Dear Classical Wisdom Member,
History has a way of rewarding the loud, the victorious, and….the scandalous. Yet the past is equally skilled at silencing those whose voices might trouble its preferred narratives.
Julia the Younger, granddaughter of the first emperor of Rome, was one such voice. Born into the glittering, marble-clad heart of imperial power, she might have seemed destined for influence, security, and the luxury of a life lived in the very eye of history. Instead, hers is a tragic tale…
But why does her story matter now, two millennia later? Looking at her life, we are forced to contemplate: Who controls someone’s reputation? What happens when laws are written not for justice, but for power? And how far will authority go to protect its own image?
Stripped of her home, her child, and her place in the family mausoleum, Julia was erased not only from the capital’s physical spaces but from its collective memory. The ancient historians, when they mentioned her at all, folded her life into the scandal of her mother, Julia the Elder, as though their individuality did not merit distinction. Two “loose women,” one cautionary tale.
In rescuing Julia the Younger from historical obscurity, we confront not only the harsh realities of life under Rome’s first emperor… but also the enduring tendency of power to rewrite, distort, or bury the lives it finds inconvenient.
So let us unearth Julia’s life from the footnotes of history. Let us look past the judgments of Tacitus and Suetonius, past the imperial propaganda, to find the human being beneath the scandal…
All the best,
Anya Leonard
Founder and Director
Classical Wisdom
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The Forgotten Exile: Julia the Younger
By Mary Naples
Born into a life of privilege, Julia's world was sent into a tailspin when Augustus executed her husband, accusing him of conspiring to overthrow his rule. Without the protection and political backing of a husband, Julia was vulnerable; elite women in Ancient Rome were expected to rely on a male guardian or husband to protect their interests and reputations. Her status as a widow subjected her to social, legal, and political scrutiny, rendering her an easy target for scandal.
Moreover, the severe Lex Iulia de adulteriis statutes allowed no exceptions for widows; extramarital affairs were deemed crimes against public morality.
As if to uphold the law’s ignoble expectations, Julia’s unchastity was laid bare when Augustus discovered that the young princess had become pregnant—long after her husband had died. As punishment he permanently exiled her to the remote island of Tremirus (today’s Tremiti Islands) with limited access to the outside world, ordered the destruction of her lavish villa—on the pretext that it was too ostentatious—and decreed that she was not to be buried in the family mausoleum.
But even these harsh penalties were insufficient to quell the emperor’s wrath. In his cruelest act, Augustus commanded that her newborn infant be exposed, leaving it to perish in the harsh, wind-swept terrain of the barren island, which Julia would call her home for the next twenty years, or until the end of her life…
Who was this enemy combatant whose family Augustus was bent on destroying?
Más info en https://ift.tt/UGfLr6j / Tfno. & WA 607725547 Centro MENADEL (Frasco Martín) Psicología Clínica y Tradicional en Mijas. #Menadel #Psicología #Clínica #Tradicional #MijasPueblo
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