L'interventismo familiare di Antonia Minore: il caso della morte di Germanico e Livilla

Abstract

This paper aimed to examine the positions adopted by Antonia Minor and dictated by political reasons on the occasion of the death of her oldest son, Germanicus and her only daughter, Livilla. The presence of Antonia during her son's public funeral and posthumous honours is attested by the epigraphic evidences of the Tabula Siarensis and the SC de Cn. Pisone Patre, although Tacitus records her absence (Ann., III 1-3). Allegedly, the daughter Livilla helped her lover Sejanus in poisoning her husband Drusus the Younger and, according to Cassius Dio (LVIII 11, 7), Tiberius handed Livilla over to her mother, who starved her to death: in this act, Antonia Minor seems to exercise a right of the paterfamilias, the power of life and death over his children. Her authority perhaps derives from her status of univira, a woman who had only one husband throughout her life, and from her blood ties with Augustus and her kinship with Tiberius. Hence Antonia Minor is portrayed as consistently loyal to the dynasty.