00:03:42.220I mean, spoiler, it's because there was so many strong and powerful1.00
00:03:45.800and interesting women in ancient Rome at this time1.00
00:03:47.940when people do things like I, Claudius,0.99
00:03:50.440the BBC miniseries, or when they're making a movie about Cleopatra, it's like, well,
00:03:54.600we can't also have Fulvia in here. There's already enough women characters. She's an1.00
00:03:58.700incredible figure. Jane is such a fun person to talk to. And I hope you enjoy this conversation
00:04:03.200with Jane Draycott about Fulvia, the woman who broke all the rules in ancient Rome.
00:04:12.480So I'm joined today by Jane Draycott, author of Fulvia, the woman who broke all the rules
00:04:18.300in ancient Rome welcome Jane no thank you for having me pleasure to be here to be back again
00:04:24.840we spoke when you had your last book about Cleopatra Cellini that was yeah that was a couple
00:04:30.680of years ago now so yeah it is it is nice to be revisiting this so I guess my first question is
00:04:37.560how well known is Fulvia like I noticed your your book title is Fulvia is the main title and I have
00:04:45.600learned that when you're talking about a woman from history that no one's heard of usually the
00:04:49.800book title is like cleopatra's sister-in-law you know it's like or even your other book was like
00:04:54.560cleopatra's daughter so like fulvia really is famous enough for the book to be her name so how
00:05:00.240famous is she well this this is the thing i mean i i didn't want to call my previous book cleopatra's
00:05:05.400daughter because there was already like a novel um and and at least at least one novel and at least
00:05:11.560sort of one kind of academic book that had that title but my my agents and my editors sort of
00:05:18.440overruled me they said you know this is what you have to sort of tell people this is why people
00:05:24.340might be interested and the same thing with fulvia actually the original title of fulvia was was from0.98
00:05:29.420a cicero quotation and it was um a thoroughly rapacious female because i i thought you know
00:05:36.280people don't know who fulvia is i mean classicists and ancient historians know who fulvia is because1.00
00:05:41.200she's one of the prominent women in the late republic and along with um seville for example
00:05:47.880so if you if you know the late republic you know her because whenever there's anything written
00:05:53.300about women in the late republic she is one of a handful who is used as a as a representative of0.88
00:05:59.140the women of this period but if you're not a sort of classist or ancient historian fulvia
00:06:03.260you know if you if you put fulvia in this sort of social media you'll you'll come up with like
00:06:08.220Italian car pictures you know it's not like Cleopatra or um Clytemnestra or something like
00:06:16.100that so the original title was a thoroughly rapacious female and that is how I sold the book
00:06:21.820and then sort of further down the the sort of pre-publication process uh my my publisher my
00:06:27.940editor came back to me and they said how do you feel about changing the title because when we
00:06:32.560talk about this in the office people think it's erotica oh i was like well i don't have a problem
00:06:39.260with that personally because erotica sounds like yeah whatever sells the book yeah yeah but but it1.00
00:06:46.220did it did also have a have a you know it was a thoroughly rapacious female i think it was um1.00
00:06:51.840how fulvia played the game won and lost and broke all the rules in ancient rome so yeah0.83
00:06:58.800but then that didn't work as as the main title because it's just quite long and it sounds like
00:07:03.900a subtitle uh and so it sort of went around and and they they suggested Fulvia uh the woman who
00:07:11.300broke all the rules in ancient Rome so first name and then sort of slightly shorter subtitle and I
00:07:16.800didn't really like it personally because I I did think well Fulvia you know is that going to be
00:07:22.380interesting to people the subtitle well okay I mean ultimately it's
00:07:28.760one of those things that i i'm not really good at coming up with titles i i think i'm great at
00:07:34.500coming up with titles for conference papers because you always you know you have your
00:07:37.500your jokey reference then you have your colon and then you have your boring explanatory
00:07:43.340subtitle and that's that's great because conference papers can be long but for books
00:07:47.620it's got to be something that fits on a book jacket fits my spine um it's easy to search for
00:07:52.900in bookshops and on on the internet and stuff so it does need to be a bit more like you know
00:07:57.920this is what it is and and so I'm still I'm still not sure to be perfectly honest because as I said
00:08:04.080I think classicist nation historians know who Fulvia is um and while it would be it's great
00:08:11.060if classic nation historians do read the book um at the same time I would like lots more people to
00:08:16.780read the book so I the jury is out really it remains to be seen what what people think about
00:08:23.140the title and if if they if they have heard of her I mean people tell me they haven't so so people
00:08:28.840who have sort of messaged me on social media have have have come across the book because in in the
00:08:34.000UK the the book cover is quite different to how it is the book cover in the UK listeners I don't
00:08:40.540know maybe I'll attach it to this episode somehow it's incredible it's fantastic I like I have a
00:08:46.100book coming out and honestly that was on our mood board it's like we have to have a cover that's
00:08:49.960like this good yeah I mean I I again I was I was a little bit uncertain about it because it's um
00:08:57.060it's a very it's a well-known it's a well-known painting and it's it's used in sort of other
00:09:02.180discussions of phobia and so I thought oh well is this just gonna look like I'm you know ripping
00:09:07.180off other other people but the way that they did it with the with the neon colors and everything
00:09:12.600I thought that made it look really dramatic and attention-grabbing and hopefully the kind of book
00:09:16.740that people would pick up in a bookshop and go, oh, this looks cool. And they read the back and
00:09:20.800they're like, hmm, it's a nonfiction book. It's a history book. I'm not entirely sure if this is
00:09:26.380quite what I want. And then they read the description and think, yes, actually, this is
00:09:30.200what I want. A woman causing trouble, this would be great. What's also great about that cover,1.00
00:09:34.980I just wanted to mention for the listeners is that, and this is also on our mood board for my0.73
00:09:39.060book, is you have quotes from people from ancient times talking about what a horrifying woman she
00:09:46.060is it's like blah blah blah Cicero usually where a quote is like da da da Lucy Worsley it's like
00:09:50.880da da da Cicero and I was like that's fantastic I love this because it's just a show like in her1.00
00:09:55.700time yeah the kind of the holdover of the original a thoroughly rapacious female because when when
00:10:01.180I said I was you know I was a bit sad to lose that because yeah this is this is like dramatic0.79
00:10:05.960and everything I think I think it was my editor which said she said something along the lines of
00:10:09.860oh well we could use those in the marketing and I was like yeah all right then that way we get to
00:10:15.180we get to keep them and some of them they're very dramatic they're very evocative and so yeah that
00:10:21.280they they were in the marketing they're on the book cover um they're on the amazon page and stuff
00:10:26.900like that so uh yeah these these these celebrity endorsements from the late republic so i was i was
00:10:31.940quite happy about the way that went i mean the american cover is is beautiful too it's very
00:10:36.620very different to the the uk one but i i think it's still very striking and because it's a sort
00:10:41.440of lovely orangey yellow color and it's got these red highlights i think hopefully that will also be
00:10:47.580quite noticeable in a bookshop because a lot of the the history books um they they in the uk
00:10:55.400anyway i don't know so much about the american market but in the uk they have very sort of
00:11:00.160austere quite boring titles like covers and titles i mean it's like a blank like a kind of a cream or
00:11:07.860a black or something like that with just the title and then maybe some very small little motif of a
00:11:14.500crown or something and they just they don't look that interesting to me and and so I didn't really
00:11:21.540think that was quite the right you know vibe I you know wanted to be projecting so I'm really
00:11:28.480pleased with both of the covers and how they they do sort of say something exciting when it lurks
00:11:33.380we're in. Well, and your book certainly starts off with something exciting. We won't start our
00:11:37.980story there, but I will just let everybody know there is. In reading history, I'm always excited
00:11:43.920when a vengeance-fueled mob shows up. And so just listeners know there is more than one of those.
00:11:50.900But first, can you explain to everybody how, like we just did an episode about Livia,
00:11:54.920for instance. That's probably fresh in people's mind. People know about Cleopatra.
00:11:58.300How does Vulvia fit into these people, to the stories that people might already know?
00:12:03.380So, Sylvia is basically, she is at the very end of the late Republic. So she's born around about 80 BCE and she dies in 40 BCE. And so she lives for 40 years. And during the course of the 40 years that she lives, this is pretty much where the Republic lurches from like crisis to crisis, death row to death row.
00:12:28.280we go through the first triumvirate with Caesar and Pompey and Crassus. We go through the second
00:12:36.560triumvirate with Antony and Octavian and Lepidus. We have the civil war between Caesar and Pompey.
00:12:41.920We have the dictatorship of Caesar. We have the assassination of Caesar. We have the civil war
00:12:46.480between Antony and Octavian. It's the first iteration of that civil war. And we also have
00:12:53.560the prescriptions and the sort of murder of cicero and uh and that basically this this period is is a
00:13:00.840complete disaster for literally everybody in rome except a handful of very sort of clever
00:13:06.680savvy uh politicians and generals because it is it is just non-stop horror you've got gangs roaming
00:13:14.360the countryside and murdering people in the roads you've got gangs roaming the streets murdering
00:13:19.140people in the streets you've got bodies being you know thrown into the river thrown into the sewer
00:13:26.040you've got people grassing you up to to see you know to get hold of your your money and and your
00:13:32.500your uh sort of other kind of valuables and it's really like a horrible time you know a lot a lot
00:13:40.140for a lot of this period because there are these sort of civil wars and and and conflicts between
00:13:45.420um very powerful men with very very large moral armies uh if you are a woman like like Thulvia
00:13:53.320or like Livia as well um you are constantly worried because you're all of your male family
00:13:58.720members have basically uh you've gone off to war and are they on the right side and are they going
00:14:04.320to survive and if they do survive are they on the right side or are they on the wrong side
00:14:08.700are they going to get punished because of that you know are you in danger are your children in
00:14:12.680danger what's going to happen to your fortune you know is it going to get seized are you going to
00:14:17.880taxed are you going to have to you know there are all these like really they're fantastic stories
00:14:24.240but they're also pretty horrible as well about um in appian's um account of the civil war about
00:14:29.580things that um people who are on the prescriptions list so men who are on the prescriptions list and
00:14:35.080what their what their female family members you know their wives and their daughters and
00:14:40.320even um their enslaved people what they did whether they were they were good wives and they
00:14:45.460they hid them or they tried to bribe their way out of it or if they were bad and they they you
00:14:51.260know they basically shot them to the authorities and betrayed them and uh whether if they if they
00:14:56.880were murdered did the wives you know basically end their own lives too or what happened and so
00:15:02.620we get these really interesting accounts of what women's lives were like in this period that we
00:15:07.660don't we don't get in the sort of normal peace time because you know no one thinks that you
00:15:13.180know housewives however wealthy are really worth writing about unless they're doing something1.00
00:15:17.200exciting and that's generally a bad thing you know roman roman wives are not meant to be exciting1.00
00:15:22.280they're meant to be boring they must be seen but not heard they can be powerful as long as they're1.00
00:15:26.540doing it quietly behind the scenes for the the sort of betterment of their you know husbands or
00:15:32.300sons or whatever else but they can't really be first and foremost and in your face about it0.94
00:15:37.040And so when we do hear about women doing those things, it's always a sign that something has gone terribly wrong, like society is breaking down if women like Fulvia are sort of stepping forward and are able to manage any sort of sort of open power grabbing and politicking and things like that.0.90
00:15:54.560So we hear a lot about Forbia in the ancient sources of this period because the very fact that she is so visible and she is so powerful and influential is a sign of everything that's gone wrong with the normal political process, military process, government of the republic and the wider empire.0.94
00:16:14.980and it's also a way if you're talking about women you're what you're really doing is talking about0.51
00:16:22.180how like weak and emasculated and under the thumb and not proper men their you know husbands or
00:16:29.380fathers or brothers or whatever are so so you talk about women being bad as a way to talk about
00:16:34.480men being ineffectual and so we hear about phobia when her husband's enemies want to make a point
00:16:43.080that they are deficient in in some way and we will absolutely get to this because this is a
00:16:50.220very satisfying part of your book is well first i was just like oh my god i hate cicero cicero is0.93
00:16:57.440like number one enemy to me personally because he is all he does is hate on fulvia and we will
00:17:04.360talk about that but your book includes um you know how he dies and i was very satisfied when
00:17:09.040what happened and i was very happy with fulvia i'm also i'm very satisfied that you know his
00:17:13.900his corpse is on the cover thank god being yeah i'm disrespected because cicero i remember i0.51
00:17:22.040ages ago i did a cleopatra episode and i was just like wow this guy sucks and so to hear this it's0.64
00:17:28.180like he writes a lot of what um we know about fulvia comes from his writing about her and
00:17:33.220in your book you're kind of saying like well he hated her so here's what he said but like
00:17:36.520you know what is the kernel of truth to this but it's not just like he hated her because she was a
00:17:40.600woman who was doing stuff but he hated her because they were neighbors and they were like kept trying
00:17:46.680to get each other's property and like seizing each other's property and stuff so he like
00:17:50.100personally hated her yeah sometimes you don't necessarily think about it but Cicero is pretty
00:17:58.000much 90 percent of our source for this period of you know of the people that were writing at the
00:18:05.040time you know he he is he is the the most perhaps the most important most prolific i mean obviously
00:18:11.000we have caesar's commentaries uh for example and we have fragments of other things but you know we
00:18:16.740have cicero's writings his longer writings but also his letters as well and that's how we
00:18:21.920reconstruct period and so for for many centuries the the understanding of what was going on was
00:18:28.340entirely from cicero's perspective and so cicero's friends were your friends you know and his enemies
00:18:32.780were your enemies and so it was it was rather uncritical in a lot of ways so cicero's depiction
00:18:39.100of fulvia must must be accurate she must be awful and then when you start trying to look for other
00:18:44.620sources from this period or from slightly later you can then start to maybe see some variations
00:18:52.440and then the the later sources you can also see how the tale grows in the telling how you know
00:18:58.500extra details get added and um you know the benefit of hindsight and and the the history
00:19:04.220is written by you know the winner's situation and so phobia gets worse and worse and worse as time
00:19:09.440goes on because everybody everybody knows what happened they know how the story ends and so
00:19:14.700they there isn't new information in the sense of like new discoveries it's more just new writers
00:19:21.680adding their own sort of extra like very lurid details to sort of make their their work that
00:19:28.060little bit more exciting and they can get away with it because of course we know that you know
00:19:33.100anthony loses and and octavian becomes augustus and and so there's there's a very interesting
00:19:41.020sort of you can see it happen in real time that the cleanup of his reputation over the
00:19:45.640four years of his principate from he's really quite reprehensible in the late republic i mean
00:19:51.360he's he's quite young and so he he kind of plays the oh well i i was just this young this young
00:19:57.540innocent boy and i was misled by all these older more influential men but he's he's pretty nasty0.73
00:20:02.740he's a thug he you know tortures people kills people does all sorts of really unpleasant stuff
00:20:08.120but but later on when he wants to present himself as like the benign you know part of patriae and0.95
00:20:13.720and the pater familias of the imperial family good traditional moral guy um he obviously can't have
00:20:20.960the nasty stuff being like raped over again so it's it's all kind of let's let's look over there
00:20:26.300and said let's let's criticize Anthony let's let's criticize Fulvia let's criticize Cleopatra
00:20:30.300they're really bad and I'm I was just trying to you know uh make sure that that Rome uh survived
00:20:37.280when of course he was doing no such thing he was out for himself so if we like I think we should
00:20:43.880go through Fulvia was married three times um some more dramatically than others I I guess by
00:20:51.460dramatically i mean the conclusion of the marriage but um can you talk about so at the very beginning
00:20:56.340like like many young romans like she gets married as a young teenager and uh who is the the first
00:21:02.640husband claudius not i not i claudius claudius different person yeah he is his name is is um
00:21:12.220probably as claudius pulcare he's a member of of the claudii but he he changes his name at some
00:21:18.080point to sort of uh be more fashionable and appeal more to the common people so his his brothers
00:21:23.780are um you know they are claudia he's a claudia he's claudius one of the claudia smaller smaller
00:21:32.140group and he is what we would today i suppose especially with with the way things are with
00:21:39.820global politics at the moment we would call him a populist politician because although he is
00:21:45.160incredibly wealthy and incredibly aristocratic and the very definition of the sort of silver
00:21:51.100spoon in your mouth sort of situation he presents himself as a man of the people as uh he he deliberately
00:21:58.680pitches himself towards the the sort of the ordinary working romans he he he deliberately
00:22:08.160tries to get um supporters from the sort of the the poor the disenfranchised you know the
00:22:14.720the working people um and he tries to basically circumvent the the traditional way of doing
00:22:23.620roman politics i mean he is very wealthy he's got consular ancestors and and siblings uh his
00:22:30.120his sisters that are all married to to consuls and generals as well um he's in that you know
00:22:36.340he's a senator he's surrounded by senators um but he stands uh is elected as a tribune so that he
00:22:44.420can basically say you know i represent the working ordinary people of rome and as as part of that
00:22:51.340he's not content to just stick to politics he he does have street gangs and thugs and intimidates
00:22:59.520political rivals and there's a lot of sort of electoral corruption um and bribery and and stuff
00:23:07.200like that and we sort of first at the point at which he and fulvia marry um he has literally
00:23:16.740just been um prosecuted for uh his sort of blaspheming sacrilege because he he gate crashed
00:23:23.860the uh the bonadier celebrations all women celebrations in the uh the house of the pontifex
00:23:31.180maximus that was caesar at the time and his his wife as as the wife of the pontifex maximus was
00:23:36.360hosting these celebrations very secret we don't really know anything about them because they were
00:23:42.420all women and they they were so so secret and so what we hear from the sources is that macclodius
00:23:48.300dressed up as a woman and sneaked in somehow to the house there is this question of was he
00:23:55.660having an affair with caesar's wife and was like sneaking in to you know um terrible choice of
00:24:02.140timing if he was if he was trying to get his leg over um on this particular night um or was it that
00:24:08.240he wanted to find out what the uh celebrations were because man he wouldn't ever know um and so
00:24:15.400there is this big sort of scandal because the the the rituals are interrupted and it's terribly
00:24:22.480offensive and so on so forth so he so he is uh he is prosecuted for this but he gets away with it
00:24:27.600basically um bribes his way out of it so even though there seems to be the sense that everybody
00:24:32.820knew he did it uh he he does you know as as incredibly wealthy influential people tend to
00:24:39.460simply just buy his way out of it and get away without he's got claudius like you know listeners
00:24:44.760are listening from all kinds of different countries and i think we're all thinking of
00:24:48.200a politician in our country who is exactly like this yeah absolutely i mean it's nothing really
00:24:52.620much has changed in in in 2 000 years uh that the people who have the right sort of advantages
00:24:58.580by and large are above the law um it catches up with them eventually because we will talk i'm sure
00:25:04.560very shortly about how it catches up with with clonius you know you live by the sword you die
00:25:08.860by the sword but um at this particular point in time um this isn't the first scandal that's been
00:25:14.240attached to his name i mean previously when he was on a military campaign with his brother-in-law
00:25:19.120he tried to foment mutiny because he felt like he wasn't being given like a sufficiently important
00:25:24.680command um there were allegations about him committing incest with his various sisters
00:25:29.780so he he is he is a very sort of high profile scandalous salacious kind of person i i think
00:25:37.820probably with very much with the mentality of that that whole um it's better to be talked about
00:25:42.660and not talked about and there's a lot of people talking about you doesn't really matter what
00:25:46.100they're saying because then people can you know your name is is on people's you know lips and
00:25:50.360things and so it's at this point um in the sort of like the late 60s where he and Fulvia seemed
00:25:57.700to have married and there it's been suggested that because she was from um she was also from
00:26:05.200old, wealthy, respectable families. But her father's family, the 4VE, and her mother's
00:26:13.400family as well, they were not as important as they had been 100 or 150 years earlier.
00:26:20.340So although they were wealthy, they were no longer influential. They hadn't had consuls
00:26:23.980for several generations. And so it's been suggested that this is why someone like Clodius
00:26:57.500So it's been suggested that this was an opportunity
00:27:00.200Because while the very conservative aristocratic families would have thought, oh, God, no, we're not marrying one of our daughters to this scandal longer, a slightly less prestigious family with lots of money, they were like, we will do that.
00:33:55.380And it's also interesting because there is a political dimension to this as well, that if she was with him all the time, then she was part of his political life. And she either learned from him these ideas about using the crowd and playing on people's emotions and getting what you want outside of the normal channels.
00:34:18.160so either she learned that from him or it's something that he potentially learned from her
00:34:23.420and or the pair of them sort of worked it out together and that's that's just quite interesting
00:34:27.920to see this this possibility of a sort of roman women do not get to have the same sort of political
00:34:33.400career or the political education um that roman men do but you can perhaps have a different kind
00:34:41.000of education sort of you can you can be there and you can absorb and you can see what's happening1.00
00:34:45.900and then you can you can learn from that and also I suppose one thing you can't necessarily teach
00:34:51.280someone is to have a sense of timing and to know when it's the right moment to do a particular
00:34:56.500thing and how to turn the situation to your advantage and clearly this is something that
00:35:00.500Fulvia has because she does it when she's presented with the body of Clodius and she does it again
00:35:05.280at the trial and she does it again at later points in in her her life as well she recognizes that
00:35:11.100this is, this is a moment where I can actually, I can make something out of this. And so although
00:35:16.340we don't have huge amounts of information about her at this point in time, the information that
00:35:22.420we do have, I think is suggestive. And so we can start to see patterns emerging that we'll see over
00:35:28.660the next sort of 15 years of her life and her career. Well, and then also just the way that
00:35:35.240um, Clodius was this populist politician. He was, well, you can see by like the way that the mob
00:35:40.940assembled, like he was beloved by these people. And after he died, Filvia kind of inherits those
00:35:46.400followers or those fans. And then eventually like we see that that is much like, you know,
00:35:51.520her wealth is an attractive thing to somebody who wants to marry her. It's like, well, here's this
00:35:54.600woman who like brings with her, like whoever she marries next, people are going to support him
00:35:59.020because people supported Clodius so much. So then she gets her, her second husband, who's this like
00:36:05.240various things but he's among other things i'm a theater empresario who has this like revolving
00:36:10.380stage we don't need to get into that but she marries basically as soon as she is allowed to
00:36:14.940after the period of mourning is over and who is the second husband yes so her second her second
00:36:20.600husband is um guy scraboni's curio and he too is on the sort of he's from a very respectable
00:36:28.240wealthy aristocratic family um his father is actually is is still alive at least to start
00:36:35.000with and is very influential as a politician in the senate and he and his father work together
00:36:39.620quite closely as um you know together for their for their causes and to start with he is more on
00:36:46.040the conservative side you sort of think oh you know this is this is clearly influence of his
00:36:49.380father because after his father's death he goes way over the other side and uh joins up with caesar
00:36:55.320and and um he he too is is a tribune and and um sort of goes for the the more kind of populist
00:37:03.580um element although not as extreme as as clonius he's he still seems to be working within the
00:37:08.940normal parameters so um the theater is is part of um sort of funerary games to celebrate is his
00:37:15.220father and as as well as being a very effective marketing tool for himself and so because we
00:37:20.860don't know exactly when um he and and fully are married there is this question of well did he
00:37:27.460woo her with his amazing like revolving theater and she thought oh yeah you know this this is a
00:37:32.920guy i can work with he's he's got a bit of pizzazz or was was she involved in this you know that he
00:37:39.060he was like i need to i need to do something to you know honor my dad and to make my name and to
00:37:44.440get attention she's like well you know what you could do so we don't we don't quite know but but
00:37:49.880there is this sort of period where they they are married and his career is going quite well
00:37:53.680then we see civil war he is uh he takes caesar's side in the civil war and he goes off to north
00:38:02.440africa uh you know leading caesar's armies and unfortunately they're only married a sort of a
00:38:07.920year or two they're married long enough for for him to like father a child on her um but that then
00:38:13.880but that that is that is basically it so he dies uh in in north africa and she is left once again
00:38:20.180she is left alone as a widow with with you know a young family like young children so she has her
00:38:26.460two children from her marriage to clonius now she has her one child from her marriage to curio
00:38:32.440and it's at that point because it's so we so because it's such a short period of time and
00:38:36.320there's so much other stuff going on we don't really know um anything about their their marriage
00:38:41.620their relationship and their life together um because frankly that clodius her first husband
00:38:46.960and um anthony her third husband they're what people care more about really than curia he is
00:38:53.300the sort of you know just sandwiched between them but he it's probably the bridge to anthony
00:39:00.680because he and Anthony are very close friends there are suggestions that when they were younger
00:39:05.840they were lovers because they were so close and again it's this it's this you can kind of it's
00:39:11.520suggestive because you sort of think well Anthony his his his closest bestest oldest friend has just
00:39:19.480died leaving you know a widow and a very young baby and it's actually quite a nice thing to do
00:39:26.860if you if you think about it to sort of be be there for your your uh your your dead friend's
00:39:33.160wife and baby and i mean you know you you can think about it also in a completely mercenary
00:39:37.880way as well that yes she she's got this political um these followers yeah yeah these followers and
00:39:43.600he's like oh i can make use of that and oh she's got a lot of money i can make use of that because
00:39:47.100anthony is perpetually poor but at the same time there is perhaps a human element to it as well
00:39:51.780that he's he's stepping in to to support his his best friend's widow and so we know a bit more about
00:39:57.920their marriage because we have a lot more sort of information and anecdotal information about
00:40:02.080well i'm gonna say because cicero was their neighbor and he hated her and them and so it's
00:40:07.300like this homeowners association blog of just like what's happening at the house but also like
00:40:13.820mark anthony just to just to remind listeners as well like he is um you know famously anthony
00:40:19.520Cleopatra like that. That's, that's where he, that's where he's going to end up. So this is
00:40:24.480pre pre Cleopatra McAnthony. So we see him with another like strong, interesting, intelligent
00:40:29.120woman speaks well of him. And now for a quick advertising break. Ready to take your investing
00:40:36.120knowledge to pro level. This is Fidelity connects your daily edge in the markets. Get deep insights
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00:53:36.580And so he's like a historical footnote,
00:53:38.540even though at the time he was he was really important um it's yeah this is this is where
00:53:43.300we get with with historians ancient historians writing later and knowing that yeah who's important
00:53:48.460and who's not yeah yeah he's important at the time but you wouldn't know it from sort of the way that
00:53:52.660it's just brushed over later anyway um so if you can get out of rome and get down to sicily and
00:53:58.460join up with sexist pompey you're okay if you can't uh basically anybody anyone at all whether
00:54:05.520they are um a freeborn person or a freed person or even an enslaved person they can basically0.95
00:54:11.880find you cut your head off take the head to a member of the triumvirate and then you know claim
00:54:19.680um some some of your property you know they think the triumvirate gets some of it because they need0.98
00:54:24.160it to to declare war on bruce and cassius but but you can get some too so the if you were if you
00:54:30.660were um not a friend of the triumvirate and you were wealthy then you had a target on your back
00:54:35.520And Cicero is very much not a friend of, or particularly not a friend of Antony, because he has written a lot of horrible letters and speeches and pamphlets about Antony since the assassination of Caesar in 44.
00:54:49.520So he spent the last year writing these speeches, delivering speeches publicly, et cetera, et cetera. These are called the Philippics. And this is where we get a lot of our information about Antony and a lot of the negative qualities of Antony.
00:55:04.100So this is where we read about how he's drunk and is permanently drinking and he's surrounded by all sorts of unsavoury actors and prostitutes and stuff like that.
00:55:18.400And that he seized Pompey's property and spends loads of money and is in loads of debt.
00:55:26.760And this is where we sort of hear a lot of stories about his marriage to Fulvia and how she basically wears the trousers, that, you know, he's completely weak and emasculated and she bosses him around.0.52
00:55:38.280And there's a great line in Plutarch's Life of Antony, written much later, but using these sources, that essentially Cleopatra was grateful to Fulvia because Fulvia had broken Antony and trained him to be ruled by a woman.
00:55:55.280and so like Fulvia is sort of seen as the precursor to Cleopatra um in that way and so yeah Cicero
00:56:03.660um thought it would be a really good idea to uh assassinate Anthony's character and in response
00:56:10.420Anthony thought it would be an even better idea to assassinate Cicero like like quite quite
00:56:14.600literally and I sort of the the way I I kind of I've been thinking about this recently is I I don't
00:56:21.500don't know how aware you are of the feud between um kendrick and drake oh very i'm in canada so
00:56:29.560like yeah yeah i mean that's the thing it's it's kind of it's that sort of thing these two these
00:56:34.760two people attempting to kind of one-up each other and and i i know the way i see this i'm sort of
00:56:40.040like who is who in this situation is is anthony drake i mean cicero cicero would have you believe
00:56:45.880that anthony is drake and cicero's writings would have you believe that anthony is drake but
00:56:50.560ultimately um it's it's Anthony that wins it's like you know like the Super Bowl the Super Bowl
00:56:57.400performance of Kendrick Lamar like it was like a philosophical murder of Drake and then Mark
00:57:04.240Anthony does like an actual murder of Cicero yeah so I mean so Anthony does attempt to kind of write
00:57:09.580back but we just don't have that literature unfortunately it's all I mean he he is he is a
00:57:15.480victim of Octavian later because Octavian goes out of his way to just um bulldoze Antony's
00:57:21.340reputation and any sign of it so it's it is it is just this this sort of situation where um
00:57:27.940Cicero I mean I firmly believe that he had it coming frankly I mean oh my gosh your book I
00:57:34.640didn't know that that was the end of Cicero and I was so happy yeah because I just I just you know
00:57:40.840your book is like very you know well written and whatever but just like you're like you hold
00:57:45.540no like you just you're like this is what Cicero is doing he's just like a hater he hates Fulvia0.98
00:57:50.380he hates Mark Anthony he's writing these things and when he's killed I was just like fuck yeah0.96
00:57:53.580yeah finally good I'm from you know from Anthony's perspective you're like of course absolutely you0.98
00:57:59.240know you know killing Cicero is a sensible thing to do because he was he was against Caesar he was
00:58:04.360against anthony he is the foremost orator and politician in the if you can't do this if you're0.98
00:58:11.500an ancient roman you can just do it yeah yeah you need to get rid of him you know he he is a thorn0.99
00:58:15.920in your side from four years perspective and because this is we shouldn't really forget that0.99
00:58:20.600she's involved in this too so cicero is the man that um attempted to get clodius um done for
00:58:29.580sacrilege. They had a neighborly feud for years. Clodius got Cicero exiled and then Cicero came
00:58:38.320back and caused loads of trouble for Clodius. He took Milo's side and Milo and Clodius were
00:58:47.180mortal enemies. When Milo actually murdered Clodius and attempted to murder Fulvia's son,
00:58:53.220And Cicero defended him publicly and tried to get him away with it and tried to argue that Clodius was going to kill Milo.0.76
00:59:02.040And he also he'd given a very long speech if he was earlier about how Clodius was was having sex with his sister who was, you know, and would you like it if people were saying that your husband was having sex with his sister?0.87
00:59:16.380No, you would not. I mean, and so all of that was was kind of earlier on.
00:59:20.920And then with all the stuff with Cicero and Antony, Cicero going around after the assassination of Caesar and saying, oh, well, if I'd been involved in the planning, Antony would have been murdered too. You're so stupid, Brutus, for not killing Antony.0.99
00:59:38.080like oh yeah that's a great idea you know go around telling people that you you think that1.00
00:59:43.620you know someone's husband should be murdered and then when he's driven you know driven out
00:59:48.720of Rome as a public enemy start threatening her kids as well and and I'm just like if I'd been
00:59:56.320in that situation I would have been so thrilled when when Cicero finally got his and I absolutely
01:00:03.740would have wanted to see the proof of it you know show me that head i i really want to just just
01:00:08.960bask in this feeling of like sean freuder and that's what like you know listeners that the
01:00:16.340cover of the uk version of this book is and like there's multiple artworks in history of like
01:00:22.720fulvia with the head of cicero which now when i see those paintings i'll know what a satisfying
01:00:27.340moment that is and what that's portraying because the picture i mean the paint the paintings are
01:00:31.380probably not coming at it from that perspective the paint the paintings are like oh poor cicero
01:00:36.100he was martyred just like cato the younger he he believed in his in his political cause and he
01:00:43.680died for it's like no he was a complete like i don't know if i can i don't know what words i can1.00
01:00:49.940use on this you can use it literally anywhere he was an asshole he was a monster he was absolutely0.99
01:00:54.800he was the worst he was and he absolutely deserved it and it's very very fitting0.99
01:01:00.580and yes it's very satisfying so frankly but when you look at those paintings and
01:01:07.940when you know the artist wants you to I suppose feel feel sadness and regret and it's always so
01:01:14.580poignant that such a great man came to such an end look at them and think that's what you get0.98
01:01:19.680for being a complete dick frankly you know no hell have no fury like a woman scorned and if0.98
01:01:26.740you threaten women's husbands and children this is what you get to to me like the the painting1.00
01:01:34.360again the one that's on the cover of your book it's like she's kind of like grinning she just
01:01:37.720like so she looks so like happy and relieved and there's this like dead head next to her1.00
01:01:41.900because the store and I guess you're supposed to be like oh my god what a monstrous woman I'm just
01:01:45.520like i'm on her side when i see this painting i'm like her list of names yes and we even do get1.00
01:01:53.300don't we in in that episode of game of thrones where she she basically serves up um the the
01:01:59.480fray the fray children to to um you know the the head of the household and it's very it's very
01:02:06.580yes you know so this is you're on that side yeah we want vengeance that's to me a very satisfying
01:02:14.560moment in her life and also in your book comma and then the final act of her life it's like
01:02:19.640cleopatra enters a new bombshell has entered the villa it's cleopatra and um and mark anthony well
01:02:28.380i guess the other thing too is like octavian is getting more power like it's i don't know you've
01:02:32.940mentioned it's like okay and then there's civil war again i feel like it's just been all civil
01:02:35.920war this whole time but it's like yes officially so it's kind of like are you team anthony are you
01:02:40.860team octavian and she is anthony's wife so she's team anthony and then so octavian starts kind of
01:02:47.620going after her a bit right yes i mean the thing you have to remember is it's not just not just
01:02:52.760team anthony and team octavian in in that sense i mean it's it's made out a lot of the ancient
01:02:57.840sources they they sort of lead a lot of things but the thing to remember is it's not just
01:03:05.020individuals there are a lot of other people behind those individuals there are entire political
01:03:10.700factions behind those individuals and people who thought that you know anthony was was the better
01:03:16.660bear he he was he was older he was a successful politician a successful general he had all this
01:03:23.060experience and octavian is this kind of young psycho basically who's just a pin out of nowhere
01:03:29.260is riding the crest of the sort of nepo baby wave by insisting that everybody calls him you know
01:03:34.980Caesar and trying to get Caesar's soldiers and veterans on side so he can throw his weight around
01:03:41.460and become consul like 20 years too early and do all sorts of other illegal things.
01:03:47.500And so all the way down to sort of 31 in the Battle of Actium, Antony had hundreds of senators
01:03:55.020on his side, consuls and whatnot. He had many, many legions and things. And so it's also,
01:04:02.600it's not just about them it's about their families and this is this is another thing that that we're
01:04:06.740sort of bearing in mind is that anthony has he has children he has he has um his two sons with
01:04:12.540he has step sons um his his uh thorvia's son with curio thorvia's son with claudius so anthony has
01:04:20.600basically a dynasty and this is a this is a way to think about it that i i don't think gets enough
01:04:25.740attention it's something that i was very keen to emphasize towards the end of my book is that if we
01:04:30.940look at this as entirely about Anthony and Octavian and even if we look at it as as Anthony
01:04:37.320and Cleopatra and Fulvia versus Cleopatra I think that's the wrong way to look at it that's a very
01:04:42.000sort of I guess it's a very like modern way to look at it I mean we have we have to bear in mind
01:04:46.480that Roman marriage was not like contemporary marriage or at least not your normal average0.98
01:04:51.320contemporary marriage so Roman men were generally not faithful husbands at all you know they could0.80
01:04:59.420be unfaithful just about anyone as as long as as they they sort of kept it sort of um you know0.70
01:05:07.100quiet and dignifying everything else and so when Anthony goes off to the east and is he has an
01:05:15.180affair with Glephira um a courtesan and then he has an affair with Cleopatra you know a client0.65
01:05:20.780queen these women are you know they're foreigners they're not Roman they're not even in Rome he0.62
01:05:28.420can't marry them they are not any kind of threat to fulvia in her position as his wife uh his roman
01:05:35.600wife the mother of his roman heirs and the way that i think by by the ancient source is trying
01:05:42.080to basically like dismiss fulvia as oh she was just jealous you know she she she caused all this
01:05:47.340trouble trying to come back from me he was going to come back from egypt anyway you know um and so
01:05:52.960so ultimately it it wasn't really it wasn't something that she necessarily needed to pay
01:05:58.480much attention to and and she dies in 40 and there Anthony lives for another 10 years and
01:06:04.620has another sort of 10 years of a relationship with Cleopatra um and children and everything else
01:06:09.500but if you think about it in the in the sort of political sense so Fulvia is in Rome she has
01:06:17.040antony's two sons so she has like three very ancient and important roman families that she
01:06:24.500has children um as members of she has clodius's political faction supporting her son and her
01:06:32.660other sons and with antony in the east is the senior triumvir i mean he was planning to to go
01:06:39.180to war with parthia and and had he been successful he would have had lots of conquests in the east
01:06:45.340He has these three children with Cleopatra. And with the donations of Alexander in 34, it's clear that there are plans, basically, to give these children kingdoms in the East. He has another daughter who has already been married from his previous marriage, prior to Phylvia. He has another daughter who has already been married into a Near Eastern dynasty.
01:07:04.540so he's got his roman children and stepchildren in rome his his eldest stepson clodius is already
01:07:12.500you know in in his sort of 20s his late teens 20s at this time and so he's on the political ladder
01:07:19.540his his second stepson curio is getting there he's he's 18 in in um 30 um and then he has his
01:07:26.900own two sons um antillus and eulis and so he's got a huge amount of future power in rome through
01:07:35.460these four boys and then um claudia who is phobia's daughter um who can be married into another
01:07:42.200family and then in the east he has got his his daughter um his three children with cleopatra who
01:07:49.100the plan is for them to all have these kingdoms and so with anthony in the east you know paying
01:07:56.180attention to Pahlia and other things. Fulvia has absolute, would have had, had she been alive,
01:08:00.840would have had absolute power in Rome. She would have had Antony's political and military heirs.1.00
01:08:06.660And under such circumstances, things would have, I think, been quite different between
01:08:12.680Antony and Octavian. Because Octavian is able to make inroads in Rome and in Italy and in the
01:08:20.880western half of the empire because anthony's not there and anthony doesn't have a proxy anymore
01:08:26.180because phobia has dies in 40 his brother lucius seems to go off to spain in 40 and dies soon
01:08:33.220after um so there's nobody really there who can fill that gap that phobia and lucius left and
01:08:40.620and you know his his sons and stepsons you know they're they're either with him in the east as
01:08:46.100well or you know they're too young to be doing anything significant and so this had fulvia
01:08:52.900continued to to live i think the 30s would have been quite different octavian would not have gotten
01:08:58.100away with a lot of the stuff he got away with because um anthony wouldn't have married octavia
01:09:02.380so octavian wouldn't have been able to use every private detail of that marriage as political
01:09:09.060ammunition he would not have been able to get um anthony's will out of the the um you know the
01:09:16.700house of the vestals assuming that it was even the genuine will because he wouldn't have been
01:09:20.480able to get away with that because foolia would have been able to say well a that's not his will
01:09:24.140um i have his will it says very different things um you know or b she she would have just been able
01:09:30.000to argue with him or he wouldn't have dared to do it in the first place so i think something that's
01:09:34.740quite interesting that when we're dealing with this sense of well history is written by the
01:09:39.060victors and everybody's writing with the benefit of hindsight that is true obviously but at the
01:09:44.880same time i think we can look at when particular historical figures die and we can think about
01:09:51.360would they have would they have made things very different so when cicero dies in in 43
01:09:57.420would things have really been different if he hadn't have died at that point you know what
01:10:03.100what realistically could he have done you know he was he was an old man he was not um you know
01:10:09.680a strong general or anything like that all he could have been able to really do is is write
01:10:14.560some more bitchy speeches and yeah there's only so so long that those are really important when
01:10:20.880everybody's you know tooling up and going to war whereas when fortvia dies in 40 this i think has
01:10:27.380a really significant effect on what follows like her absence has has a significant effect and if
01:10:35.780she had been present then everything would have been very different in the period from 40 down
01:10:41.640down to 31 at the battle of actium and even potentially afterwards i mean it if if the
01:10:47.820battle had still gone the way it went with with a sort of nominal um octavian victory over over
01:10:54.020Antony. Forbia was still in Rome and could still have perhaps drawn on, you know, a lot of sort of
01:11:00.920power and influence to continue to support Antony at that time. But, you know, she died and Antony
01:11:08.660lost his best asset. And the more time he spent in the East and with Cleopatra, the more of a gap
01:11:15.140he left. And that enabled Octavian to step in and fill it with all sorts of, you know, stories.
01:20:32.280And we're talking about ancient Rome. So I have to bring up her brand partner, Common Era Jewelry, because that's her whole vibe. So Common Era Jewelry is a company I connected with because, well, frankly, because their Instagram ads are being shared to a bunch of listeners of this podcast who shared it with me, who were like, Ann, I think you would like this jewelry. And I was like, I do. And in fact, I want to work with them.
01:20:53.040so Tori is it's it's not a one-woman show but like she runs the whole company even as she's
01:20:58.800like at home like breastfeeding her newborn child congratulations again on your baby Tori
01:21:03.560but anyway so she does the designs herself and the whole vibe of the company is because she is
01:21:08.760really into the classical world just like Jane Drake caught it's like it's just that's her
01:21:13.680passion and so Common Ear Jewelry makes designs based on either jewelry that's been discovered
01:21:18.980from ancient Roman times, ancient Egyptian times, or just truly inspired by people who lived back
01:21:26.400then. So this is a small woman-owned business, which I think is important to note. And they
01:21:32.620have several gorgeous pieces inspired by Rome and the women of ancient Rome. So there's not
01:21:36.680one of Fulvia. She's not famous enough yet to make it there, but there is a beautiful pennant
01:21:43.380inspired by last week's topic, person Livia, as well as a person we've talked about on this
01:21:47.960podcast before, Agrippina the Younger. And both Livia and Agrippina the Younger, they were sort
01:21:52.840of like one generation after Filvia. Like if Filvia was the elder millennial, Livia is like
01:21:59.320the younger millennial and Agrippina the Younger is like the Gen Z in this situation. So they were
01:22:04.440all like living close to each other, but not exactly the same generation. And for sure,
01:22:08.880Livia and Agrippina the Younger saw what Filvia was able to do and clearly took some inspiration
01:22:13.740from what she was able to accomplish so you can get those pieces from from common era livia and
01:22:20.240agrippina the younger common era also brings roman vibes to pieces like there's they have two pieces
01:22:25.380that are inspired by artwork that was found in pompeii which like it's like a dream of mine to
01:22:31.440go visit pompeii one day but it's just like the pompeii was an ancient roman city and they
01:22:37.500excavated so much stuff and you were able to see like the the murals and the frescoes and the
01:22:41.140artwork that people had just on the walls of their buildings. And one of those things was
01:22:44.780an image of Lita and the Swan, which is from a very sexy myth about a god who came down and took
01:22:53.680the form of a swan and had sex with a lady. And people throughout history have liked to
01:22:58.920reinterpret that in burlesque and various things. But anyway, Lita and the Swan,
01:23:03.520the pendant is inspired by specifically the portrayal of the story in Pompeii in ancient
01:23:08.860Roman times. And also another thing that was uncovered, another piece of artwork that was
01:23:13.300sort of like a puzzle that was discovered during the excavations of Pompeii, the ancient Roman city
01:23:18.300is the magic Sator Square, which is a word puzzle, which was, I love that. I love the vibe that
01:23:25.300people in ancient Roman times were doing word puzzles. I feel like Fulvia would have been
01:23:28.760really good at like wordle and things. Anyway, this is what they had at the time, the magic Sator
01:23:33.520Square. So this was discovered. And then I love that Tori took this and turned it into beautiful
01:23:37.320jewelry so you can get that as a ring or also as a pendant and then there's also a design from
01:23:43.220common era featuring the vestal virgins who are kind of other than fulvia like the most powerful
01:23:49.280women women in ancient rome and it's based on an ancient roman coin that had the vestal virgins on
01:23:55.400it these pieces are available in solid gold as well as a more affordable gold for may and vulgar
01:24:00.640history listeners can always get 15 off all items from common era by going to commonera.com
01:24:06.180slash vulgar or using code vulgar at checkout that's commonera.com slash vulgar or use code
01:24:12.800vulgar at checkout next week on the podcast we're getting back into the 18th century of it all
01:24:19.080we're getting back into the revolutionary vibes like we're we're powering through to get to our
01:24:25.660ultimate destination this season which will be a discussion of queen marie antoinette this is
01:24:30.500another reason i wanted to talk about the ancient roman stuff because marie antoinette was some of
01:24:34.720the people who hated her. Some of the haters were comparing her to some women from ancient Roman0.63
01:24:38.660times negatively, but I would say that these women from ancient Roman times, if anyone compared me
01:24:44.400to Filvia, I'd be like, thank you. Thank you. Anyway, we're powering through. We're going to
01:24:48.800get to Marie Antoinette, not next week, but soon. Next week, we're going to be talking about somebody
01:24:53.800else from the revolutionary era, and I hope you join me then. And until then, my friends,
01:25:00.280keep your pants on and your tits out vulgar history is researched scripted and hosted by0.99
01:25:07.040ann foster that's me editor is christina lumagi theme music is by the severin duo transcripts of0.99
01:25:14.080this podcast are available at vulgarhistory.com by aveline malik you can get early ad-free episodes
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01:26:43.200fall in love with our core cast or be awed by our incredible guests from familiar shows
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