page_title: Livia
section_title: Life after Augustus, death, and aftermath
hierarchical_section_title: Livia / Life after Augustus, death, and aftermath
caption_attribution_description: English: A statue of Livia Drusilla. Español: Una estatua de Livia Drusila.
context_page_description: Livia Drusilla, also known as Julia Augusta after her formal adoption into the Julian family in AD 14, was the wife of the Roman emperor Augustus throughout his reign, as well as his adviser. She was the mother of the emperor Tiberius, paternal grandmother of the emperor Claudius, paternal great-grandmother of the emperor Caligula, and maternal great-great-grandmother of the emperor Nero. She was deified by Claudius who acknowledged her title of Augusta.
context_section_description: Augustus died on August 19, 14 AD, being deified by the Senate shortly afterwards. In his will, he left one third of his property to Livia, and the other two thirds to Tiberius. In the will, he also adopted her into the Julian family and granted her the honorific title of Augusta. These dispositions permitted Livia to maintain her status and power after her husband's death, under the new name of Julia Augusta. Tacitus and Cassius Dio wrote that rumours persisted that Augustus was poisoned by Livia, but these are mainly dismissed as malicious fabrications spread by political enemies of the dynasty. The most famous of these rumors was that Livia, unable to poison his food in the kitchens because Augustus insisted on only eating figs picked fresh from his garden, smeared each fruit with poison while still on the tree to pre-empt him. In Imperial times, a variety of fig cultivated in Roman gardens was called the Liviana, perhaps because of her reputed horticultural abilities, or as a tongue-in-cheek reference to this rumor.
  For some time, Livia and her son Tiberius, the new Emperor, appeared to get along with each other. Speaking against her became treason in AD 20, and in AD 24 he granted his mother a theater seat among the Vestal Virgins. Livia exercised unofficial but very real power in Rome. Eventually, Tiberius became resentful of his mother's political status, particularly against the idea that it was she who had given him the throne. At the beginning of his reign Tiberius vetoed the unprecedented title Mater Patriae ("Mother of the Fatherland") that the Senate wished to bestow upon her, in the same manner in which Augustus had been named Pater Patriae ("Father of the Fatherland") (Tiberius also consistently refused the title of Pater Patriae for himself).
  The historians Tacitus and Cassius Dio depict an overweening, even domineering dowager, ready to interfere in Tiberius’ decisions, the most notable instances being the case of Urgulania (grandmother of Claudius's first wife Plautia Urgulanilla), a woman who correctly assumed that her friendship with the empress placed her above the law, and Munatia Plancina, suspected of murdering Germanicus and saved at Livia's entreaty (Plancina committed suicide in AD 33 after being accused again of murder after Livia's death). A notice from AD 22 records that Julia Augusta (Livia) dedicated a statue to Augustus in the center of Rome, placing her own name even before that of Tiberius.
  Ancient historians give as a reason for Tiberius' retirement to Capri his inability to endure his mother any longer. Until AD 22 there had, according to Tacitus, been "a genuine harmony between mother and son, or a hatred well concealed;" Dio tells us that at the time of his accession already Tiberius heartily loathed her. In AD 22 she had fallen ill, and Tiberius had hastened back to Rome in order to be with her. But in AD 29 when she finally fell ill and died, he remained on Capri, pleading pressure of work and sending Caligula to deliver the funeral oration. Suetonius adds the macabre detail that "when she died... after a delay of several days, during which he held out hope of his coming, [she was at last] buried because the condition of the corpse made it necessary...". Divine honors he also vetoed, stating that this was in accord with her own instructions. Later he vetoed all the honors the Senate had granted her after her death and cancelled the fulfillment of her will.
  It was not until 13 years later, in AD 42 during the reign of her grandson Claudius, that all her honors were restored and her deification finally completed. She was named  Diva Augusta (The Divine Augusta), and an elephant-drawn chariot conveyed her image to all public games. A statue of her was set up in the Temple of Augustus along with her husband's, races were held in her honor, and women were to invoke her name in their sacred oaths. In AD 410, during the Sack of Rome, her ashes were scattered when Augustus' tomb was sacked.
  Her Villa ad Gallinas Albas north of Rome is currently being excavated; its famous frescoes of imag
caption: Livia Drusilla statue, from Paestum
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