Livia

Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics

BBC

Stand-up, History, Comedy

4.8 • 598 Ratings

🗓️ 20 December 2023

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Livia was the first Empress of Rome, a faithful wife, excellent friend and trusted advisor. So why is she still best known as a serial killer?

Natalie is joined by guests Dr Emma Southon and Professor Llewelyn Morgan to discuss the life of Livia. Her marriage to the Emperor Augustus (Octavian) was a love-match. They were both married to other people when they first met, but that didn't last long, despite the added complication of her pregnancy and existing child. Before he became Emperor, Octavian was a powerful war lord who got what he wanted. He wanted Livia. He adopted her two sons and numerous other children but had none of his own.

The family was unlucky in losing many members to untimely death, and Livia seems often to have got the blame, however unreasonably. But Augustus appears to have respected and loved his wife and not to have listened to the rumours. Their marriage lasted over fifty years, but still she was accused of poisoning him (in a mysterious fig-painting incident) when he died at the ripe old age of seventy six.

Rock star mythologist’ and reformed stand-up Natalie Haynes is obsessed with the ancient world. Here she explores key stories from ancient Rome and Greece that still have resonance today. They might be biographical, topographical, mythological or epic, but they are always hilarious, magical and tragic, mystifying and revelatory. And they tell us more about ourselves now than seems possible of stories from a couple of thousand years ago.

Producer...Mary Ward-Lowery

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.
0:05.4	Ladies and gentlemen, today I am standing up for Libya.
0:28.4	Libya, Ducilla, the first Empress of Rome, was born in 59, maybe 58 BCE.
0:33.5	She is the daughter of a Roman senator named Marcus, Livius, Drusus Claudianus,
0:38.6	and a much less well-connected woman from a Roman town named Alphidia.
0:44.4	The imperial biographer Suetonius says that Caligula, Livia's great grandson,
0:48.5	I'm so bad at generations, the notoriously mad emperor, horse senator, you remember,
0:56.0	he considered Livia to be low-born because her grandfather, so her mother's father, was just a provincial magistrate. I mean, you know, he also thought horses were capable governors, so, you know,
1:01.0	you can take that as you want. Suetonius, I might add, also gets Alphidia's name wrong. He calls her
1:05.5	Alphidia, so you have to be a little bit careful with our ancient sources here. In the year 43 BCE, Livia marries a man named Tiberius Claudius Nero. That's not the Nero, he'll be emperor. He's a century later. Everyone has the same name all the time. I will be flagging them up here and there, but basically, everyone in this story is called either Agrippina or Drusus.
1:28.0	I can't help it, it's just how it is.
1:29.6	So, in 42 BCE, Livia gives birth to the future Emperor Tiberius, her first son.
1:37.7	She is, obviously, if you've done the maths, only 15 or 16 when she gets married.
1:42.7	Girls married really young in ancient Rome and often to much
1:46.3	older men. Although for Livia, that isn't quite the case because in the year 38 BCE or maybe just
1:54.7	before, she meets Octavian, who is only three or four years older than her.
2:04.7	Now, this is during the final years of the Roman Republic.
2:08.8	So Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BCE.
2:14.8	The Battle of Philippi was won by Octavian and Mark Anthony in 42 BCE.
2:16.7	They will soon turn on each other,
2:19.6	and Anthony and Cleopatra will be defeated by Octavian. You've probably seen a play about it or something.C.E. They will soon turn on each other and Anthony and Cleopatra will be defeated by Octavian.
2:25.9	You've probably seen a play about it or something. At the Battle of Actium, which is 31 BCE.
	...

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