The story of a young woman – capricious, uninhibited, a lover of worldly things – condemned by her father to three marriages of mere political convenience: not just any woman, but Julia, the only daughter of the first emperor of Rome.

“Julia was a spirited, brilliant, extroverted woman, indubitably captivating, conscious of her role and social standing, who was determined to conquer for herself a sphere in which to excel: all of which transpired clearly from her participation in the literary coteries to those of the political circles, from the salons of her generation’s rebellion to the more insidious ones of subterranean opposition to the regime and system. Nothing was denied her and wherever she moved, a crowd of courtiers who played to her pride and vanity trailed in her wake.
A vocal critic of her father and his hypocritical universe of values, she failed to realize in time into what abyss she was sinking, as she moved from fringe positions to open conspiracy. Her behaviour was always driven by her spirit of provocation and impulsive desire to occupy the role of prima donna”.
Lorenzo Braccesi recounts the fascinating life of a controversial woman, much discussed and criticized by her contemporaries, possible muse of poets and instigator of bizarre situations within her court. Is she Corinna, the woman Ovid sings of in the Amores? Why was she so fascinated by Egypt? Was hers a taste for the exotic or fatal attraction to Hellenistic forms of power and despotism? What was the nature of the antagonistic relationship between her and Livia, Augustus’s third wife? Where, in the subversive behaviour of this woman – first at the margins and then at the centre of conspiracy – did the public person end and the private one begin?