L’appellation Caesaris (Uxor) dans les témoignages épigraphiques et littéraires sur Scribonia

Abstract

This paper examines the appellation Caesaris (uxor), “Caesar’s wife”, for Scribonia, attested in epigraphic and literary sources. Scribonia was married to Octavian, later Augustus, between 40 and 39 BC., and gave birth to Julia the Elder : the only biological child of Augustus. However, Octavian divorced from Scribonia the day his daughter was born, to remarry with Livia Drusilla, in 39 BC. This study suggests that Scribonia, even after the divorce from the future emperor Augustus and his remarriage with Livia Drusilla, would have continued to be referred to as “Caesar’s wife” in the funerary inscriptions of her slaves and freedmen and in an epigraph of her mother, Sentia. While in Tacitus and Suetonius Scribonia is mentioned as “the wife of Augustus” in accounts of the events dated several years after the short marriage between Scribonia and Octavian.