So, I decided to look into this whole Milonia Caesonia business. You hear the name, figure, okay, Roman empress, should be straightforward enough to get the story, right? Like picking up a manual and expecting it to make sense. Ha!
Turns out, getting a clear picture of this woman is like trying to assemble a jigsaw puzzle where half the pieces are missing, and the other half are from different damn puzzles. It ain't just one simple story. It's a whole mess of bits and pieces, and none of 'em fit together neatly.
What a Tangled Web
First, you got your Suetonius. Then you got your Cassius Dio. And let's not forget Tacitus, though he barely gives her a nod. Each one hands you a slightly different version, like they're all describing different women sometimes. It's a proper mash-up.
- Suetonius will tell you Caligula supposedly married her the very day she was wedding another guy, or that she wasn't young, nor a looker, and already had three daughters by someone else – then he flips and says Caligula was madly in love with only her. Try making sense of that!
- Dio then wades in with his own take, usually more over-the-top, less, you know, nailed down.
- And then you’ve got all these modern historians sifting through this ancient gossip, each pushing their own pet theories. Some paint her as a total nobody, others as some sharp political operator. Who the hell are you supposed to believe?
The entire thing is a crazy quilt. You think you’re getting a straight historical lowdown, but what you’re really wading through is layer upon layer of interpretation, old biases, and pure guesswork. It’s like those companies where one department is coding in Java, another’s on Python, a third is messing with some ancient COBOL, and none of it syncs up. You end up with a monster of a system that's a complete headache to figure out, never mind keep running. That's Milonia Caesonia for you – a historical records disaster.
You're probably sitting there thinking why on earth I’d sink my teeth this deep into such a convoluted mess. Well, it wasn’t for some high-brow university paper, I can tell you that much. The honest truth? My kid had this school assignment on "lesser-known historical figures." Seemed like a walk in the park to help out, right? Find someone not everyone and their dog knows. I bumped into Milonia Caesonia's name, thought, "Bingo! Short, simple, job done."
Simple? It was a blasted rabbit warren. I wasted days, man, chasing down every little clue, trying to wrestle out something, anything, solid enough for a ten-year-old's class presentation. I’m talking about burning the midnight oil, squinting at Latin translations I could barely make heads or tails of, getting all wound up over academics still fighting about whether she was "wild" or "loyal" two millennia ago. My wife started giving me the side-eye, probably thought I’d finally cracked. And maybe I had, just a touch.
So, yeah, that there was my "practice." A long, aggravating slog through the sheer bedlam of ancient accounts. And what did we eventually slap into that school project? The absolute bare-bones, agreed-upon stuff, with a big fat disclaimer saying "most historians can't agree on the rest." That pretty much nails my whole Milonia Caesonia adventure. A real piece of work, she was. Or, more accurately, trying to get a handle on her was.
