Dio and the Dowager Empresses, Part 2

An examination of Cassius Dio’s depictions of the dowager empresses – Livia, Agrippina, and Julia Domna – reveals a pattern of representation that suggests Dio was less concerned with accurately representing the historical imperial women than with using them for his own his rhetorical ends. Like Tacitus and Pliny, Dio believed that an emperor’s most important advisor and co-ruler was the Senate. Bad emperors prioritized the advice of third parties over that of the Senate, and the empresses as wives or mothers were the targets of Dio’s harsh depictions because they had unfettered access to the emperors and promoted dynastic succession. His depictions of the empresses as duplicitous, ambitious, and self-serving permitted him to accomplish several goals at once: to vilify senatorial rivals, to assert the primacy of the Senate’s relationship with the emperor, and to characterize emperors who were duped by their women as defective men and tyrannical leaders. His dowager empresses were meant to dissuade not only his male readership within the senatorial or governing elite, but especially the current and future emperors, from neglecting the Senate

Ancient history · Art · Elite · Emperor · Literature · Political science · Politics · Rhetorical question · Ruler · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classics · Historical and Literary Studies · History · Law

• Literary Technique in the Roman History

  Open Access•L M A A Jansen•Mnemosyne•2025

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