Antistia (wife of Pompey)

The only surviving source for Antistia's life and relationship with Pompey is Plutarch's Lives. The most complete account is found in his Life of Pompey, though he also included details of the divorce in the Life of Sulla.^[2][3] Plutarch was born c. 46 CE, approximately 130 years after the events he describes.^[4]

These accounts are known to be based on sources hostile to Pompey: in particular, the account of Antistia has been linked with Oppius, a Caesarian propagandist whose work Plutarch consulted while writing the Life of Pompey.^[5] The relevant sections of the Life of Pompey have been characterised as primarily concerned with making political points about Sulla's tyranny and presenting the affair through a tragic lens, with comparatively little regard for the facts of the story or its chronological accuracy.^[6] Keith Hopkins has suggested that the motives imputed by Plutarch to the various characters should be regarded as "suspect".^[2]

Antistia was a member of a relatively obscure plebeian family, the gens Antistia, which later gained patrician status in 29 BCE under Octavian.^[7] Her mother, Calpurnia, was likewise of plebeian ancestry, though her family (the gens Calpurnia) had attained the rank of nobiles by 180 BCE, when her ancestor Gaius Calpurnius Piso [Wikidata] was consul.^[8] Calpurnia belonged to a relatively minor branch of the gens, the Calpurnii Bestiae: her father, Lucius Calpurnius Bestia, had been consul in 111 BCE but was prosecuted and condemned for corruption during the Jugurthine War.^[9]

Antistia's father, Publius Antistius, rose to prominence in the early 80s BCE, judged by Cicero as among the best of a poor crop of orators active at that time (c. 88 BCE).^[10] Having dominated politics in the previous years, Sulla was absent from Rome for much of the First Mithridatic War (89–85 BCE), allowing his enemies, Gaius Marius and then Cornelius Cinna, to gain political supremacy. Cicero described this as a time of lawlessness and corruption,^[11] and Antistius's prominence has been taken as evidence for his implication in the judicial irregularities of the period.^[12]

In 88 BCE, Antistius was elected tribune of the plebs. In this role, he gained prominence for his successful opposition to the candidacy of Gaius Julius Caesar Strabo for consul, on the grounds that Strabo had not previously held the necessary office of praetor.^[13] This brought Antistius greater public visibility and a reputation as a prosecutor;^[14] Cicero recalls that "every case of importance" was brought to him.^[15]

Around 86 BCE,^[a] in his capacity as iudex,^[b] Antistius presided over the trial of Pompey for embezzlement of public funds (peculatus) during the Social War.^[20] The trial has been largely characterised as a sham, with its outcome assured from the start.^[21] Antistius showed favour to Pompey throughout the trial, and secretly promised Antistia to him in marriage while the proceedings were still ongoing.^[22] This fact, however, became common knowledge: when Antistius announced the verdict of acquittal, Plutarch reports that the crowd began shouting Talasio!, the customary acclamation of a marriage.^[23]

Antistia's marriage to Pompey has thus been interpreted as "the most characteristic example of political marriage, and … the most pitiful and pathetic":^[22] as a cynically-minded attempt by Antistius to increase his standing through alliance to an up-and-coming young nobleman, and by Pompey as an equally-cynical attempt to avoid any chance of an adverse verdict, as well as to gain the favour and patronage of Antistius and his family.^[22] Erich Gruen has described it as the first of Pompey's marriages intended to give him "access to the inner citadels of senatorial power",^[24] though the alliance ultimately proved of little political value to him.^[25]

Pompey was around twenty years old at the time of the marriage. Antistia's age is not recorded; it was normal for Roman women to make their first marriage before the age of twenty, though aristocratic girls often married much younger, typically between the ages of twelve and fifteen.^[26] No children are known from the marriage, which is generally assumed to have been childless.^[27]

In 82 or 81 BCE,^[d] Sulla and his wife Metella persuaded Pompey to divorce Antistia in favour of Sulla's stepdaughter, Aemilia. The reasons for the marriage are ambiguous, and perhaps mixed: Plutarch explains the marriage through Sulla's desire to reward Pompey for his successful service in the civil war against the Marians during 83–82, and to make a marriage alliance with a capable man who could be of use to him.^[29] However, the marriage has also been characterised as Sulla's attempt to neutralise the potential threat of Pompey's popularity and growing power.^[22] Pompey, for his own part, considered himself a 'Sullan' for the remainder of the dictator's life, and for at least a decade after Sulla's death in 78 BCE; maintaining his connection to Sulla was an important factor in his own marriage to Mucia Tertia in 79 BCE and that of his daughter Pompeia Magna to the dictator's son Faustus Cornelius Sulla.^[30]

The divorce was criticised in Roman society,^[31] and seems to have been painful for Pompey:^[5][e] Plutarch writes that it 'befitted the needs of Sulla rather than the nature and habits of Pompey',^[33] in that Aemilia was already pregnant by her current husband, the future consul Manius Acilius Glabrio, and was soon to die giving birth to his son.^[34] The remark may also allude to Pompey's passionate nature and, perhaps, his attachment to Antistia.^[5][35] For Antistia, the divorce was part of a period of great misfortune: her father had been killed in 82 BCE by Marian supporters, the so-called Cinnani,^[6] during a senate-meeting at the Curia Hostilia. The murder was instigated by the praetor Junius Damasippus, who viewed Antistius as unreliable, despite his earlier co-operation, due to his marriage alliance with Pompey. Her mother, Calpurnia, had also killed herself upon hearing of the divorce, which Plutarch described as an "indignity".^[36][37][f] The damage to Pompey's reputation caused by the divorce has been cited as a contributing factor towards his cultivation of an alliance with Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, the father of the future triumvir, in 79 BCE.^[39]

Little is known of Antistia's reaction to the divorce, or of her life afterwards.^[5][g] By Roman standards, the marriage was short: while approximately a third of known Roman marriages ended in divorce,^[42] they averaged around twenty-one years in duration, and most short marriages were ended by death.^[43] Both Plutarch and the modern scholar Thomas Hillman have described the marriage as a "Greek tragedy".^[6][44]

Antistia has been described as a "political victim",^[40] and the affair has taken as evidence of Roman women's lack of control over their marital lives, and the overarching importance of political concerns over personal in aristocratic Roman marriages.^[22] However, the parallels between Plutarch's account of Pompey's divorce from Antistia and his account of Caesar's refusal to divorce his own wife, Cornelia, when ordered to do so by Sulla^[45] have led to the suggestion that the framing of the narrative as found in Plutarch may originate in anti-Pompeian propaganda written by Caesar's supporters after the outbreak of civil war between the two in 49 BCE.^[5] Susan Jacobs has also situated Plutarch's narrative of Antistia's marriage and divorce in a tradition of "advice literature" to statesmen,^[46] and viewed Plutarch's portrayal of the affair as a warning of how marriage alliances could serve both as political tools and as reputational risks.^[47]