Clodia
Clodia was a Roman patrician lady, born in 95 B.C. C., third daughter of the patrician Apio Claudio Pulcro and Cecilia Metela and sister of Publio Clodio Pulcro.
Like upper-class women of her day, Clodia was well educated in Greek and Philosophy, with a special talent for writing poetry. Her life, immortalized in the writings of Cicero and also, according to general belief, in the poems of Catullus, was characterized by continuous scandals.
Biography
Together with his brother Publius Clodius Pulcher, the patrician name Claudia was changed to Clodia, with a plebeian connotation.
Clodia married her cousin Quintus Cecilio Metellus Céler. The marriage was not happy. Clodia had several affairs with married men and slaves, becoming a famous gambler and drinker at the same time. Her arguments with Metellus Celer were constant, often in public. When Metellus Celer died under mysterious circumstances in 59 B.C. C., it was suspected that she had poisoned him.
As a widow, Clodia became known as a woman with a merry life, taking several lovers, possibly including the poet Catullus, who would fall out of favor with Clodia and, jealous and angry, began to write against Clodius. But it was another of her adventures that caused a tremendous scandal, the one she had with Marco Celio Rufus, Catullus's friend. After ending her relationship with Celio in 56 B.C. C., Clodia publicly accused him of trying to poison her. There was a murder charge and a trial. Caelius' defender was Cicero, who treated her very harshly, (speech Pro Caelio ) since she had a personal interest in the case, because her brother Publius Clodius was her enemy. staunchest politician of hers. Among other things, Clodia was accused of being a seducer and a drunkard in Rome and in Baiae, as well as committing incest with her brother Publius of hers. It appears that Cicero's marriage to Terentia suffered from Terentia's lingering suspicions that Cicero was having an affair with Clodia.
Perhaps the word «zeal» comes from the confrontation between Caelius and Catullus. It is in this speech by Cicero where his belonging to the gens Claudia is clearly indicated, through his father and his predecessor, Appius Claudius the Censor, responsible for the construction of the Appian Way.
After Caelius's trial, in which he was found not guilty, little or nothing is known about Clodia, and the date of her death is unknown. Because Roman women were not identified by personalized names, there is some difficulty in identifying them. Perhaps this Clodia or a sister was still alive in 44 B.C. c.
Identification with Lesbia
The poet Catullus wrote several love poems about a woman named Lesbia, identified in the second half of the century by the writer Apuleius (Apology 10) as a "Clodia". This practice of substituting real names for ones with the same metric value was common in the Latin poetry of the time. The identification of Lesbia with Clodia, based largely on Cicero's portrayal of her, is an accepted fact, despite occasional detractors. Roman historian Suzanne Dixon makes a powerful argument not only against Clodia's identification with Lesbia but also that 'Lesbia' he was referring to a real woman.[citation needed]
Pop Culture
There is a version of Clodia's love affair with her brother and other Roman patricians in a tale from the collection Imaginary Lives, by Marcel Schwob.