Servilia

Servilia ( 101 BC – after 42 BC) was a Roman matron from a distinguished family, the Servilii Caepiones. She was the daughter of Quintus Servilius Caepio and Livia, thus the half-sister of Cato the Younger. She married Marcus Junius Brutus, with whom she had a son, the Brutus who, along with others in the Senate, would assassinate Julius Caesar. After her first husband's death in 77, she married Decimus Junius Silanus, and with him had a son and three daughters. She gained fame as the mistress of Julius Caesar, whom her son Brutus and son-in-law Gaius Cassius Longinus would assassinate in 44 BC. Her affair with Caesar seems to have been publicly known in Rome at the time. Plutarch stated that she in turn was madly in love with Caesar. The relationship between the two probably started in 59, after the death of Servilia's second husband although Plutarch implied it began when they were teenagers. Biography Early life Servilia was a patrician who could trace her line back to Gaius Servilius Ahala, and was the of Livia and Quintus Servilius Caepio. Her parents had two other children, a younger Servilia and a Gnaeus Servilius Caepio; her father also likely had another son named Quintus Servilius Caepio from an earlier marriage. They divorced when she was three or four, and her mother then married Marcus Porcius Cato. From this union, Servilia's half-brother, Cato the Younger, and half-sister, Porcia, were born.