Caenis

Template:Short description Template:About Template:Flavian dynasty Antonia Caenis, (died 75 AD) a former slave and secretary of Antonia Minor (mother of the emperor Claudius), was Roman emperor Vespasian's contubernalis.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Life

It could be thought that she had family in Istria, now in Croatia, based on a trip she took there (Suet. Dom. 12.3). In her 30s Caenis, still possibly a slave, was in an unofficial type of relationship with Vespasian, known as contubernium,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> before his marriage. According to Suetonius, after the death of Vespasian's wife Flavia Domitilla, Vespasian and Caenis, now a freedwoman, resumed their relationship; she was his wife "in all but name" until her death in AD 75.

According to Cassius Dio, she had a remarkable memory and considerable influence on the emperor's administration, carried out official business on his behalf, and apparently made a lot of money from her position.<ref>(Cassius Dio 66.14)</ref> However, Suetonius states that she was treated with disrespect by Vespasian's son Domitian, who refused to greet her as one of the family.<ref>(Suet. Dom. 12.3)</ref>

Popular culture

File:CIL VI 12037.jpg

Inscription commemorating Caenis, described by the historian Suetonius as the "almost wife" of Vespasian<ref>CIL 6.12037</ref>

The life of Caenis and her love-story with Vespasian are portrayed in Lindsey Davis's novel The Course of Honour. She is also a character who features regularly in Robert Fabbri's Vespasian series, in which she is depicted as a long-lost grand-niece of the king of the Caenii, a rebelling tribe in Thracia.

Robert Graves, in his short story "Caenis on Incest", used her as a kind of foil to present what he then thought to have been the underlying reason for the power-related murders chronicled in I, Claudius. The story is included in his compendium "Occupation: Writer", and he admits to having missed the real reason for the murders in the introduction to that anthology. <ref> "Caenis on Incest A.D. 75 (1946)" from "Occupation: Writer" Universal Library, Grosset and Dunlap, 1950</ref>

See also

• List of slaves
• Claudia Acte
• Galeria Lysistrate
• Marcia (mistress of Commodus)

Sources

• Suetonius, Lives of the Twelve Caesars: Vespasian 3, 21; Domitian 12.3
• Dio Cassius, Roman History 66.14
• William Smith (1870), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology