I modelli della maternità delle Augustae in età giulio-claudia

In this paper some women belonging to the Julio-Claudian domus are examined: Livia, Julia, Agrippina the Elder, Claudia Livia Julia, Valeria Messalina and Agrippina the Jounger. Their real life and history are difficult to reconstruct, as their role was evidently manipulated by historiographic sources especially to denigrate the emperors in power, but it is clear that their role was to become mothers, ie generate a legitimate successor to the emperor. There is no doubt that the idea of fertility and, therefore, of dynastic continuity is already associated, from Augustus, with the "First Lady" of the imperial house, a fact that gave the women who belonged to the domus Augusta a function of legitimisation of the male imperial power. It is therefore inevitable that their story is told always and in any case in relation to events in which men are the leader.