Dr Rad 0:15 Welcome to the Partial Historians. We explore all the details of ancient Rome, everything from political scandals, the love affairs, the battle's waged and when citizens turn against each other, I'm Dr Rad Dr G 0:33 And I'm Dr G. We consider Rome as the Romans saw it, by reading different authors from the ancient past and comparing their stories. Dr Rad 0:44 Join us as we trace the journey of Rome from the founding of the city. Dr G 0:54 Hello and welcome to a brand new episode of the partial historians. I am Dr G Dr Rad 1:01 And I am Dr Rad Dr G 1:04 And we are thrilled today to be talking to Kaarina Parker about her debut novel, Fulvia. Welcome Kaarina. Kaarina Parker 1:14 Thank you so much for having me Dr G 1:16 A pleasure. So a little bit of background. Kaarina Parker holds a Bachelor of Arts with Honours from the University of Melbourne in film and feminist film theory, and a Masters of Creative Writing from Auckland University of Technology. She has a love for the extraordinary, largely uncredited women of the late Roman Republic - a woman after our own heart. And Kaarina is also a fashion model and a voice for diversity in the fashion industry in Australia and New Zealand. So more points to Kaarina, because Australia and New Zealand are like best friends at the bottom of the world. So we are thrilled to have Kaarina on the show to chat about Fulvia, a novel set, obviously, in the late Roman Republic. And for people who don't know enough about Fulvia, just you wait you are about to find out some exciting things. Dr Rad 2:14 All right, so we are very curious to know, where did your interest in the women of ancient Rome, and particularly the Roman Republic all begin. Kaarina Parker 2:25 Oh, that's a great question. I sort of classic queer childhood. Loved Greek mythology from a very young age, and that was sort of my gateway drug into ancient history, I would say. And when I was at school, we were offered Latin as one of the like potential languages that you could take. And you know, me, nine years old, I was like, oh, Latin, Greek mythology, it's all the same thing, right? So I did that, and then that was sort of how I got into Roman history. And then quickly discovered that I found the sort of political intrigue of the Romans a lot even more fascinating than the mythology that I had previously been obsessed with. So then I just sort of imprinted on Roman history when I was about 12, and it became my entire personality. And then as I grew older, very quickly realized that women, by their nature, are just more interesting than men, and therefore I became very curious about what the women were doing. Because I think, as I'm sure you guys know, so much of how we understand that period of Roman history from a kind of modern lens, as it's all through basically Julius Caesar and maybe a little bit of Cicero. But obviously there are all of these amazing women who you just kind of, you see in a footnote or in a little throwaway comment, or, you know, someone's trying to have a dig at their husbands, so they make slanderous remarks about this woman, and then you starts to build this little picture of these really fascinating lives that are orbiting these, these figures who are so big throughout history. And so then I just became a little bit obsessed with like, Who are these women? What were they doing? What were their sort of daily realities? What did they think about these, these men who they were sort of kicking around with and, yeah, just kind of all spiral out of control from there. Dr Rad 4:25 Now. I like that, because as people who are very firmly stuck in the early Roman Republic right now, we can definitely testify that there are not enough female characters that we come across in that time period. And we're very much looking forward to the late Roman Republic when you at least start to hear references, even slanderous ones, towards female characters. Dr G 4:50 Yeah, it turns out they were probably they're all along doing something interesting, and our ability to see that really develops in the late Republic. Kaarina Parker 4:58 Hmmm Dr G 4:58 So I think that's interesting. As well, because it it shows a shift in the way that Roman men particularly might be thinking about their political scene. Because all of a sudden, the women are more present in their minds as well. So thinking about the late Roman republic, this period which is loosely defined as everything from about 133 BCE onwards, until we get the end of the Civil War and we get Augustus emerging in sort of 27 so it's this weird kind of one century period of time. What are some of the key expectations and responsibilities that seem to have been expected of women in this period of Roman history? Kaarina Parker 5:42 Obviously, there's going to be a significant difference based on the class and the wealth and the sort of the situations that these women were born into, you know, like the daily expectations and realities of a plebeian woman versus a patrician woman were going to be quite different. But if we're talking specifically about Fulvia and her sort of contemporaries, it was essentially you had the, in some ways, privilege, of a sort of decent education if you were born into a quote, unquote good family, with the expectation that you would then marry someone of your father's choosing. It was usually like a politically or financially advantageous match. Once you've done that, you would then do your duty of popping out as many children, hopefully sons, as humanly possible, hopefully not dying in the process. And then once you've managed to do all of that, you were just expected to maintain the sort of domestic harmony of the house. You oversaw the children and their educations, and you made sure that your husband's needs were seen to, but women had, if they were lucky, they had certain religious responsibilities that they were they were sort of given. But overall, there was, I think, at least from a legal moral standpoint, this understanding that women were seen but not heard. And I think when we start to get into the late Roman Republic, which has been dubbed by some, the age of the Roman matron, is when you start to see these women who are starting to exceed what may be worthy expectations put on them by society, and starting to maneuver politically. I think it was, it was Dr Jane Draycott said in her book that, I'm paraphrasing here, but it was something along the lines of, women couldn't hold power for themselves, but they could exert power over the people who held power. And so I think we're starting to see more of that happening in a more obvious way, towards the sort of late Republic, but it was very much not within the realm of of the sort of expectations and responsibilities that they had. Like these were people who were very much, yeah, that's great, but I'm going to do this. Dr Rad 8:18 Yeah, it's almost like when you start to get more men competing like you do in the sort of late Republic, as in, you start to get, I suppose, these real rivalries coming through, you know, the age of the over mighty generals and whatnot. It does sort of give, I suppose, the women in their lives also a pathway that they can potentially use. Should they be so inclined to try and gain some more power for themselves as well, and maybe also feel a little bit more ambitious. I mean, God knows, that's what the men were doing in this time period. So why not? So Fulvia is obviously one of the standout characters from this time period. Is why you probably focused on her, but she's not someone who's necessarily widely known to most people, unless they really study this period. So how did Fulvia stand out? How did she go against these expectations? Kaarina Parker 9:13 I feel that Fulvia was really quite exceptional, both, you know, as a historical figure for us looking back, but then also within her time period, like to to her contemporaries. I think she was exceptional in that she was obviously this very ambitious woman. And there were other ambitious women kicking around at that time that we are, we know about. But she was different, at least from my view. And before I would get into this, I want to make it clear that for me, I try really hard to differentiate when I'm talking about Fulvia, the historical figure, and Fulvia the character in my book, because obviously there are differences. It is historical fiction, and I've spent the last 10 years. Of my life, kind of creating this version of her who lives in my head and now lives in the book, who's very heavily informed by the historical figure. But obviously there are parts where I've taken license, so I try not to blow the lines too much when I'm talking specifically about like the history as we know it, but that probably will happen where you'll hear me assigning personal traits to her, and you'll be like, Oh, she a close personal friend of yours? Even just from reading the sources, the picture that I've always sort of built of her is that she's she is this deeply ambitious woman, but of the other women of her era who are kind of considered now to be the standouts. You know, you have your Servilias, your Terentia, Clodia Metelli, even if you go a little bit further back, Cornelia of the Gracchi. The thing about these women is that their ambition is known to us relative to the men in their lives. So for Clodia, she was, if we are going to talk about her political ambition, and not all of the other amazing things about her. You know, she was ambitious on behalf of her brother. Servilia was ambitious on behalf of her son and possibly lover. And you know, Terentia, obviously wife of Cicero, and then you've got Cornelia with her sons, and also her connection to her father. Fulvia is the one who really kind of stands out in that, yes, she she had these three husbands, and she worked hard to advance their careers. But her ambitions do seem to have been personal. She was ambitious for herself. She wanted power. And in some ways, I think you can make the argument that she used her marriages to leverage her way to power, which was a real sort of inversion of the status quo, which is that normally, that would have been done the other way around. And I do think that she was singular in her time for that reason. And I do, I like to think that, you know, a young Livia, or even a young Agrippina would have, like, had a had a fresco of Fulvia on their wall and been like, I want to be just like her when I grow up. Because she was kind of, she set the standard for that, that ambitious woman who wanted power for herself. She wanted to be the most powerful woman in Rome, and she achieved it briefly. We love that for her. Dr G 12:32 She made it! Kaarina Parker 12:34 She did it! Dr Rad 12:34 I must admit, whenever I teach the Julio-Claudians and Agrippina the Younger to my classes, I have absolutely always taken the point of view that you have, that I bet they knew exactly who Fulvia was and what she tried to do, and perhaps learnt from some of her mistakes, let's say, but certainly been inspired by what she attempted to do, and that she may be somewhat smooth the path for the women that most people have heard of, because they become part of this dynasty. But Fulvia in this pre-dynastic Rome, I think really was a game changer. Kaarina Parker 13:20 Yeah, and it's interesting to think about if, if the civil war between Antonius and Octavian had played out differently, and there'd been a dynasty built from their lineage. How that might have changed things we'll never know, Dr Rad 13:38 Don't tempt me. Kaarina Parker 13:40 We'll never know. But someone should make a TV show about it. Dr Rad 13:43 Yeah! Dr G 13:45 What a launching point for a speculative series as well. I do love the the idea that you've mentioned here, which is that she's pursuing ambition for herself, because I do wonder, from a historical perspective, whether she would have known that that's what she was doing at the time, or whether she was looking at those other ambitious Roman matrons around her and being like, No, I'm just, I'm just doing what, what ambitious women do, and maybe not seeing herself as being particularly out there, but maybe achieving at a higher level over time. And I don't know, obviously, this is completely speculative, but I do like this idea that it seems potentially from from a point of view of of now that maybe she was doing something different, but I wonder if she herself realized that she was doing something quite different, or she was just genuinely, revolutionary without realizing it. And either way, it makes her an incredible figure. And I think this leads in really nicely to thinking about the source tradition that we do have for Fulvia, because it is a largely negative source tradition. And. And I'm interested in what you made of it? Kaarina Parker 15:06 I have lifelong personal beef with Cicero, this is not the only reason, but it's one of many reasons. , Dr G 15:17 Look he's not a super likable guy in many respects, he seems like a complainer. Kaarina Parker 15:22 No, you know, like, yes, he was a brilliant philosopher and intellectual, and he had interesting ideas. I'll not deny any of that. I just think he was a bit of a twat, and I think that his opinions about women were wrong. Dr G 15:42 You heard it here first, guys. Dr Rad 15:46 Do you mean a ancient Roman man didn't have super enlightened views on the status of women? Kaarina Parker 15:55 I know Dr Rad 15:56 This is brand new information. Kaarina Parker 16:00 All of his peers were such staunch feminists, and he just had to come along and be the chauvinist among them. I found it very painful going through because the basically, the way that I got into researching Fulvia specifically, was that I, one of my majors at Melbourne was history, and I specialized in Roman history, and I wrote, I was writing a research essay. It was like, the entire grade, essentially was was resting on this one research essay. And the professor just said, write about whatever you want, as long as it's in the Roman Republic. And I was like, cool. I was gonna do, you know, the boring old like triumvirate or something. I was kicking around trying to think what to write about. And then I remembered I'd heard of servilia. And so then I thought, oh, maybe instead of writing about Caesar, what about Servilia? And then I kind of went on this journey of and then I was like, maybe I'll write about more than one Roman woman. And then, so then I was like, Okay, I'm gonna find a triumvirate of Roman women who were kicking around at the same time write about them. So I found Servilia, and then I found Clodia Metelli, who I am also in love with. But then through her, I found Fulvia. And I'd heard of Fulvia because I had, I'd read that brilliant Plutarch quote: "She took no thought of spinning or housekeeping. She wanted to rule a ruler and command a commander". I'd read that in a footnote in a paper. I read about Antonius, and I was like, Oh, wait, hold on, that was - this is Antonius' wife. And then found the connection to Clodius. And then I started reading, and it was just like, I couldn't stop. And I just, I became so obsessed with her. My friends all got really sick of hearing about her. I got, I have her name tattooed on my ribs like it was, it was like a whole night, I just really imprinted on this historical figure. And that was kind of what eventually led me to this. But in that process of just even writing that research essay for university, trying to find evidence of her, explicit evidence of her life in the ancient sources, was hard enough, and then almost everything I did find was, I think, intended to be slanderous. But what I do find quite, quite ironic about that is that all of the things that was said about her during her life or just after which, I think, were intended to sort of darken her character and make us see what an immoral and evil, vengeful, greedy woman she was. These are all things that modern day women love. These all the things that make her such a fascinating, interesting figure to us now. So to Cicero, I say pffff basically. Dr Rad 19:07 You failed. You failed. Kaarina Parker 19:08 You failed, but Dr G 19:11 Your hatred has just made my passion grow stronger. Kaarina Parker 19:16 So Cicero is kind of the only contemporary source that we have in terms of he was alive at the same time as her, and he had many reasons, political, social, cultural reasons to dislike her and her retinue of husbands, and everything that he said about her was negative, even though, like I said, it's they're all things that just make me love her more. But I do think also a part of the reason that we we have for someone who was arguably such a an important figure in the late Republic, you know, she was one of the one of the chosen few who heralded the sort of fall of the Republic, and she was a power player during. That time, and all of the other power players, you know, the Agrippas, Augustus, Antony, even Cleopatra, we know so much about them. Fulvia, we know so little. And yet what we do know, we know that she was such an important part of that. My personal theory about that is that I think it was part of, obviously, once Augustus found his way to power, he went about this sort of propagandist campaign of, kind of deifying himself and almost making it seem like his rise to power was ordained by the gods. And, you know, like mythologizing his family history and and I think a big part of that was erasing Fulvia's role in it, firstly, because he could never admit how close he came to losing it all to a woman. And secondly, because obviously part of his cultural overhaul when he came into power was this attempt to rein in the wealthy upper class women and sort of get them out of the senate house and back into making babies. And so I think allowing women like filvia to have a significant role in Rome's story kind of went against that. So I do think I do wonder sometimes if that is another part of the reason why there seems to be a disproportionate amount of evidence missing about her, as opposed to her peers from that exact period of time. Dr Rad 21:35 No, it's an interesting thought, because I guess you said totally right as Dr G well knows, I do consider Augustus to be the devil and the master of spin, and he did have a delicate, tight rope to walk once he was the last man standing. And I think part of that is he obviously does want to create this narrative, and he has the time to do it. Surprisingly, nobody expected that to happen. And with Mark Antony being his great rival, Bart also being someone who was a part of his family history, you know, someone who, because of the marriage between Augustus sister Octavia and Antonius and the children that they had. You can't obvious - you know you have to be careful how you handle Mark Antony and as well, obviously avoiding that whole civil war narrative, potentially trying to negotiate that Cleopatra can't be erased, because she's obviously a big reason of why they allegedly went to war. It's not civil war. It's war against Egypt. It's war against Cleopatra, but Fulvia, she's not needed for any of this, you know, and you don't have to be delicate with her. You don't have to have the kid gloves on to handle her. Part of the story, she can just be kind of lifted out to a certain extent, I often wonder if that has something to do with it as well. Kaarina Parker 23:04 Yeah. Dr Rad 23:07 Now your novel, obviously, is trying to take on Fulvia's point of view and sort of give us insight into her character. To what extent would you say that this novel is an attempt to sort of recenter women's agency in a room that, as we've been discussing, is relatively patriarchal? Kaarina Parker 23:29 I think that was definitely part of my my intention. I when I, like first began working on this, I really was just writing about Fulvia, who actually started during my honours year, when I was procrastinating working on my thesis and I would just write these little like fictionalized snippets of the historical moments as I was reading about them in my research. I think the first thing I ever wrote was her with sister is seven head so that was it really was just like a procrastination passion project that then over the next 10 years, morphed into an actual book. And I think that at some point along the way, I did become more intentional about it in that respect. I mean, you can't, you can't write a book about a woman during this period of time and not then intentionally or otherwise, end up centering the lives of women, although I suppose you could, because actually, as I say that I have read books before where they might not the that might not be like a female main character, but it'll be, you know, like this book about Caesar or something, and the women are there, and they have their own lives, but everything that happens in their lives is relative to the men. Men, and all of their their stories and their thoughts and their feelings revolve around the Caesars of the world, and that was something I wanted to avoid. Obviously, you can't avoid it completely. Unfortunately, there were men there, but, and you know, obviously I knew that there were certain men who would have to play a larger role, like Clodius, for example, but I wanted to spend as much of the book as I could with women in women's spaces in ancient Rome. But then also one thing that I think makes fulvius so interesting, both as a historical figure and as a character, is her, sort of, her yearning to be in these like, quote, unquote, male spaces and partaking in these male activities of, like politicking. And the way over the course of her life that she sort of managed to do that, and it was almost kind of transgressive, her ability to partake in male activities, male dominated industries, but in female spaces, you know, like having having this like politicking happen in the private parts of her home with Antonius, just something that shocked and horrified Cicero, but I think is really interesting, and so I kind of wanted to explore that idea of because obviously the book is taking place during one of the most interesting turbulent times in Roman history. There are these big historical events happening that are relative to the novel, both because they're shaping the world that Fulvia lives in, and also because in some aspects, she's a part of those historical events. So it was a real challenge finding ways to portray and live in those events while centering a female character, because firstly, there are spaces in Rome she can't go to. So there are certain, if I'm telling the book from her perspective, there are certain things I can never show her. So it was sort of finding ways around that, and then also showing that and talking about the politics of it all, while not then having it just be a book about a woman in Rome sitting in a house hearing about politics. You know, it's like she there's also wanted her to have relationships with other women and show the aspects of her daily life, the sort of religious rituals she was partaking in. And the didn't want to skip over, obviously, the childbirth and but then again, I didn't want it to just become about, oh, she has kids now. Now the story is about her being a mother, like I wanted it to sort of reflect how I envisioned her as a person, which is that she had this child, or she had these children, and then was like, cool. Back to work, because she kind of what she was. She was a working mother in many ways. Dr Rad 28:00 Tick that off the list. Yup. Dr G 28:04 Done my duty, and now back to the good stuff. Kaarina Parker 28:06 So, so, yeah, I definitely, I was, I was definitely trying to do that, but within the constraints of Rome. Dr G 28:19 And I think you really do an admirable job, because it is such a delicate balance to find a way to bring this world to life, which can feel overwhelming, because this is the period of history that for any undergraduate student, it's one of the core topics, because there is so much evidence. All of a sudden, we've had all of these gaps in ancient source material, and then we hit the late Republic, and we're almost overwhelmed by the amount of material we have. And for some scholars, that's where they stay for the rest of their lives. So to try and take on board that sense of immensity of the weight of these events and how much source material we have for them, and then to turn at a slight angle and be like, All right, Fulvia, what you're doing in this space right now, while these men are sort of doing these relatively chaotic things, and the Republic is sort of falling apart, and they don't realize it yet. And for her to be standing really close by bearing witness, and for it to be her life, and her for wanting to be involved in it. And I think by centering her perspective, you're able to touch lightly on some of like those heavy political moments, and to give her perspective on them with an appreciation that she is not a historian herself. She's living in this moment in Rome's period of history. It's not necessarily the case that she or anybody around her have the foresight to understand where all of this is going right now. She has to live in that moment, and I think you do that really well with this book. And so I think for people who are interested in Roman history and are not sure where to start, and it. Interested in women in the ancient world. This is a great entry point, because it gives you a chance to experience it with a lighter touch than what you would get if you say went with something like Colleen McCulloch's series which also has really interesting female characters in it, but is doing it very much in a more male centered way. And I think this is a nice difference that you're offering into this space. So we can't get away from the marriage aspect of this. Fulvia's marriages are very important. And I'm interested because we start off with essentially this book opens with her meeting coming to Rome and meeting the guy that's going to be her first husband, Publius Clodius Pulcher and I'm interested in what we know about that marriage from the ancient evidence? Kaarina Parker 30:53 I'm afraid I'm going to have to bring up Cicero again. I hate to do it, but unfortunately, a lot of what we know about the marriage between full bear and Clodius is from Cicero, because Clodius and Cicero had a very tumultuous political relationship. And you know, Cicero is a huge fan of throwing shade across the forum at anyone who he he was taking issue with in the Senate, and a lot of the time that was Clodius. And so reading through a lot of Cicero's speeches and also his like snarky little letters he was writing to his pen pals, we start to sort of see a picture build of this relationship, but again, very aware that it's Cicero's impression. And so it's not only informed by Cicero's own terrible thoughts and opinions, it's also informed by the lens through which Rome perceived these things. So it's like, you don't want to fall into the trap of interpreting that through our lens, because you're trying to, sort of, there's like so many layers. You're trying to, kind of put all of them into place so that you can see right through to the truth of the situation, and then from, from the perspective of of like, narratively writing the book, obviously, I always knew that the Clodius relationship was going to be important, because it's her first marriage. It's her, according to the ancient sources, her sort of most important marriage in terms of her development as a person. You know, she was quite young when she married him, although quite old by Roman standards, young by our standards, and sort of developed as a person, I think, quite a lot during their marriage, the person she was when she came in, versus when it ended, there's such a sort of significant shift of her becoming the person who did all of these incredible things later in life. So I knew that, from a sort of character and a narrative standpoint, the marriage was going to be really important. I so I went and pulled what I could from the history, which was one of one of the remarks of Cicero's that I really enjoyed was that I can't quote the exact translation, but it was something along the lines of, it was so rare to ever see Clodius without Fulvia. They were always together. And I found that really interesting, because that does not seem to have been the norm in Rome, in that obviously, it was rare that men and women were in the same space, obviously, if they were going to a dinner party or something, but generally, they got kind of doing their own things during the day. They had their own lives. But these two were always together to such a point that it's remarked upon by their peers multiple times, which therefore means that, you know, Claudius was bringing full view into these public spaces. She was making a point of being beside him, especially once he became even more of a disrupter, and he was, you know, staging riots and rallies and everything, and she was there beside him in a space that was really not designed for women to be so that that was something that I kind of always had in the back of my mind. But then I think a big part of like writing historical fiction is finding, finding the gaps of what's not in the sources, and then that's where you can kind of come in and bring your creative license to turn it into a story. And so I was always really interested in, if this is the historical reality of their relationship, what would the personal, intimate dynamic of their relationship be? And this is probably the closest I came in. Look to bringing more of a sort of modern understanding of things in that I did, kind of in my head. I always envisioned it that they almost had a sort of an almost queer relationship, in the sense of the shifting of the gender dynamics, where personality wise, you know, you have Fulvia is inhabiting these personality traits that the Romans associated with manhood and like, you know, Virtus, and she's powerful and she's ambitious and she cares about the future of Rome. And then you have Clodius, who's kind of frivolous and naughty. He's like, he, he's just kind of doing, he's almost like a trickster god sort of character. You know, he's there in the book. I mean, he's, he's just, he's there for a good time, not a long time, you know, he just wants to do the funniest thing, just to see what will happen. And yes, he he is ambitious, and he does have this sort of overarching idea of, like, Yeah, I'd like to be rich, and I'd like to be powerful, and I, and I think Fulvia is the one who comes along and helps to kind of shape that into a truer sense of ambition, of, oh, actually, if I could get into this position, then I could make this happen, and then we could do this. And then it's like the two of them come together to create this monster that is then capable of navigating the very particular shark infested waters of the late Roman republic. But then, like in the sort of romantic, sexual dynamic of their relationship. There is also still this kind of almost queerness to it, where it is almost kind of like, emotionally, she's the top and he's the bottom, kind of where he's he's very not subservient to her. But I wanted to play with this idea that Clodius has grown up with his sister Clodia, being this person who has shaped his life and who he's always kind of looked up to and admired, and she has really kind of shaped both his idea of of life and fun, and what's the point of anything, but also of women and what women can and should be. And so when Fulvia comes along, Clodius is already pre-loaded with this acceptance and almost like understanding and expectation of a woman being a little bit more domineering and powerful and being like, No, we're going to do this. And so like more so than any of the other men around him, he's kind of already quite susceptible to that, because it's what he's grown up with, and it's what he finds comforting and familiar. And Fulvia is then able to come in and then grow and exercise that part of her personality in a way that she wouldn't if she'd been married off to someone else who would have had a zero tolerance policy for that kind of behavior. So it's like she's able to grow into a more kind of, quote, unquote, masculine presence within that relationship. But then they also both benefit from the fact that they're still doing what they should be doing. They're married and they're having children, and they have a son, so they're not doing anything wrong by societal standards, but they are also both allowing each other to grow into quite taboo versions of themselves. There's a conversation in the book between them where Clodius says, I think if you'd been born a man, you would have made consul. And I really that it's that kind of idea of like they see the truth of each other, and they're not scared to kind of both say it out loud and then play to that in their lives. And so they're sort of like true allies in disruption in that sense. Dr Rad 38:58 Yeah, it's so interesting because, as you've highlighted there, all three of those characters you were just talking about, so much of the source material about them is just slander. And trying to figure out exactly who they were as people is incredibly hard, I imagine, particularly if you are writing the historical fiction side, where you need to get inside their heads. But nonetheless, even though you know there's this particular perspective that you're being presented when you're looking at the ancient material about them, you do get a real sense that all three of these characters there is something inherently edgy and different about them in comparison to some of their peers. Kaarina Parker 39:42 Yeah. Dr Rad 39:43 So I think this is probably a good moment to talk about the Bona Dea, because that kind of leans into what you were just talking about in terms of Clodius' behaviour and some of the things that made him particularly notorious. So the Bona Dea, "the Good Goddess", holds particular significance in late Republican Rome, partly because there is this major right that is held in her honour, and it's attended exclusively by the women of the Roman aristocracy, of which Fulvia is obviously a part. How does Fulvia's story intersect with the Bona Dea? Kaarina Parker 40:18 So in the history, we don't know the exact date of when Fulvia and Clodius were actually married, so we don't know if she was already married to him when the Bona Dea incident occurred, or if she married him after that, and actually, if that happening was part of maybe the reason that they were matched up together, I choose to believe that they were together when it happened. I always knew - I always knew that I wanted the Bona Dea to be like a sort of significant narrative beat in the story, because, firstly, it happens early in their marriage. So it's a really interesting way of exploring their dynamic. The incident itself has always fascinated me, both the fact that we have so many different versions of events, you know, the end of the day, we will never know the truth of what happens, and also because we only know so much about the Bona Dea itself, about what really was happening as part of the ritual. And I mean any event that involves a group of rich, bored women, that's deeply secretive, and there are no men allowed. I'm always going to want to know what's going on there. That's always going to interest me. When you put it in ancient Rome as well. There's just like a whole nother layer, because then it's like they really could be doing anything in there. So I the way that Clo-, that Fulvia's story, intersects, is that, like you said, the Bona Dea was attended only by high born Roman women, but specifically they had to be married. So if that was another reason was that if Fulvia and Clodius were not yet married, she would not have been in attendance at the festival, and it would have been a lot harder to do what I wanted to do, selfishly, which was set a scene of the book in the festival. So she, if her and Clodius are married at the time, she would have been attending the festival, which happened over the course of, I think it was two nights, and this particular one was hosted by Pompeia, who was the very young new wife of Julius Caesar, who is the pontifus maximus. And so Fulvia would have gone along to this mysterious women's festival that happened at night. And it was there really couldn't be any men there, to the point that they had to cover up depictions of men and the mosaics and the paintings, and they had to take all the sculptures and all the male animals had to be taken out of the house, and Dr Rad 43:10 It's quite an undertaking. Kaarina Parker 43:11 I just love that. It was always going to be a really interesting part of the book. But then it's like, also allows you to kind of see this really chaotic side of Clodius, as well as this deep sense of entitlement, of he really doesn't think there are going to be any consequences, like, he really thinks everyone's going to find this funny. It's never occurred to him that he could get in serious trouble for something like this. And then you've got Fulvia, who is sort of, she's quite young at this point. I think she's only about 19, 18-19, in the book. So she's kind of torn between also finding it sort of funny, because it is, it is quite funny. But she also has this ability to see, oh, this, this could go seriously wrong for us. Like, yeah, haha funny, but also, go home and don't say to anyone that you were here. So basically, the the incident of the Bona Dea and the history. What we what we know for a fact is that the festival happened. At some point during the festival, there was an intruder dressed very convincingly as one of the female flute players, one of the slaves who was part of the entertainment for the festival, and it turned out to be allegedly Clodius Pulcher in disguise. He was discovered, chased off the premises, and then chaos ensued. Some people say that he was trying to sleep with Caesar's wife. Some people say that it was a dare. Some people say he was trying to sleep with his own sister, who knows the truth of it. In the book, I chose to go with the idea that he was genuinely just so violently overcome by the need to know what was happening at this mysterious women's festival, he was so unable to grasp the concept of him not being allowed to go somewhere or not being allowed to see something, that he was really to risk it all just to know the answer to this question, because I actually find that much more interesting than any of the more kind of salacious ideas. And then for Fulvia, it's, you know, she she's now been put into this position of, oh, yeah, haha. But it's not that serious, right? She then learns very quickly that her marriage to Clodius, while it might empower her in some ways, it also it's not a fail safe. She doesn't have any children by him yet, and if he goes down, either she goes down with him or her, his family will throw her under the bus. So it's also kind of like a crash course for her and learning okay, we now need to navigate this like significant social, political, legal scandal. I need to figure out both how to help you, because you're my husband and I love you, but also because if you go down, I'm going down with you, but I also need to figure out how to navigate this for myself. She's thinking a lot about how she's being perceived by the public, especially around the time of the trial she it's kind of the first time that she's really sort of coming to terms of the fact that she's in the public eye. Now she is a public figure. She it's in her power to decide what people see when they look at her, but she has to be very deliberate about what she allows them to see. So I always knew that that was going to be a sort of turning point of the book, and doing the research for it was, was definitely one of my favorite parts of of writing this book. Dr G 47:07 I think it's a fabulous story in and of itself, even just what we have from the historical record is incredible enough so to be able to weave that into a narrative as well, I think people are in for a fantastic time, because the Bona Dea is one of these incredibly mysterious goddesses that for all of the study of her, we tend to know very little, and there's lots of room to build her up and to figure out what it would have been like had you been in the house. And not for a moment do I think that anybody who studied this period has not tried to envisage what it would have been like inside that house, which immediately makes Claudius motive in this novel completely understandable. Kaarina Parker 47:51 Yeah Dr G 47:52 It's like we all want to know what's going on in there. Like, come on, ladies, what are you doing? Why can't anybody see? Dr Rad 47:59 Why do you need so long? Dr G 48:02 Yeah, why is it taking days? So I think it's a fantastic insight into some of the more quirky and mysterious sides of the totality that is Roman ritual practice at this point in time, the way it goes so wrong, leading to all of these political implications obviously opens up things really nicely for thinking about how fullvia might have started to have to navigate some of these things as well. So to wrap things up, what do you wish that more people knew about the women of the late Republic? Kaarina Parker 48:40 Oh, I just wish people knew how interesting they were, that their lives have so much to teach us outside of their proximity to Julius Caesar and Augustus and Cicero, I, you know, power to those guys, but I think we've learned enough about Caesar and Antony and Cicero, like they've, they're, you know, wells of information. Love that for them, they lived incredible lives. They did amazing things. They've shaped history as we know it. Cool. The women who were moving alongside and around them are so fascinating, both because they had this proximity to them and yet lived entirely separate, singular lives. There's this whole side of Roman society that I think people who are sort of have, kind of like, you know, base level knowledge about the Roman Republic or even the Empire, are just completely unaware of because it's not deemed by the historiography to be interesting enough, or it's not. It can't be succinctly tied to Caesar, and therefore Augustus, and therefore the Empire, and therefore it's not worth learning about. I think the really interesting human part of it, the part that I think really draws people to history, the part that allows you to look at it and get that sense of, you know, they're just like us. They were just real people with real lives. That side of that comes in in the lives of the women, the enslaved people, the queer people, the people whose stories have not been deemed by 2000 years of historiography to be interesting enough to focus on Fulvia is, to me, the most exceptional of those women. But there are so many of them. There's Terentia, Tullia, Hortensia, Cornelia of the Gracchi is very interesting figure, Servilia, Clodia Metelli, Caecilia Metella. There's so many women who are worth knowing about. They're just as worth knowing about as Cicero or Caesar or Antony or Agrippa or Augustus or Pompey or Crassus, or any of those guys. And so I just wish that there was more of a normalization of placing their lives and their stories alongside these more familiar names. You know, I don't think anyone should be learning about Antony and not also learning about Fulvia. Dr G 51:32 Hear, hear. Kaarina Parker 51:35 That's That's crazy to me. Like, why? Why? So, yeah, I just think the women are where, where the humanity is and where the stories are. And I think I just wish people had more of a hunger and also more of more access to those stories. Dr Rad 51:59 We often lament the loss of the memoirs of Agrippina. However, you have definitely highlighted that it would be so awesome to get just something from the perspective of any of these women who are living in the late just a little bit from their own perspective, and not something that we have to, you know, dissect, because it's from the perspective of their enemy or a man who didn't like them. Because, whilst we don't want to overstate what women were capable of doing in a society that is no doubt highly patriarchal, at the same time, there is this intriguing possibility, I think, for women in this time period, particularly women of this elite class, because of the little quirks of Roman society about women's relationship to wealth. You know how they're potentially able to hold it themselves, and also the peculiarities of Roman marriage by this point in time. You know the way that it works. It does open up the door potentially for a little bit more freedom than they had, certainly in the time period that Dr G and I are looking at, or in other societies at around the same time period. Dr G 53:20 And I'm wondering as well, so we've seen Fulvia in this amazing novel. Can we expect more? Kaarina Parker 53:30 Yes, so obviously, the novel Fulvia only covers sort of part of her story. So there is a sequel. It's coming out on the first of July this year, and it's, it's called "To Rule a Ruler". Dr Rad 53:48 Nice. Kaarina Parker 53:49 So that will sort of go from it picks up pretty maybe a year after the last book finishes and takes us right through to Sicyon and 40 BC, so... Dr Rad 54:03 Fantastic. I was gonna ask you, just for your own sake, if you wanted to tell us about how Cicero ends up. But you know what? Maybe I'll save that question for another chat. Kaarina Parker 54:14 I will tell you that was the most fun I've had. That was, that was 28 - no, well, 32 years of academic angst, all coming, coming to bear in one delicious chapter. Yes, I can't wait. I've also, do you know Flora Kirk? I think she, her artist handle is Flaroh Dr Rad 54:39 Yes well, I'm actually wearing some of her artwork right now. Kaarina Parker 54:43 Oh yes, I'm a huge fan of my office's plastered in her work. I have commissioned a piece from her of the that particular the scene. Dr G 54:57 Ooo yes Kaarina Parker 54:57 So I'm very excited, very excited. For all of that to be out in the world. Dr Rad 55:02 Sounds like we might have to have you back - find out where this all ends up. Dr G 55:07 Hmm yes. So thank you so much for joining us today. We've really appreciated you taking the time to bring Fulvia to life in this new way, and we definitely encourage people to seek out your book and enjoy it for themselves. Kaarina Parker 55:21 Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Dr G 55:37 Thanks for listening. If you'd like to support the podcast, you can find us on Patreon and Ko-Fi. We've also published two books on ancient Roman history. "Rex: The Seven Kings of Rome", examines the different literary accounts of the earliest rulers recorded in Roman history. "Your Cheeky Guide to the Roman Empire" is full of the sorts of stories the Romans wished you didn't know about them, and is guaranteed to make the interesting conversation. Thank you to all our Patreon supporters. We are truly humbled by your patronage. Transcribed by https://otter.ai