Rape of the Sabine Women

The life of Cleopatra Selene is a story so unlikely that magic sometimes seems like the only explanation.

But that isn’t why I chose to include magical realism in my book. I included my heroine’s ability to commune with her goddess through bloody hieroglyphs and some dominion over the wind, because I wanted my novels to be allegorical. I wanted to say something about the faith that sustained this young woman through her parents’ suicides and the murder of her siblings. I also wanted to tap into a more authentic portrayal of the ancients, for whom magic was a real, every day phenomenon.

I had similar reasons for including a rape scene in Song of the Nile.

I could say that I did it for historical authenticity, as if there were no choice on my part and I was merely tyrannized by the facts, but that would be disingenuous. Some have argued that editorial choices need not be dictated by history and I mostly agree with that statement. For example, it’s rare to encounter an unappealing hero or heroine even though it’s historically authentic to portray our characters as having bad teeth, bad breath, and horrible hygiene. (Okay, maybe not the latter in the case of the Romans, but you get the point.)

In short, even though history does constrain and dictate, authors still make choices about what to include so as to cater to an audience’s desires. But I would also argue that in a book where historical hygiene is an important metaphor, or illustrative of some greater point, it would be criminal to leave it out. It just so happens that not much in the artistic world hinges upon whether or not a character has bad breath.

By contrast, the constant threat of sexual violence under which historical women lived–almost entirely without recourse–is not only relevant to understanding their world, but also to understanding our own.

Rape is as omnipresent today as it was in ancient times–it’s just that only recently has it become recognized or rediscovered as a crime against women. In Selene’s time, such an offense would be viewed largely through a prism of how a rape might taint the honor of her father or husband. That’s an important shift in the progress of women’s equality and our recognition as full human beings. I believe, and have always believed, that it’s important to juxtapose our current reality with where we came from.

The Romans had a complicated history with rape. On the one hand, their origin story revolves around the famous “Rape of the Sabine Women” which consisted of a bunch of kidnappings, forced marriages and rapes in the more modern sense of the word. They were quite proud of this and re-enacted it during their wedding ceremonies. (Something I found appalling and wanted to address in my novel.) On the other hand, one of the great Roman heroines was Lucretia, who told her husband about her rape–and was believed. (Of course, then she killed herself, as the Romans believed a ‘shamed’ heroine must.)

Unfortunately, the Roman ideal of how women should respond to violation has woven itself into the very fabric of modern society. And insofar as fiction is meant to educate and enlighten, these are not trivial reasons for including a rape scene.

They certainly figured into my decision.

But art isn’t only about education and enlightenment. It’s meant to explore, to communicate, to spur the imagination and to provoke. So beyond the sociological reasons, I also had artistic ones.

Selene was the daughter of the most infamous seductress in the history of western civilization. Cleopatra was a strong and capable woman who came to be known, thanks to her enemy, almost entirely for her sexuality. This same enemy–a man who defined the respectable standards of female behavior not just in his time, but also well into our own–raised Cleopatra’s daughter in his own household until she was marriageable.

This made it imperative upon me, as an artistic endeavor, to explore his character and hers in the world I created, a combination of myth and history.

What kind of man was he, this Augustus, who was said to debauch virgins that his wife procured for him? A man who seems to have been obsessed with Cleopatra, long after she was dead. How would a man like Augustus, who was incapable of using might on a battlefield except through his friend Agrippa, have wielded power over the women in his household? (This is a man who banished his own daughter to a tiny island. She eventually starved to death.)

I wanted to know his dark soul.

I also wanted to know Selene’s soul. Her coping mechanisms. Her resilience. I wanted to imagine how she navigated the treacherous waters of imperial Rome. Why she always appears so modest in her statues, veiled and covered up. Why she was never known for any scandal during her long marriage to King Juba II. And I wanted to explore her story against that of the goddess with whom she would be linked–Kore.

You may have heard of Persephone or Proserpina but in Selene’s time, the goddess of spring who was raped by the god of the underworld was called Kore. Her story is immortal. Collecting flowers with her maidens in a field, she is taken by the dark lord of Hades. Her mother, in her grief, turns the whole world fallow. It is her mother–not her father–who fights to free Kore. Hearing that he must release the girl, the god of the underworld tricks Kore into eating the pomegranate seeds to ensure she is never entirely free of him.

Selene’s life seemed very much like that to me, so I exploited her biography and the myth in equal measure to make both come alive. That’s why I wrote a rape scene into my novel and why I’d do it again, but I don’t expect everyone to love that choice.

On the surface, they don’t seem to have much in common. Where Selene is serious and careful, Julia is witty and reckless. Where Selene is thought of as a royal captive, the daughter of an Egyptian whore, Julia is known as the revered daughter of the emperor, a veritable Roman princess whose children will one day rule Rome. And yet, the two have more in common than most people know.

Selene’s mother is dead and Julia’s mother might as well be, since her father banished her mother from her life. Both girls live at the mercy of the emperor who sees them both as useful pawns in his dynastic schemes–trophies to reward the loyalty of his generals and cronies. While both girls are whip-smart and have an aptitude for politics, Augustus values only their wombs. He controls their sexuality, dictates their love lives, and tries to smother their spirits.

So how much of this is true to history? Almost all of it.

The historical Julia was taken away from her mother at birth and raised by Augustus and his wife Livia. It’s said that she lived a dreary childhood of spinning wool and weaving cloth, but once she reached her teen years, she was married off to her first cousin Marcellus, the heir apparent. Whilst Marcellus was alive, the handsome teens seemed like a romantic pairing, so when Marcellus died young of some mysterious ailment, leaving Julia a young widow, she won the people’s sympathy.

Pretty, witty, educated and fashionable, the emperor’s daughter was popular with the people.  Perhaps some of them pitied her when she was next married off to her father’s general, Agrippa, a man who was much older and had already been married twice before. Though Julia was one of the most educated women in the Roman empire, her mission was to provide sons who could be adopted by the emperor to take over after he died.

In terms of breeding, Julia seems to have taken the duty seriously and performed with grace. She gave birth to three sons and two daughters, thus ensuring that the Julio-Claudian dynasty would survive. Though she gave her body to the husband her father chose for her, it seems clear that she considered her heart to be her own to give as she pleased. It’s said that she kept a lover and when someone asked how her children all looked so much like Agrippa, she intimated that she waited to be pregnant before engaging in adultery, saying, “I never take on new passengers unless the cargo is already full.”

Julia’s story has a dramatic ending–one that I won’t reveal here lest I give spoilers that might ruin the enjoyment of my readers. Let it suffice to say, she’s one of the most interesting “bad girls” of the ancient world, and that’s probably why I love her!

Played to perfection by Sian Phillips in the mini-series of Robert Graves’ famous I, Claudius, Livia emerges as a delicious villainess. She makes Cruella de Vil look rather civilized for merely wanting to turn spotted puppies into fur coats.

Personally, I find the lure of such extravagant evil too hard to resist.

When writing about my heroine, the orphaned daughter of Cleopatra, who was taken as a prisoner of war at the age of nine and marched through the streets in chains, there were plenty of villains for me to choose from. But my novels aren’t about the the tragedies this real life princess lived through; my novels are ultimately about Cleopatra Selene’s triumphs. Consequently, I needed an antagonist who could show the darker sides of my heroine’s ambitions.

Livia fit the bill.

It’s true that in my novels, Cleopatra Selene plays a dangerous and twisted game with the ruthless Emperor Augustus, who was obsessed with her mother and is now obsessed with her. But I wanted to show the other side of the coin–a woman who was nothing whatsoever like Cleopatra of Egypt, but almost as powerful.

That’s where Livia came in.

Unlike the seductive Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile, Livia was known for chaste and modest public behavior. (At least, after she married Augustus.) She always dressed in voluminous garments that practically covered her from neck to ankle, and of course, her husband would brag that she spun the wool and wove the cloth to make those baggy clothes as well. She was a veritable goddess of domesticity, our Livia. And one who supposedly eschewed expensive jewelry, claiming that her children were the only jewels she needed.

In spite of all this puritanical posturing, Livia was, nonetheless, associated with sexual scandal. According to Suetonius, she was rumored to procure young virgin girls for her husband’s bed. That made me wonder if such girls came from within the emperor’s own household and included vulnerable orphans like Cleopatra Selene.

Livia was also rumored to be a poisoner. She’s known to have concocted tonics and elixirs that she said accounted for her extraordinarily good health and long life, but if you were supping at the imperial palace, you might be better off not drinking the wine. At various points, she’s been accused of murdering Marcellus, Drusus, Germanicus, Posthumous and even Augustus himself.

In my novel, she offers Cleopatra Selene a poisoned cup.

But was Livia really such a she-devil?

Her biographer, Anthony Barrett, paints a picture of a much maligned mother of the empire. She had a documented record of altruism against which her detractors could only conjure up rumor and innuendo. She went to the emperor on behalf of the citizens of the Isle of Samos to return them to independence. She is known to have intervened on behalf of one woman accused of witchcraft; she also saved the life of a man who accidentally appeared naked before her, saying that to chaste women such men were like looking at statues. Known to advise her husband on political matters, Livia enjoyed a marriage with him of more than fifty years. Especially tricky, considering that she never gave him a child and he rather desperately needed an heir.

I can’t point to a single documented event in which Livia did an evil deed. Her worst crime, it seems, was to have lived for so long, and exerted such power over the empire as the wife or ancestress of every Julio-Claudian emperor.

For the misogynistic Romans, the only way to explain her political success was to make her a monster.

In the end, Livia was deified and worshipped as a goddess, so maybe she’ll have the last laugh. Certainly, the one regret about my own novels is that I so enjoyed exploiting her bad reputation.

Expect lots of wickedness and depravity in Song of the Nile, but in the third and final book of the trilogy, I hope to redeem myself by giving Livia a little bit of empathy. So, what about you? Are there women in history that you love to hate?