Julia (-39 - 14). Julia the Elder, known to her contemporaries as Julia Caesaris filia or Julia Augusti filia, was the daughter and only biological child of Augustus, the first Roman Emperor, and his second wife, Scribonia. Julia was also stepsister and second wife of the Emperor Tiberius; maternal grandmother of the Emperor Caligula and the Empress Agrippina the Younger; grandmother-in-law of the Emperor Claudius; and maternal great-grandmother of the Emperor Nero. Her epithet the Elder distinguishes her from her daughter, Julia the Younger. At the time of Julia's birth, 39 BC, Augustus had not yet received the title Augustus and was known as Gaius Julius Caesar Divi Filius, though historians refer to him as Octavian until 27 BC, when Julia was 11. Octavian divorced Julia's mother on the day of her birth and took Julia from her soon thereafter. Octavian, in accordance with Roman custom, claimed complete parental control over her. She was sent to live with her stepmother Livia and when she was old enough learned how to be an aristocrat. Her education appears to have been strict and somewhat old-fashioned. Thus, in addition to her studies, Suetonius informs us, she was taught spinning and weaving. Macrobius mentions her love of literature and considerable culture, a thing easy to come by in that household. Julia's social life was severely controlled, and she was allowed to talk only to people whom her father had vetted. However, Octavian had a great affection for his daughter and made sure she had the best teachers available. Macrobius preserves a remark of Augustus: There are two wayward daughters that I have to put up with: the Roman commonwealth and Julia. In 37 BC, during Julia's early childhood, Octavian's friends Gaius Maecenas and Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa concluded an agreement with Octavian's great rival Mark Antony. It was sealed with an engagement: Antony's ten-year-old son Marcus Antonius Antyllus was to marry Julia, then two years old. The engagement never led to marriage because civil war broke out. In 31 BC, at the Battle of Actium, Octavian and Agrippa defeated Antony and Cleopatra. In Alexandria, the defeated couple both committed suicide, and Octavian became sole ruler of the Roman Empire. irst marriage As with most aristocratic Roman women of the period, expectations of Julia focused on marriage and on the resulting family alliances. Moreover, Augustus desired a male issue; as his only living child, Julia's duty would be to provide her father with grandsons whom he could adopt as his heirs. In 25 BC, at the age of fourteen, Julia married her first cousin Marcellus, the son of her father's sister Octavia, who was some three years older than she. Augustus himself was not present for the wedding as he was fighting a war in Spain and had fallen ill. Instead, he commissioned Agrippa to preside over the ceremony and hold the festival in his absence. The decision to marry Marcellus to Julia, and then Augustus's choice to raise Marcellus to the pontificate and curule aedileship, was perceived to be an indication that he would be Augustus's successor in power, despite his youth. This put him at odds with Agrippa, whom people believed would oppose Marcellus' accession to power; the apparent preference for Marcellus is allegedly the catalyst that led to Agrippa to withdraw to Mytilene, Greece. However, Marcellus died on September 23 BC, when Julia was sixteen. The union produced no children. In 21 BC, having now reached the age of 18, Julia married Agrippa, a man from a modest family who had risen to become Augustus's most trusted general and friend. This step is said to have been taken partly on the advice of Maecenas, who in counseling him remarked: You have made him so great that he must either become your son-in-law or be slain. Agrippa was nearly 25 years her elder; it was a typical arranged marriage, with Julia functioning as a pawn in her father's dynastic plans. There is from this period the report of an infidelity with one Sempronius Gracchus, with whom Julia allegedly had a lasting liaison. This was the first of a series of alleged adulteries. According to Suetonius, Julia's marital status did not prevent her from conceiving a passion for Augustus' stepson, and thus her stepbrother, Tiberius, so it was widely rumoured. The newlyweds lived in a villa in Rome that has since been excavated near the modern Farnesina in Trastevere. Agrippa and Julia's marriage resulted in five children: Gaius Caesar, Julia the Younger, Lucius Caesar, Agrippina the Elder, and Agrippa Postumus. From June 20 BC to the spring of 18 BC, Agrippa was governor of Gaul, and it is likely that Julia followed him across the Alps. Shortly after their arrival, their first child Gaius was born, and in 19 BC, Julia gave birth to Vipsania Julia. After their return to Italy, a third child followed: a son named Lucius. In 17 BC, Augustus adopted the newborn Lucius and the three-year-old Gaius. He took care of their education personally.