ABSTRACT
We saw in discussing Julia’s time as wife of Agrippa and mother of his children that there was no direct evidence for either the naming of her daughters or their relative or absolute ages. The known birth-dates of Gaius and Lucius (and year of Agrippa Postumus’ birth) left the years 19 and 18 BCE and again 15 and 14 BCE open for these pregnancies and suggest that one daughter was born before 17 and the other after 16 BCE. In fact, the relative ages of Julia the Younger and Agrippina must be deduced from their marriages, which are themselves a matter of inference. We infer Julia’s marriage to Aemilius Paullus from the marriageability of their daughter Aemilia Lepida. If she was betrothed to Germanicus’ young brother, the future Emperor Claudius, and expected to marry him in 8 CE,1 this implies that she was approaching twelve years old and her parents must have been married by 4 or at least 3 BCE. This in turn implies that Julia must have been born before 16 BCE, the year when her parents set out for the Aegean and Asia Minor. She may well have been born the year before Lucius; if so, she would have been fourteen at marriage. Her sister Agrippina was certainly an infant during the eastern tour but did not marry Germanicus (born in 16 or 15 BCE)2 until 4 CE. Their eldest children Nero and Drusus come of age in 20 CE (Tac. Annals 3.29) and 23 CE respectively (Tac. Annals 4.4.1). The sisters seem to have been four or five years apart, but although they would both ultimately be victimized by the dominant males of their family, their destinies were radically different and reflect the changing fortunes of the dynasty between 4 BCE when Tiberius, in self-imposed exile, was apparently disgraced, and 4 CE when he was adopted by Augustus, together with the fifteen-year-old Agrippa Postumus.
