Please note that most of this comes from A Rome of One’s Own.
Who the hell is Clodia Pulcher, you might be asking yourself. She is not a commonplace name. And I don’t know how much backstory to give you. In part, because I don’t know how to gauge what you know, dear reader. Forgive me if I go too far.
Clodia was born in 95 or 94 BCE, in Rome. She was born to the Claudians, one of the pre-eminent families of the Roman Republic. In today’s world, it would be like if she were a Kennedy or a Bush. It was a family dynasty. Her particular branch of the family was trying to appeal to the common man, so they changed the spelling of their name from Claudian to Clodian, a more plebeian (literally, plebeians were what the non-patricians were called in Ancient Rome) spelling of the name.
Pulcher is latin for beautiful. So she is Clodia the Beautiful.
This is a super-turbulent time in Roman politics. It’s not quite the Roman Empire yet, but it’s coming. Cicero is there, as are Pompey the Great and Julius Caesar. All three are fighting for power, in their ways. Cicero wants the Senate to keep ruling; Julius Caesar knows everything would be better if he were in charge; and Pompey just likes being a leader. This time period is the end of a period of growth for the Romans. They have fought many battles, expanded their territory, and grown from a little city to basically ruling over almost the entire Mediterranean area. But their political structures haven’t evolved as quickly. They needed more administrative capacity and better decision making capabilities. The powerful men who wanted to be kings were vying to take the power vacuum that was there. The senate was trying to fight back, but “we need to just keep the status quo” wasn’t a compelling argument to anyone. The status quo was inadequate.
Clodia is another case where the record is highly unreliable. Historians don’t even know if she is one person or two, not really. She only shows up in small bits. Here are these bits.
I first encountered Clodia as a character in Steven Saylor’s Roma Sub Rosa series. She is intelligent, mature, politically savvy, and enjoys sex, much like the men in that series.
The first time she’s in the actual historical record, Cicero is asking her help in managing a political situation – could she get someone to back off?
The next time she appears it’s again from Cicero. But this time he’s had a falling out with Clodio Pulcher, her brother. Cicero starts the incest jokes at this point. I should note that anytime there is a powerful woman doing things someone doesn’t like? Her enemies are probably saying “but she’s sleeping with her brother!” I don’t actually take this seriously.
She continues to move amongst the senatorial class, trying to further both her own and her family’s interests. Cicero also continues to ask favors of her, despite their public animosity.
But then.
Clodio and Cicero have a no-holds-barred, can’t come back from it disagreement. Cicero is banished from Rome for a year and Clodio’s men burn his house down.
In another incident, Clodia accuses a man named Rufus of attempting to poison her. Clodia and Rufus had been having an affair; it ended badly. There are various rumors about what happened. Regardless, Clodia accuses Rufus of trying to poison her, Rufus gets Cicero to defend him, Cicero paints Clodia as a literal prostitute who seduces young men, uses them up, and then casts them aside.
Cicero wins this case.
The other place she shows up is in Catullus’ poetry. The general consensus is that she is Lesbia in his poems. If the poems are accurate, the two had a tumultuous affair: his feelings are all over the place. He loves her, he hates her. She’s sexually voracious, having several ongoing love affairs with several men (please note that Catullus is also having several affairs at the same time). The men she is sleeping with adore her and are her social and intellectual equals.
The record is so thin, but I find her so compelling. To me, she is a woman who knows what she wants and goes after it. When she pisses off Cicero, she loses her reputation, but if she is also Lesbia, then it’s unclear to me how much that matters. Like, Cicero is just one guy. A powerful, influential guy, but just one person. There are so many others.
In a recent interview with Douglas Boin, on Ancient History Fangirl, he revealed that his next book will be about Clodia. I can’t wait.