Fulvia: The Woman Who Broke All the Rules in Ancient Rome

In this evocative account, historian Draycott (Cleopatra’s Daughter) revisits the story of Fulvia, the wife abandoned by Marc Antony in his pursuit of Cleopatra. Fulvia was born in 80 BCE to an upwardly mobile mother who married a wealthy but stuttering senator just long enough to have her. Fulvia’s inheritance allowed her to marry Clodius, a handsome patrician in need of a fortune to fund his political ambitions. The pair “enjoyed each other’s company immensely” (Clodius flouted decorum by allowing his wife to accompany him in public), but tragedy struck when Clodius was killed by a fellow senator during a battle. That harrowing moment led to Fulvia’s political ascendance; rejecting the womanly virtue of “pudicitia,” or restraint, she instead incited a mob to arrest her husband’s killer. Fulvia remarried and lost to battle another wealthy husband before marrying Marc Antony, a union that eventually made her the most powerful woman in Rome—it was she who demanded the head of Cicero, as he had backed her first husband’s murderer. When Marc Antony left her, however, her power drained away; she died “alone” and “unattended” in 40 BCE. Draycott uses the dramatic saga to explore how marriage organized political power and how even politically savvy women were sidelined without the cover of marriage. It makes for a fresh, insightful, and at times spellbindingly romantic chronicle of ancient Rome’s power players. (July)