Happily Ever After (or Not): Drusus Germanicus and Antonia Minor

by Heather Domin

You don’t see a lot of epic romances in Roman history – partnerships, sure, passions, affairs, a few obsessions here and there, but not many great true-love matches. The tendency toward political and arranged marriages among the upper classes did not give much consideration to marital love (hence the affairs). But there were exceptions of course, and for me one of the greatest and most bittersweet is the short marriage of Claudius Drusus, aka Drusus the Elder or Drusus Germanicus, and Antonia Minor.

one of the few likenesses
of Drusus the Elder

Drusus was the son of Augustus’ wife Livia from her first marriage, raised from the age of five in his stepfather’s house along with his brother Tiberius. Augustus and Livia never had children of their own, but the boys didn’t lack company; Augustus ran a veritable boarding school of children belonging to his family, friends, and enemies, including barbarian princes. Among the motley brood was Antonia Minor, a daughter of Marc Antony from his marriage to Augustus’ sister Octavia. After her father abandoned them, she and her siblings were raised by their mother as part of Augustus’ family.

the Juno Ludovisi,
modeled after Antonia

Antonia was only two years younger than Drusus, so they most likely grew up together as playmates. It’s romantic to imagine them falling in love at a young age, engaging in adolescent flirtation among the colonnades, but there’s no direct evidence for this. What we do know is that Augustus had great things planned for Drusus, his favorite stepson; and one of them was a match with Antonia, his favorite niece, a marriage to which both parties readily agreed.

They married in 16BC when he was 22 and she was 20, and for the next seven years they were one of the foremost power couples in Rome. He was a famous general, handsome and dashing, destined for greatness and possibly the throne; she was beautiful and vivacious, clever and independent, exercising a level of freedom unusual for women of the time. Augustus had no qualms about rearranging family marriages as often as the furniture, but he never meddled with Drusus and Antonia’s union. They had three children who lived to maturity, and possibly two others who did not. From all accounts they were deeply in love; there is no evidence that either of them ever had affairs or took lovers, which was pretty unheard of in elite Roman society.

But their marriage was destined to be brief. In 9 BC, Drusus died after a freak accident at the age of just 29. Although she was only 27, Antonia never remarried, instead focusing her energy into becoming one of the most powerful women Rome had ever known. As a matriarch of the Julio-Claudian dynasty she advised her children and grandchildren as they rose and fell from power, and she could be brutal when they did not live up to her expectations. She lived to the age of 73, when in one last act of authority she committed suicide as a protest against the antics of her grandson Caligula.

Antonia’s image as a cold and callous woman who rejected her son Claudius and executed her own daughter is not entirely false, though it’s probably colored by historical misogyny; but I can’t help wondering how different her life might have been if she hadn’t lost Drusus at such a young age. No matter what she became later in life, for a brief time Antonia and Drusus shared one of the great love stories of the Augustan era.

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Heather Domin writes mixed-genre fiction including historical adventure, unconventional romance, and supernatural suspense. She is preparing to publish Valerian's Legion: The Heirs of Fortune later this summer, in which Drusus Germanicus plays a major role.

Warriors: Drusus Germanicus

By Heather Domin

Roman history is full of famous warriors, some factual, some mythical (usually a combination of the two); one of the most interesting is Drusus Germanicus, aka Drusus the Elder, the general who almost conquered Germania. Drusus had all the makings of a legend – he burned bright, died young, and was mourned by an empire – yet only one biography has been written about him in modern times, and that was just last year. His story deserves a little more of the spotlight on the stage of great Roman warriors.

Bust of Drusus; courtesy of Wiki Commons

Nero Claudius Drusus was born in 38BC to Tiberius Claudius Nero and his wife Livia Drusilla – or rather, his ex-wife, as she divorced him while pregnant with Drusus so she could marry the Emperor Augustus. In keeping with paterfamilias, Drusus and his older brother Tiberius remained with their father; after he died when Drusus was five and Tiberius nine, both boys went to live with their mother and stepfather. (Tiberius and Drusus were extremely close – they even named their firstborn sons after each other, which was almost unheard of in the Roman aristocracy at that time.)

Augustus obviously saw potential in his young stepson; Drusus was allowed to begin his career five years before he reached the minimum age, and at 22 he was leading large-scale military campaigns in Raetia. For the next seven years Drusus was the rock star of the Roman army – subduing tribes, gaining territory, leading battles on land and sea, and collecting accolades, including the cognomen Germanicus in honor of his victories. He was good-looking, charismatic, and smart; his troops adored him, his colleagues respected him, and Augustus held him up to the public as a paragon of conservative Roman manhood. It was even said (amazingly enough) that he was faithful to his wife, Antonia, the daughter of Marc Antony.

In 10BC the Chatti attacked Drusus' summer camp, but he fended them off and took his vengeance the following summer with another overwhelming victory. But then, in August of 9BC, as he planned his next campaign, the bright star of Rome was cut down in his prime by a strange and unexpected death. According to Suetonius, Drusus was thrown from his horse, and a month later he was dead –  that's it. No one knows exactly what happened in the weeks between his accident and his death at the age of just 29. Just like that, the hero of the legions was gone.

Drususstein monument in Mainz, Germany;
courtesy of Wiki Commons

Drusus' soldiers dearly mourned him, pooling their money to build a monument to him outside Mainz which still stands today. Tiberius was never the same, and Antonia never remarried for the rest of her life. Their eldest son, Germanicus, would go on to an even more famous career and an even more mysterious death; their younger son, Claudius, would become one of Rome's most well-known emperors. Augustus wrote a biography in tribute to Drusus which has sadly disappeared; after losing two more potential heirs, his imperial crown eventually went to Tiberius, and the rest is history.

Despite the effect Drusus Germanicus had on Rome, there is precious little about him in the historical record. Even from the few bits and pieces we do have, however, it's clear he deserves a place on any list of the most famous Roman warriors.

Further reading:

-Lindsay Powell, Eager for Glory: The Untold Story of Drusus the Elder, Conqueror of Germania

-Suetonius, The Life of Tiberius and The Twelve Caesars

-Werner Eck, The Life of Augustus

Heather Domin is the author of The Soldier of Raetia,set in Augustan Rome, and Allegiance, set in 1920s Dublin. She is currently up to her eyeballs in revisions on the sequel to The Soldier of Raetia, in which Drusus Germanicus plays a major role. You can usually find her procrastinating on Twitter, procrastinating on Livejournal, or procrastinating staring at pictures of Tom Hiddleston on Tumblr.