Chapter V: LXII
I’d like to insert another row, a second row showing them in a big audience hall. But let’s keep the story moving.
I am a SLEEPY artist right now. I’ll review this in the morning and make sure I didn’t do anything silly, mistype dialogue, cease making sense, etc.
ETA: Added that row I wanted to add 🙂
I like this it shows how much Domitian loved his wife and how worried he was about being ordered to divorce her.
And here comes the dreaded encounter between Domitian and Felix.
I know, I know…he’s an eeeevil plotter who will soon become a tyrannical emperor. As a sympathetic character he’s…Senator Palapatine.
But I can’t help liking him for his care for Domitia Longina, and feeling a little blue because I know their son will die young and that she will still call herself “Domitia, wife of Domitian” twenty-five years after his dead name had been damned to oblivion by the Senate.
It’d be a whole lot easier if life was more like fiction…
Lots of people forget that “evil” people are still humans.
Take Hitler, he was a hardcore vegan and loved children and dogs. Things that without his hatred for the Jewish people would have probably branded him as a nice man. Yet, he was the perpetrator of the biggest organized murder in history. Others did the deed, he just gave the order.
“Biggest organized murder in history”? Not more than third biggest. Stalin and Mao both killed off larger numbers. And I think Pol Pot has the record for percentage of national population murdered, though it’s a percentage of a smaller total number.
But numbers are more evidence of social organization than of personal character. Caligula killed a bare handful of people compared to any of those twentieth century rulers, but he was a total monster nonetheless. Effective genocide was just a lot harder in his time.
Hi – a quick precautionary admin note for everyone: Almost all conversation and insight are welcome here, as is correcting historical facts, but let’s be sure not to wander off into the weeds of disputing numbers on the way-too-many genocidal events of the previous century. Thanks for understanding, everyone!
I have to say, what standing out to me more is the difference between Domitia’s and Julia’s presentation. Julia doesn’t have the high hair or jewels that I’m used to seeing on high ranking ladies at this point. She’s also heavily covered before she’s called up. Is this a married vs single thing?
Those tall, elaborate Flavian hairstyles were a sign of maturity as well as wealth. Young girls might keep their hair in a simple bun. Wholesome young women of marriageable age might stay covered and eschew jewelry to evoke a Vestal-like modesty, whereas women wearing fashionably elaborate hairdos could (and would want to) only cover up so much.
Several efforts were actually made over the years to create laws to regulate how much jewelry and fancy fabric a “decent” Roman woman could wear. Those those efforts never went over well or lasted long.
But Julia may also have intentionally been evoking an earlier imperial era by emulating the old-fashioned hairstyle of the Empress Livia from several generations back.
Don’t forget, too, that the whole Flavian “thing” was a deliberate appeal to Make Rome Decent Again after the wild excesses of the latter Julio-Claudians and the chaos of the three of the Four Emperors. So the reason that Julia might (or her family might) be invoking a more virginal image was to cement her family’s place as the “old-fashioned” first-among-equals that Vespasian and Titus tried to evoke…
A presumed statue of Julia Titi has some of the highest and most elaborate Flavian hairstyles in the artistic record. Don’t worry about her; she got that mop up plenty high when it suited her. goo.gl/nTSrm9
If we’re thinking of the same one, it’s the model for Iusta’s eventual Flavian updo (not quite so sky high, though):
(drawn way way back a long time ago…)
Here it comes! Enter Felix, stage left…
And he will, any moment now!
I’ve been a little tied up finally getting the last bits of the Kickstarter and the Patreon obligations tied up, plus the computer being grumpy. But we’ll be back in motion here soon!