anakinskydala:

ok strap in everyone, i’m gonna tell you the story of julia daughter of augustus and iullus antonius son of mark antony, a story that is deliciously scandalous and CRIMINALLY little-known

so yeah, you know mark antony? famously had a scandalous and disastrous affair with cleopatra which led to his death by suicide? a lesser-known fact is that his son ALSO had a scandalous and disastrous affair which led to his death by suicide. i’m pretty sure the antonius family motto was “thots gonna thot”

anwyay, so we’ve got augustus and antony. bitter rivals. had a whole civil war against each other (until antony was defeated and committed suicide). that was in the 30s BCE and we are now in the 10s BCE. so antony’s been dead for 20 years but you’d better believe augustus is still holding onto that grudge. already we’ve got a good romeo and juliet setup for julia and iullus, but wait! there’s more.

in this day and age, augustus is very into building a Family Dynasty, but he only has one biological child, his daughter julia. so what does he do? he marries her off to his nephew marcellus. marcellus dies, so augustus marries her off to his BFF and right-hand man agrippa. agrippa dies, so augustus marries her off to his stepson tiberius. at this point you can imagine julia is probably pretty tired of being married off. she seems to have gotten along well enough with marcellus and agrippa, but she and tiberius did NOT like each other and REALLY did not want to get married, but augustus forced them to.

meanwhile, augustus has recently passed a series of laws making adultery a criminal offense (rather than just a private matter) for the first time ever in the roman world. so what is julia to do? how about, rebel against the marriage her father forced her into and the adultery laws he passed by having an affair with the son of his greatest rival. like. she didn’t have to go that hard, but she did. she is my hero.

but of course, the affair gets exposed…..and things get ugly. julia has basically made a complete fool of augustus and he is PISSED AS ALL HELL so he exiles her to some random island for the rest of her life. now, julia supposedly had several lovers including iullus. all these other lovers get exiled as well, but poor iullus? he gets sentenced to execution. supposedly iullus was conspiring against augustus and committing treason, or at least augustus believed that he was, or at least augustus pretended to believe that he was so he’d have an excuse to execute him. was iullus actually Conspiring, or was he just a dumbass thot who wanted to get some? alas, we may never know.

anyway, iullus commits suicide rather than letting augustus execute him. just like his dad, mark antony. poetic much? meanwhile julia lives in exile for many years and dies shortly after augustus dies, possibly because tiberius, the new emperor and her ex-husband who is still mad that she cheated on him 15 years ago, cuts off her food supply and starves her to death. and there you have it folks. where’s the oscar-winning period drama of these events that we deserve??