Meet Tanaquil

     My affair with Julia was followed in rapid succession with new women.  The second was Tanaquil. In my wildest imagination I see them as friends, not only with me but with each other. Julia, whose indomitable spirit captured the hearts of her young contemporaries in the first century AD, would have enthralled Tanaquil, who lived six centuries earlier in Tarquinia, not yet a part of Rome. Likewise Tanaquil would have spurred Julia on in her defiant moves.
      Just who is Tanaquil? An aristocratic teenager, ripe for marriage, horrifies her family with her desire to marry the son of a Greek merchant.  Neither the merchant's enormous wealth nor his marriage to Clestia, a Tarquinian aristocrat could soften the fact that he was an alien. From Tanaquil's story.
     She has just asked her mother if she can see the merchant's son.                         

            "Have you taken leave of your senses, child?  Have you quite forgotten who you are?  Do you not consider whose daughter you are?   Are you intent on making us the laughing stock of the city?  Do you imagine for an instant that your father and I will countenance your keeping company with this -- with this alien?"

            "But  mother,  he is not really an alien.  His mother is Clestia."  Tanaquil had learned all she could about Lucumo's aristocratic mother. "Clestia is ever so aristocratic. Everybody knows that.  Even Tarlia's mother-- and you know what a horrid snob she is-- even she says Clestia is heads above any of us."

            "Was heads above us.  Before.... Did Tarlia's mother say anything about what has happened since Clestia married Demaratus?  She's not now quite aristocratic enough I should think.  What are you thinking, child?"  Urnilla looked up to the ceiling.  Then she closed her eyes, sighed deeply and said, not particularly to her daughter, "What is the world coming to?"

            Tanaquil lowered her head and began to sob.  But Urnilla was not fooled by the faked tears nor was she to be deterred.  "Good gods, child, he's a foreigner-- an alien.  You cannot -- you must not think like this. It cannot be  What will people think? It cannot be." 
            "Oh Mother.  It's not right." She tried to force tears but they would not come.  She scowled and added, "I shall die. I shall surely die."

            Urnilla smiled.  "At fifteen I assure you will not die for lack of a young man."     

Who is Julia?

      They say a picture is worth pages of description. True if pictures are available. Two thousand years ago cameras were as remote from man's imagination as 'beam me up, Scotty' is today. So how do we know what Julia looked like? Pages of description and numerous statues?

     Verbal descriptions tell us Julia had jet black hair with a white streak over her left eye.  Her skin was fair, her body slender and well proportioned. All these portrayals do not give us what one Paparazzo photograph gives. But do the specifics of looks matter? Brown eyes or blue eyes? Brunette hair or blonde hair?  Or is mental acuity more important?
     If we say yes, then it is Julia's fiery and ambitious nature, her intelligence and passion for her studies that matter. That is what put her in the forefront of a new post war generation, determined to free itself from tradition.
     It was this side of Julia that captured my imagination. As did three other remarkable women, Tanaquil and Tullia, queens of early Rome, and Cartimandua,  the Celtic Queen who was an ally of  Rome.

Each account is available as a PDF file at Ionicbooks.com.

Julia begins her life as a pawn

After years of civil war, Augustus became the first emperor of Rome.  His only child was Julia, not what he needed for an heir

When Julia was 15 he married her to his nephew Marcellus, not unwelcomed by Julia.  But his plan for grandchildren she did find unwelcome.

A scene from a father-daughter encounter on Julia's 16th birthday follows:

Augustus found his daughter in the garden, dancing with abandon around the statue of Apollo.  He approached her:
"My princess looks happy on the occasion of her sixteenth birthday" he said

"You remembered. OhTata, I knew you would. Marcellus is so big headed now that he's an aedile, he forgets I am alive. But you brought me a present.  What is it? Come on Tata. I know it's behind you.  Give it to me."

"Julia, you're incorrigibile, and yes I have a present"    He handed her the seal skin amulet on a long leather throng.  It was without question the ugliest thing she had ever seen, a wrinkled brown leather disk the size of an egg, suspended on the ugly thong. Julia's first thought was it belonged on the neck of a dog.

She stared at it.  "It's horrid.  What is it?"

"My pet, it will ward off all evil and assure you great luck.  It has served me on many occasions, and I am told that soon after you put it on you will become pregnant."

:But Tata, it's so ugly, and besides I don't want to be pregnant.  Pregnant women are so fat an ugly."

How I Got Here

     When as a student of Roman history I was assigned to read I CLAUDIUS  and CALUDIUS THE GOD, my feminist bias rejected the emphasis on emperors and generals.  Rather it came to rest on the women, who sometimes behind the scenes, sometimes openly pricked the neat 'pseudo-republican' claims of the disgenenous rulers.  They say  'behind every successful man is a woman who makes his success possible'. The opposite, logically, is that behind every successful man is a woman who if not controlled threatens his success. This most certainly applies to Augustus, the first Emperor of Rome. His wife of decades for whatever her reasons was a bulwark of his politics, a champion of his desires (perverted or not) and a protector of his image.  Daughter Julia unwilling to be sacrificed on the altar of her father's political ambitions, positioned herself a a personal and political danger.
     Over and over I imagined myself as Julia, with her personal abandon, her political ambition, her rejection of her sacrifice for some man's, albeit her father's,  success.  Julia emerged in my consciousness as a friend, a sister, a woman whose story I would share, a woman whose story I had to share.

Launch Daze

In the coming days I intend to introduce the characters of my novels and hope they will capture your interest.