This article is about the sister of Caligula. For the fictional character, see Drusilla (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

Julia Drusilla (September, 16 - June 10, 38) was a daughter to Germanicus and Agrippina the Elder. She had two sisters (Julia Livilla, Agrippina the younger) and five brothers (Nero Caesar, Drusus Caesar, Tiberius Caesar, Gaius Julius Caesar and Gaius Caesar Germanicus). The later brother was nicknamed Caligula and later became the third Roman Emperor (reigning AD March 28, 37 - January 24, 41).

She was born in Ambitarvium, north of the later city of Koblenz, Germany. She was married in 33 to Lucius Cassius Longinus. The couple divorced in 37. By that time Caligula had reputedly become a lover to all three of his sisters. He might have instructed the couple to divorce.

Shortly after, Drusilla had her second marriage to Marcus Aemilius Lepidus. He was reputed to be a male lover to Caligula. Robert Graves' I, Claudius nicknamed him Ganymede after the male lover of Zeus. Lepidus' great-grandfather Lucius Aemilius Lepidus was son to Marcus Aemilius Lepidus and Appuleia, brother to the Marcus Aemilius Lepidus who had served as member of the Second Triumvirate and himself Consul in 50 BC. His grandfather Aemilius Lepidus Paullus had replaced Lucius Scribonius Libo as consul in 34 BC and served as censor in 22 BC. His paternal grandmother Cornelia was probably a member of the gens Cornelia. His father Lucius Aemilius Paullus served as a Consul in AD 1. His mother Vipsania Julia was daughter to a Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa and a granddaughter of the Emperor Augustus.

Drusilla was reportedly a favorite to her brother and lover. This role likely gained her some influence over him as well as being a source of personal profit. However the activities between brother and sister were seen as incest by their contemporaries. Drusilla herself earned a rather poor reputation and was even likened to a prostitute by later scholars.

She died on June 10, 38 AD, reportedly from loss of blood during anal sex. In a more sinister account given by Suetonius, Drusilla became pregnant with Caligula's child and that in a panic he disembowelled her. He did so in the belief that the child of their union was divine and so represented a threat to his throne. Caligula buried his sister with the honors of an Augusta, acted as a grieving widower and had the Roman Senate declare her a Goddess as "Diva Drusilla", apparently officially deifying his personal sex goddess. She was notably the first woman in Roman history to be deified.

A year later, Caligula named his only known daughter Julia Drusilla after his late favorite sister. Meanwhile her widowed husband Marcus Aemilius Lepidus reportedly became a lover to her sisters Livilla and Agrippina. This in an apparent attempt to gain their support in succeeding Caligula. The conspiracy was discovered by Caligula while in Germania Superior during the autumn. Lepidus was swiftly executed.

Caligula has been suggested to be motivated by more than mere lust or love in pursuing relations with his sisters. He might instead have deliberately paterned himself after the Hellenistic Monarchs of the Ptolemaic dynasty where marriages between jointly ruling brothers and sisters had become tradition rather than sex scandals. This has also been used to explain his despotism being apparently more evident to his contemporaries than those of his predecessors Caesar Augustus and Tiberius.

Teresa Ann Savoy played Drusilla in the 1979 motion picture "Caligula",and Beth Morris played her in the 1976 miniseries adaptation of I, Claudius,where the disembowellment story was used though scenes alluding to it were cut from it before showing in the United States.

External links

• A list of members of the gens Aemilia who were her relations by marriage (http://web.genealogie.free.fr/Les_dynasties/Antiquite/Rome_et_Constantinople/Gentes/A_Gentes.htm)