Life
Named after her late aunt and her father's favorite sister, Julia Drusilla, Julia was born not long after Caligula married Caesonia (some sources have her being born on the same day as the marriage). The date of her parents' marriage has not been determined for sure, but it is known that it was sometime in the summer of AD 39. When Drusilla, as the child was called, was born, Caligula took her to a temple that housed statues of goddesses and placed her on the lap of Minerva, instructing the goddess to nurse and train his new daughter. The reason of Caligula's hasted marriage with the neither young nor beautiful Milonia Caesonia was the purported illegitimacy of his daughter: should Caligula marry his daughter's mother, the child would become his heir.
The order of events suggests that he did not want to marry until a child of his had already been born, a child who would be the purpose of the union. Soon after her birth, Caligula set up donation boxes around Rome marked "Julia's Drink" or "Julia's Food". According to the ancient historian Suetonius, Caligula believed that Minerva would supervise his daughter's growth and education. Suetonius further claims that " considered as his own child for no better reason than her savage temper, which was such even in her infancy, that she would attack with her nails the face and eyes of the children at play with her."
Read more about this topic: Julia Drusilla (daughter Of Caligula)
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“Undershaft: Alcohol is a very necessary article. It heals the sick—Barbara: It does nothing of the sort. Undershaft: Well, it assists the doctor: that is perhaps a less questionable way of putting it. It makes life bearable to millions of people who could not endure their existence if they were quite sober. It enables Parliament to do things at eleven at night that no sane person would do at eleven in the morning.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“To finish the moment, to find the journey’s end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom. It is not the part of men, but of fanatics, or of mathematicians, if you will, to say, that, the shortness of life considered, it is not worth caring whether for so short a duration we were sprawling in want, or sitting high. Since our office is with moments, let us husband them.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I think that any woman who sets goals for herself and takes her own life seriously and moves to achieve the goals that she wants as a person in her own right is a feminist.”
—Frances Kuehn (b. 1943)