History of the West

Central European History from Antiquity to the 20th Century

Drusilla and Caligula

The court of Caligula by Virgillo Mattoni de la Fuente, 1842-1923 ( Note: This work is also known as The Baths of Caracalla)

The historical Julia Drusilla was born on September 16, AD 16, in Abitarvium (today Koblenz, Germany) as a scion of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, the second daughter and fifth child of Germanicus and Agrippina the Elder to survive infancy, and died at the age of 21 on June 10, AD 38. She had two sisters, Julia Livilla and the Empress Agrippina the Younger, and three brothers, Emperor Caligula, Nero Julius Caesar, and Drusus. She was a great-granddaughter of Emperor Augustus, grand-niece of Emperor Tiberius, niece of Emperor Claudius, and aunt of Emperor Nero. (See Wiki)

YouTube Video

As we have found with many of the family, her reputation is seriously smeared by the negative picture many contemporary historians have painted of the whole clan. What seems clear is that she was her brother Caligula’s favourite, and the scandalous tongues, of which there were many in Rome, credited her with having an incestuous relationship with her emperor brother – who apparently had more than brotherly feelings for all his sisters, whom he awarded the privileges of Vestal Virgins and had coins issued in their likenesses.

Statue of Iulia Drusilla at the Museo Gregoriano
Bust of Drusilla

Whether this is true or not, we cannot say. It is possible that Caligula, who was, as we know, of a somewhat disturbed mind, attempted to emulate the pattern of his Roman lineage after the Hellenistic monarchs of the Ptolemaic dynasty where marriages between jointly ruling brothers and sisters had become generally accepted. His contempt for the Roman elite may have played a part in such a scheme. Since what happened in the royal bedchamber was not a matter of public knowledge, some observers registered that the emperor reserved the female position of honour at the imperial dinners always for Drusilla, not her sisters or his wives, which they took as a sure sign of his despotism.

She died of the one or other epidemic that frequently plagued Rome in these times. Her brother, who reportedly never left her sickbed, posthumously made her an Augusta and had the Senate enact a decree declaring her a Goddess, as Diva Drusilla, on a par with Venus (Aphrodite).

To our eyes, she lives on in the movies – as on the TV series I, Claudius, wherein she is played by Beth Morris, and, more, er …, revealingly, by Teresa Ann Savoy in the famous and notorious movie Caligula ( Link to Movie – for documentation only, please).

As can be seen on the early poster above, Maria Schneider – of Last Tango in Paris fame – was originally cast as Drusilla.

About this scandalous movie, there is a most extensive website, that delves deeply in the myths and legal troubles of the film at caligula.org, which informs in-depth and has never-before-published information and pictures galore.

Pics from caligula.org

  1. Teresa Ann Savoy, Anneka Di Lorenzo, Lori Wagner
  2. Valerie Ray Clark
  3. Anneka di Lorenzo and Lori Wagner
  4. Suzanne Saxon and Carolyn Patsis

(© John Vincent Palatine 2019)

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1 Comment

  1. Wynn Schaible

    While we, like the Romans, titillate ourselves gossiping about who’s sticking it into whom, “Caesar’s Household,” the bureaucratic Establishment, Deep State, continues to fasten its death-grip on the West, masked gangs roam the streets suppressing all dissenting viewpoints with seeming impunity, the barbarians pour over the border with the active connivance of parts of the ruling class, and our successors to the “schools of philosophy” formulate the most absurd and dangerous theories about the nature of mankind and have them legislated and judicially mandated by a plague of lawyers more out-or-control than any since the late Republic or post-Periclean Athens before she got creamed by the Spartans!

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