The Emperor Caligula in the Ancient Sources by Anthony A. Barrett & John C. Yardley

Author:Anthony A. Barrett & John C. Yardley [Barrett, Anthony A. & Yardley, John C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780192596765
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 2023-03-21T00:00:00+00:00

Fourth Marriage, Caesonia

After two apparently unsuccessful, at any rate very brief, marriages following the death of his first wife, Caligula seems to have achieved marital success with his fourth union, and to have found a true soulmate. Milonia Caesonia was the daughter of Vistilia, a woman who had in total six husbands and seven children, the latter born in a range of gestation periods between seven and eleven months so varied that they were recorded in Pliny’s Natural History.65 Caesonia probably resulted from the sixth marriage; her father is unknown. She was already the mother of three daughters when she married Caligula; nothing is known of her previous husband(s). The existence of the three earlier children (their ultimate fates are unknown) would in a way be seen by Caligula as a commendation, rather than as an obstacle, since they demonstrated that she was fertile. Dio places this last marriage among the final events of ad 39 after Caligula had departed for his northern expedition. But Dio’s narrative is very confused at this point and his timing seems to be contradicted by Caligula’s presence in Rome on the birth of his daughter, supposedly a month after the marriage. Suetonius claims that the birth occurred on the actual day of the marriage (4.50), although that supposition may have originated from a misunderstood joke (also there is a manuscript problem in Suetonius at this point). It may be that they were married earlier in ad 39 and that Dio did not know the precise date.

4.50 Suet. Cal. 25.3 Caesonia was neither particularly attractive nor very young66 and was already the mother of three daughters by another man, but she was given to high living and depraved sexuality; and he loved her with both more passion and fidelity, to the point of often showing her off to his soldiers riding beside him, decked out with cloak, shield, and helmet, and even displaying her naked to his friends.67

 He did not grant her the honour of being called his wife until she had given birth, declaring on one and the same day that he was her husband and also the father of the child born from her. 4 The infant, however, named Julia Drusilla, he carried around the temples of all the goddesses and set her in Minerva’s bosom68 and commended her feeding and upbringing to her. And no better evidence did he have for believing that she really was his own seed than the ferocity she showed even then, so great that with her wild fingers she would attack the faces and eyes of infants playing with her.69

4.51 Dio 59.28.7 When Caesonia gave birth to a daughter thirty days after their marriage, he made out that this was itself a miracle, priding himself on having become both husband and father within days of each other; and naming her Drusilla he took her up to the Capitol, set her on Jupiter’s knees as though she were actually his child, and put her in Minerva’s charge for nursing.

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