with which this icy materfamilias was said to have manipulated the men around her. The empress emerges from his book as a scheming and jealous busybody with an expensive wardrobe and acid tongue. The novelist Robert Graves drew on both their accounts when he wrote I, Claudius, his gripping novel about the family, told from the perspective of Livia's stuttering grandson, Emperor Claudius.
Surely it was in his interest to draw on the material he had to hand rather than resort to mere fabrication. Or might their books contain elements of truth? Suetonius was head of the libraries in Rome and had access to the imperial archives. Was what this highly respected historian reported a fiction? He and his younger contemporary, Suetonius, were writing almost a century after Livia died, and other historians who described her were writing later still. Tacitus' account – and others like it – is so jaw-dropping that it's hard to know what to make of it. – The buried ship found on an English estate The first lady was even suspected of foul play when the emperor finally dropped dead in AD14 in his seventies. The ancient historian elaborated that Livia put her husband, Emperor Augustus, under her control, and banished or had killed every potential heir to the throne in order to promote her own son – Augustus's stepson – Tiberius, as his successor. That was Tacitus's damning assessment of Livia Drusilla, first empress of Rome. "Livia: a blight upon the nation as a mother, a blight upon the house of Caesar as a stepmother".
0 kommentar(er)
