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As soon as Cornelia discovered she was with child, she sent for the augur.
'I need to know', she murmured imperiously, 'if it will be a boy'. The augur bowed his head and asked if she would like a haruspicy, or whether a simple study of avian movements would suffice. Cornelia considered for a moment, before allowing the augur to make the necessary predictions at his own discretion. She'd learned it was best not to meddle in these sort of things.
After the rushed, private meeting, she arranged for the required sacrifices to be performed. First , she arranged for a certain donation to the cult of Juno Fluonia, for marking her a mater and withholding the flow of menstrual blood. Next, she offered prayers to the Parcae, beseeching Nona and Decima for a gentle birth. Wine and sacred herbs were burnt for Juno on the family's sacrificial altar, and the household lares were satisfied with a serving of freshly harvested grain.
The augur's missive arrived just as she finished stoking the Vestal flame in her private hearth. The signs were positive, he said. A flock of black woodpeckers had descended on the horizon - it seemed the heavens would be blessing her with a strong, healthy child. A haruspicy of a hen (discretely performed, the augur assured her) had further informed him that the child would likely be a boy, a bright male heir for the house of Julii that would make the gods proud.
After perusing the letter several times, Cornelia ordered for a healthy bitch to be sacrificed to Mana Genita by the local priest.
'This child should live,' she declared to the gnarled pear tree in the courtyard. 'And with Juno's blessing, hopefully bring honour to our name.'
When the time came for the child to be born, Cornelia sent for Scribonia, a well reputed obstetrix who had assisted several other patrician families. She arrived with a birthing chair and stool, stola tied in a matronly fashion with a vial of olive oil tucked into a pouch at her waist.
The child came into the world with little hue and cry, something the midwife seemed to be pleased about. Cornelia supposed it was justified, what with all the sacrifices she had offered the di nixi in the weeks prior.
'A lovely girl, my lady. How sweet she is!'
Cornelia stared very hard at the plaster ceiling. A girl. Eventually, she reached out to hold the young babe, wet and glistening, swaddled in linens.
The augur's note arrived in the evening, ink still fresh, a few hours after she'd shown the child to her father and fixed the arrangements for her name day. Would she require services for a reading of the child's future? Were there any auspices to be observed?
Cornelia looked at the parchment for a long time. Then, without a word, she threw it into the brazier where her personal slave had been preparing lamp black only a moment ago. The material caught quickly, and was soon rendered into a pile of ash and dusty fragments.
The augur was never called to the house again.
Julia grew up in the care of several nursemaids and a small posse of slaves. At the age of seven, she lost her mother to a sudden purpureal fever from which she never recovered. It said something about her childhood that Julia did not miss her presence.
Her education and upbringing were immediately taken over by her grandmother. Aurelia Cotta was a formidable woman - discrete, sensible and highly intelligent - qualities that later made the historian Tacitus consider her the ideal Roman matron.
Julia liked her grandmother. She was quite the personality, and made everyday so much more entertaining with her keen observations and razor wit.
'One must be in possession of a sharp mind and a silver tongue.' she often reminded her, and Julia did her best to take the words to heart. Unfortunately, hers was not a conniving nature, and Aurelia seemed to notice.
'It won't do you any good, being kind.' she told her one day, sorting a pile of correspondence by the window. Julia lay on a patch of sun-warmed grass and considered her grandmother's profile.
'Rome could do with some kindness, I think.'
'Of course. But would that be the Rome we know? This republic has been built on blood, butchery and misguided ideals. Kindness has not brought these lands, titles and wealth to us, my dear. Our currency has always been war and the art of conquering those who stand against us, alongside the occasional betrayal and pithy comeuppance. It wouldn't be Rome without the theatrics, after all.'
Julia turned away and sighed, clutching a sprig of mint to her nose.
'Must you be so pessimistic, grandmother?'
'I do not wish to upset you, Julia. By all means, think of Rome as you imagine it, with kind men and women and sunshine on every street. It will never exist. But many a day, I find myself wishing it could.'
She was barely a few days over six and ten when her father called her to his quarters. He told her, quite seriously, of her prospective engagement to a Servilius Caepio.
By this age, Julia understood her duties and expectations as a daughter of the house of Julii. She would be used to gain her father political advantages, and then work hard to maintain those fragile relationships.
Servilius Caepio was not a common patronym, and there were only a few people she knew who carried that name with any measure of significance.
'You wish me to wed Brutus, father?'
Caesar did not confirm nor deny, but simply looked at her strangely, with a mixture of pride and thoughtfulness.
'Would you mind, being wed to a Junii?'
'If it would help you, I would not mind anything.'
Despite the years and silence between them, Julia had always loved her father. Now, watching him smile at her so fondly, it was clear he loved her just as much.
The engagement with Servilia Caepio never materialized. It was just as well, Julia thought privately. She had been ready to wed Brutus at her father's command, out of understanding and respect for his position, but there had never been love between the two. She remembered a warm balmy day five years ago, when she'd sighted two boys embracing behind a pillar in the temple of Bellona. It had only been a few moments, but the image was seared into her memory - Brutus' dark hair and pale glassy limbs intertwined with another, muscle-bound, blond and eager to bruise.
Coincidentally the same man who followed her father around like a loyal lapdog. Marcus Antonius. Julia had only met him a few times, at family dinners. He was arrogance and vanity personified, a vicious lion of a man. To think of him and Marcus Junius Brutus, together - how strange!
She wondered if they embraced now as they did then - it seemed terribly unlikely, but she'd been proved wrong before - and then promptly blushed at the direction her thoughts took her.
Perhaps other women might have found power in the misbegotten knowledge, but Julia found no harm in what two young boys did in their spare time. It did not matter to her that they were now two young men, of patrician families, holding influential positions in the senate and military. They were good where it counted, she reasoned - Antony was loyal to Caesar despite his many faults, and Brutus was an angel among men, or so her father believed.
Nevertheless, Julia was relieved the engagement had been broken off before it had taken root. She had never been good with awkward conversation.
The household was aflutter with anticipation. Ever since the formation of the first triumvirate in the previous year, there had been a steady stream of guests and patrons to their home. Julia took the changes in stride, and subconsciously prepared herself for her father's summons, which she now knew was inevitable given the political landscape.
Her speculation soon bore fruit. After a rushed dinner with Pompey one evening, she received an invitation to his private quarters.
They stood in silence for a while. It was a companiable one, and the tense line of Caesar's shoulders gave a little.
'Julia.'
'Father.'
'I've fixed your engagement to a fellow patrician.'
'Who am I to wed?'
'Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus.'
+ Haruspicy wasn't highly respected because it was not perceived as traditionally Roman. In fact, it was adapted from Etruscan religious practices. Some arranged for readings to be done privately, in contrast to the general public spectacles of animal sacrifices, though the results of these were officially suspect.
+ ex avibus (signage from birds) was one of the five different types of auspices observed in Ancient Rome. Two classes of birds were studied - Oscines, which gave auspices while singing (such as ravens and owls) and Alites, which gave auspices while flying (such as eagles and vultures). Some birds like the black woodpecker were considered to be both.
+ Fluonia is a form of Juno who retains nourishing blood within the womb. She was worshipped because she held back the flow of menstrual blood during pregnancy, a sign which marked a woman as a mother rather than a virgin.
+ The Parcae are the Roman equivalents of The Moirai or Three Fates. Nona and Decima are in charge of determining the time of birth, and assuring the completion of the nine month term.
+ Mana Genita is an obscure goddess referenced by Pliny and Plutarch. Her rites were carried out by the sacrifice of a puppy or bitch. It is thought that she had the power to determine whether an infant would live or die.
+ An obstetrix was the title held by a professional midwife in Ancient Rome.
+ Olive oil was used as a birthing emollient to ease the process of parturition.
+ The di nixi or Nixae were birth deities in Ancient Rome, depicted as kneeling or squatting in popular birthing positions of the period.
+ Julia was allegedly engaged to a Servilia Caepio, but the engagement was broken off by Caesar in favour of a marriage alliance with Pompey. Some speculate this may have been Marcus Junius Brutus.
+ I threw in the Mark Antony/Brutus for irony, angst purposes and also because it's my comfort pairing. It's not wholly realistic, but Shakespeare's Julius Caesar is my FAVOURITE play, and that should explain a lot.