Julia Livilla

Julia Livilla ( – ) was the youngest child of Germanicus and Agrippina the Elder and the youngest sister of the Emperor Caligula. Life Julia Livilla was the youngest great-granddaughter of Emperor Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of the Emperor Tiberius, sister of the Emperor Caligula, niece of the Emperor Claudius, and through her eldest sister Agrippina the Younger, maternal aunt of the Emperor Nero. In most ancient literary sources, on inscriptions and on coins, she is simply called "Julia". It is possible that she dropped the use of her cognomen after the damnatio memoriae of her paternal aunt Livilla (sister of Germanicus and Claudius) after whom she was named. However, on her sepulchral inscription, she is explicitly named "Livilla, daughter of Germanicus", which suggests that in her time she was called either "Julia" or "Livilla". She was born on Lesbos, one of the many Greek islands during her parents' grand tour of the eastern Mediterranean, leading Germanicus to his command base in the imperial province of Syria for the maius imperium given to him by Tiberius over the territory east of the Adriatic Sea. As a young child, she was with her mother and brother Caligula when they returned to Rome after Germanicus' untimely death in Antioch in 19 CE. Julia Livilla grew up in the household of her great-grandmother Livia and later under the care of her paternal grandmother Antonia Minor. She was first betrothed to a distant cousin, Quinctilius Varus, son of the ill-fated governor of Germania, Publius Quinctilius Varus, and of Claudia Pulchra, grandniece of Augustus, but after Quinctillius was charged of maiestas in 27, the marriage did not occur. In 33, she married Marcus Vinicius. Vinicius' family came from a small town outside of Rome. He descended from a family of the equites class and his father and grandfather had served as consuls. Her husband was mild in character and was an elaborate orator. Vinicius was appointed by Tiberius as a commissioner in early 37. He was also consul in 30 and proconsul of Asia in 38/39.