Concordia, Discordia —dynasty, domestic abuse, and family violence in Julio-Claudian Rome

Abstract This article offers a re-reading of concordia by noticing references to, and descriptions of, domestic and family violence (DVF), including intimate partner, sibling, child and elder abuse within the Julio-Claudian dynasty. My argument concerns both history and historiography and seeks to contribute to our understanding of both the history of domestic abuse and family violence and its representation. Dynasty mattered in both of these contexts: history and historiography. Domestic abuse and family violence certainly existed in Rome before the Principate, but imperial dynasticism, in important ways, amplified conditions conducive to DVF. This is, in part, because dynasticism (rather than simply autocracy or one-man-rule) relies on the existence of the family -of heirs and heir-bearers -and because Julio-Claudian dynasticism both placed pressures on members of the family (to marry among themselves (endogamy), to produce heirs, to model or exemplify behaviours and ideals) and exposed those members to unprecedented scrutiny. The end of civil war, represented as the end of discordia and the return of concordia, ushered in dynasty. For members of the dynasty—the princeps, his wife/wives, children, enslaved and freed household members, concordia was fleeting and discordia never came to an end.