Drusilla diva and Julia Livilla in the Athenian Agora

Aileen Ajootian (University of Mississippi)

Athenian Agora S220, the portrait head of a Roman woman, preserves small curls framing the brow, and the remains of a veil or diadem. When first published, this marble work was identified as a portrait of Antonia Augusta, daughter of Mark Antony and Augustus’ niece Octavia. But only one of Antonia’s portraits shows her with the forehead curls. Imperial portraits distinguished by carefully carved pin curls along the brow are more likely to be images of Caligula’s sisters, Drusilla or Julia Livilla. They represented prospects for the future of the imperial family line, and their portraits appeared in imperial family groups set up in the provinces.   Portraits of Drusilla, the first woman officially divinized by the Roman Senate after her death in A.D. 38, were displayed between 37 and 41 A.D., when Caligula died, and her cult abandoned. Julia Livilla outlived Caligula and two periods of imperial disfavor. Her portraits may have been displayed for some time after his death, but were probably in vogue ca 37-39 A.D. They featured a coiffure with 10 little curls framing the brow and temples, and a longer lock curving in front of each ear. Agora S220 corresponds very closely to well-preserved portraits of Livilla, and should be re-identified as her image, one of eight surviving examples. This work may be connected with a fragmentary statue base also found in Athens (Agora I 4313, SEG 34 [1984] no. 180). It once supported a marble sculpture of Drusilla and preserves part of an inscription naming her the New Aphrodite, her customary posthumous epithet in the eastern Mediterranean. A portrait group honoring Julia Livilla and Drusilla diva, possibly with other members of the imperial family, can thus be reconstructed in the Athenian Agora, set up sometime between 37 and 41 A.D., thus expanding the evidence for Roman activity in Athens during the reign of Caligula.