Livia's father died in 108 BC, and she passed into the care of her brother, the younger Livius Drusus. About 106, Drusus arranged for her to marry his friend,
Quintus Servilius Caepio.[1] They had three children:
Servilia, born before 100 BC, married
Marcus Junius Brutus, and was the mother of Brutus, the tyrannicide. She was the mistress of
Caesar, for which reason Caesar was rumoured to be Brutus' father.[i][2]
Livia and Caepio must have divorced about 98 BC, for reasons not stated by any ancient historian;[ii] but
Pliny the Elder reports that Caepio and Drusus had fallen out over the sale of a ring for which each was bidding at auction.[7][8][9] Livia then married
Marcus Porcius Cato, a grandson of
Cato the Elder.[10] They had two children:
Livia Drusa appears as a major character in the first two books of
Colleen McCullough's Masters of Rome series. In The First Man in Rome, her brother coerces her into marrying Caepio, whom she dislikes. In The Grass Crown, McCullough depicts Livia's relationship with Cato as having begun before her divorce from Caepio and makes Caepio's youngest son (his only son and heir, in this fictional account) the natural son of Cato.
^This rumour is not credited by historians, since Caesar was only fifteen years old when Brutus was born.
^At one time it was commonly believed that Caepio was Livia's second husband, as he survived her. But from chronology,
Manutius demonstrated that Caepio must have been her first husband, since her daughter, Servilia, was the mother of Brutus, who was born in 85 BC, and must therefore have been several years older than her half-brother, the younger Cato, who was born in 95. However, no ancient source explicitly states that Livia and Caepio were divorced.
Wilhelm Drumann, Geschichte Roms in seinem Übergang von der republikanischen zur monarchischen Verfassung, oder: Pompeius, Caesar, Cicero und ihre Zeitgenossen, Königsberg (1834–1844).
Emilio Gabba, Republican Rome, the Army, and the Allies, Berkley (1976).