Julia ( 76 BC – August 54 BC) was the daughter of Julius Caesar and his first or second wife Cornelia, and his only child from his marriages.Tacitus, Annals, iii. 6. Julia became the fourth wife of Pompey the Great and was renowned for her beauty and virtue.

Life Julia may have been born around 76 BC.Guy Edward Farquhar Chilver, Robin J. Seager " Iulia (2)" The Oxford Classical Dictionary. Ed. Simon Hornblower and Anthony Spawforth. Oxford University Press 2009. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t111.e3368. Her mother died in 69 BCMatthias Gelzer, Caesar, Politician and Statesman, (translated by Peter Needham), Oxford, 1968; Thomas Robert Shannon Broughton, Magistrates of the Roman Republic, vol. 2, 132, New York, (1951–1986). Gelzer quotes Broughton to assert that Caesar was quaestor in 69. Gelzer then explains that Caesar, after taking on his place of duty, delivered an oration in praise of his aunt Julia. Shortly after this, his wife died too. after which she was raised by her paternal grandmother Aurelia Cotta. Her father engaged her to a Servilius Caepio. There has been a notion that it could have been Marcus Junius BrutusSempronius [I 15]. In: Der Neue Pauly. Vol. 11, col. 465. (Caesar's most famous assassin), who, after being adopted by his uncle, was known as Quintus Servilius Caepio Brutus for an unknown period; however, this is just conjecture. Caesar broke off this engagement and married her to Pompey in April 59 BC, with whom Caesar sought a strong political alliance in forming the First Triumvirate. This family-alliance of its two great chiefs was regarded as the firmest bond between Caesar and Pompey, and was accordingly viewed with much alarm by the optimates (the oligarchal party in Rome), especially by Marcus Tullius Cicero and Cato the Younger.Cicero, Letters to Atticus, ii. 17, viii. 3.Plutarch, Life of Caesar, 14; Pompey, 48; Cato the Younger, 31.Suetonius, Life of Julius Caesar, 50.

Pompey was supposedly infatuated with his bride. The personal charms of Julia were remarkable: she was a kind woman of beauty and virtue; and although policy prompted her union, and she was thirty years younger than her husband, she possessed in Pompey a devoted husband, to whom she was, in return, reportedly attached.Plutarch, Life of Pompey, 48. A rumor suggested that the middle aged conqueror was losing interest in politics in favor of domestic life with his young wife. In fact, Pompey had been given the governorship of Hispania Ulterior, but had been permitted to remain in Rome to oversee the Roman grain supply as curator annonae, exercising his command through subordinates.Plutarch, Life of Pompey, 53.

Plutarch reports that at the election of aediles in 55 BC, Pompey was surrounded by a tumultuous mob, and his robe was stained with the blood of some of the rioters. A slave carried the stained toga to his house and was seen by Julia. Imagining that her husband was slain, she fell into premature labor,Valerius Maximus, Memorable Deeds and Sayings, iv. 6. § 4. miscarrying thereafter. As a result of the miscarriage, her health was irreparably damaged.

Death Julia died before a breach between her husband and father had become inevitable.Velleius Paterculus, ii. 44, 47. In August of 54 BC, she died in childbirth,William Smith (ed.), A New Classical Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography, Mythology and Geography, 1851. and her infant—a son, according to some writers,Velleius Paterculus, ii. 47.Suetonius, Life of Julius Caesar, 26.Lucanus, v. 474, ix. 1049. a daughter, according to others,Dio Cassius, xxxix. 64.—did not survive and died along with Julia.

Caesar was in Britain, according to Seneca,Seneca, To Marcia, On consolation, xiv. 3. when he received the news of Julia's death.Cicero, Oration for Publius Quinctius, iii. 1; Letters to Atticus, iv. 17.

Pompey wished her ashes to repose in his favourite Alban villa, but the Roman people, who loved Julia, determined they should rest in the Field of Mars (Campus Martius). For permission a special decree of the Senate was necessary, and Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, one of the consuls of 54 BC, impelled by his hatred for Pompey and Caesar, procured an interdict from the tribunes. But the popular will prevailed, and, after listening to a funeral orationIn Latin: laudatio funebris. in the forum, the people placed her urn in the field of Mars.Dio Cassius, xxxix. 64; xlviii. 53. Ten years later the official pyre for Caesar's cremation would be erected near the tomb of his daughter,Suetonius, Life of Julius Caesar, 84.Livy, Ab Urbe condita preserved by a 4th century summary entitled Periochae, cxvi. 6. but the people intervened after the funeral oration by Mark Antony and cremated Caesar's body in the Forum.

After Julia's death, Pompey and Caesar's alliance began to fade, which resulted in Caesar's civil war. It was allegedly remarked, as a singular omen, that on the day Augustus entered Rome as Caesar's adoptive son (in May 44 BC), the monument of Julia was struck by lightning.Suetonius, Life of Augustus, 95; compare Life of Julius Caesar , 84. Caesar himself vowed a ceremony to her manes, which he exhibited in 46 BC as extensive funeral games including gladiatorial combats.Dio Cassius, xliii. 22. The date of the ceremony was chosen to coincide, on September 26, with the ludi Veneris Genetricis,John T. Ramsey, A. Lewis Licht, Comet of 44 B.C. and Caesar's Funeral Games, appendix III, Oxford University Press US, 1997. the festival in honor of Venus Genetrix, the divine ancestress of the Julians.Octavian followed this precedent in 44 BC by staging the ludi funebres for Caesar while simultaneously moving the Ludi Veneris Genetricis from September to July, after which time they were known as Ludi Victoriae Caesaris; see John T. Ramsey and A. Lewis Licht, The Comet of 44 B.C. and Caesar's Funeral Games (American Philological Association, 1997), p. 41 online.

Cultural depictions

In the Pharsalia by the Roman poet Lucan, the ghost of Julia appears to Pompey, blaming his remarriage to Cornelia Metella for the outbreak of civil war.Lucan Pharsalia 3.31–3 The Italian Renaissance poet Carlo Marsuppini wrote a eulogy about Piccarda Bueri, in which he compared her to Julia. He names her as an example of great marital devotion.

In Dante Alighieri's epic poem the Divine Comedy (14th century), Julia was encountered by Dante in the first circle of Hell, the Limbo (where souls rest who are not in torture, pagans that lived righteous existences):Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, Inferno Canto IV, 24, 45 and 128, translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867.

[...] The foremost circle that surrounds the abyss. [...] [...] I knew, who in that Limbo were suspended. [...] [...] Lucretia, Julia, Marcia, and Cornelia, [...]

References

Primary sources

Livy, Periochae. Tacitus, Annals. Appian, Civil Wars. Cicero Letters to Atticus. Oration for Publius Quinctius. Plutarch, Parallel Lives Life of Caesar. Life of Pompey. Life of Cato the Younger. Lucan, Pharsalia Suetonius, Life of Julius Caesar. Seneca, To Marcia, On consolation. Augustine of Hippo, The City of God. Valerius Maximus, Factorum et dictorum memorabilium libri iv.6.4

Secondary sources

This entry incorporates public domain text originally from: William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, 1870. William Smith (ed.), A New Classical Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography, Mythology and Geography, 1851. Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867.

Thomas Robert Shannon Broughton, Magistrates of the Roman Republic, vol. 2, 132, New York, (1951–1986). Matthias Gelzer, Caesar, Politician and Statesman, (translated by Peter Needham), Oxford, 1968.

John T. Ramsey, A. Lewis Licht, Comet of 44 B.C. and Caesar's Funeral Games, Oxford University Press US, 1997.