Co-Geeking

Fulvia was a descendant of one of the leading families of the Roman republic and wife of Marcus Antonius, one of the men responsible for its end. Her family commanded both respect and enormous financial resources. While there was no formal role for women in Roman politics, aristocratic women were often important in connecting families and individuals. Fulvia went further than most Roman women, aiding her husbands’ ambitions not just with her family connections but with a canny knack for political theatre. She even raised and helped to lead her own army in the penultimate stage of the Roman civil wars.

The politics of the late republic were chaotic and sometimes violent. The violence of the times was a symptom of a deeper shift in the political and social landscape. Changes were under way in the Roman world that not everyone was astute enough to recognize or skillful enough to manage. Fulvia was among the most skillful players of this game, and although she ended up on the losing side, her history is a valuable window into what it took to survive the politics of the end of the republic.

From its earliest days, the Roman republic had survived by balancing the interests of two groups: the wealthy aristocracy and the ordinary people of Rome. The balance was not always easy to strike, and early Rome went through periods of tension, even violence, as these two groups hashed out a way of living together. Many things bound these groups together. The people fought in Rome’s armies, led by aristocrats; while generals got the glory that came with victories, the citizen-soldiers who fought for them expected to see their share of the profits of war. Elite families dominated the competition for political office, but they depended on the people to elect them, and could not afford to entirely ignore the peoples’ needs and opinions. Ties of patronage ran through all levels of Roman society, as the more privileged exchanged favors and protection for the services and support of those lower down the social ladder. For most of the history of the republic, the rich and the poor found ways of working together—sometimes with gritted teeth and held noses, but together nonetheless.

In the second century BCE, the compromises and concessions that had kept Rome functional began to break down. By this time, Rome had become a Mediterranean empire, but its politics were still organized for a city-state. The profits of conquest on such a grand scale made some of the rich so rich that they could now buy off voters, bribe juries, and force their way through political life without adhering to the traditional compromises. While the rich were getting richer, economic changes buffeted the poor, leaving many without the means of making a living.

Roman politicians of the late republic had divided into two camps, calling themselves the optimates and the populares. The optimates represented the interests of the elite. They tended to be conservative, even reactionary. The populares depended on the common people as their base of support. They pushed for reforms to better the lives of Rome’s poorer citizens at the same time as they rabble-roused in support of their own ambitions. Neither group was a political party as we would understand it, with a coordinated message or strategy, but individual politicians triangulated themselves between these two interest groups.

Optimates and populares alike were slow to realize that the political ground was shifting under their feet. By the end of the republic, there was a third constituency up for grabs whose support would be key to political success. In the last century of the republic, The Roman army had shifted away from the old model of a citizen militia into a professional force, which meant that the interests of soldiers were no longer the same as the interests of civilians. Rome’s soldiers and veterans were themselves slow to coalesce as a political force, but the middle of the first century BCE, astute politicians were starting to realize that Roman politics now had three major interest groups, not two: the aristocracy, the people, and the army. Success would come not to those who most ardently supported one, but who could most skillfully coordinate the support of at least two, if not all three.

Fulvia was one of the people who grasped this new reality. From her early days as a political actor, she was deep in the realm of the populares. Her first husband was Publius Clodius Pulcher, a scandal-prone popularis leader who was loved by the people as much for his outrageous provocations against aristocratic convention as for his reformist policies. Clodius also exerted power through his patronage of armed gangs on the streets of Rome. Fulvia and Clodius were inseparable, and she was as much a part of his public life as any of his male allies. When Clodius was killed in a clash with a rival’s gang, Fulvia had his bloody body publicly displayed, knowing the sight would rouse his supporters among the people. Under her leadership, Clodius’ followers smashed their way into the Senate house and turned it into Clodius’ funeral pyre.

After Clodius’ death, Fulvia retained the loyalty of his street gangs and was one of the few members of Clodius’ circle who remained in Rome amidst the optimatis backlash. She married again to Gaius Scribonius Curio, a former optimatis turned popularis. Unlike Clodius, Curio had some military experience under his belt. He and Fulvia allied with the rising general Julius Caesar, and Curio was tasked with recruiting soldiers for Caesar’s bid to take over the Roman state. Curio died while commanding part of Caesar’s army in Africa.

After Curio’s death, Fulvia married again, aligning herself even more closely with Caesar’s cause by taking his right-hand man Marcus Antonius as her new husband. Fulvia brought with her not only her family’s wealth and connections but also her ties to Clodius’ clients and supporters. After Caesar’s assassination, Antonius skillfully stage-managed his funeral as an opportunity to whip up the anger of the people against the assassins and their aristocratic supporters, and it is likely he was guided by Fulvia’s expertise at provoking and channeling popular outrage.

When Antonius and Caesar’s heir Octavian became the leaders of the two sides in a new round of civil war, Fulvia vigorously supported her husband, not just politically but militarily. Together with Antonius’ brother, she traveled around Italy raising troops for Antonius’ side and visiting towns where veterans had been settled to remind them of their loyalty to Antonius. While Antonius was away in the east, Fulvia’s army briefly held Rome against Octavian before being forced out, besieged at Perusia, and finally defeated. Fulvia was sent into exile, where she died of an unknown illness.

The literary sources are not kind to Fulvia, and they may exaggerate some elements of her life. She was on the losing side of the final stage of the Roman republic’s self-destructive civil wars, and like her husband Antonius, her memory was tarnished by Octavian’s supporters. A frequent theme in anti-Antonius propaganda was to portray him as effeminate, so making out his wife to have been overly masculine was a natural addition. Nevertheless, it seems clear that Fulvia was not shy of engaging with the man’s world of politics and war. She was a confident political operator, a popularis provocateur, a chief of street gangs, and a capable recruiter and leader of soldiers. She learned from the men in her life and shared the lessons she had gained from them.

What’s more, she grasped the fundamental shift in late republican politics: it was no longer enough to be with the aristocrats or with the people. Neither popularis nor optimatis could prosper if they did not get the support of the soldiers. It was a truth that the most successful politicians of the age, men like Caesar and Octavian, had realized, and a fact that laid the ground for the imperial age to come. If some of the civil war’s battles had turned out differently, we might look back to Fulvia as one of the founding figures of Rome’s first dynasty.

Image: Coin portrait of a woman, possibly intended to be Fulvia; photograph by Classical Numismatic Group via Wikimedia (Copenhagen; c. 41-40 BCE; copper alloy)

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