Professor Butter Beard and Livia Drusilla
“He had it comin'
He had it comin'
He only had himself to blame
If you'd have been there
If you'd have seen it
I betcha you would have done the same!”
– “Cell Block Tango,” lyrics written by Fred Ebb
Pop! Six! Squish! Uh-uh! Cicero! Lipschitz! So sing the merry ladies of the Chicago cell block as they plead self-defense against their charges of cold-blooded murder. Can anyone actually say they have never entertained the thought, or gone so far as to imagine the scene and weapon? Will it be the knife in the kitchen? The candlestick in the conservatory? The lead pipe in the lounge? Or maybe the poisoned fig on the terrace…..
This tango of scenarios mischievously played out in my daydreams this week as I researched the sculptures depicting Livia Drusilla, the first Roman empress and wife of the emperor Augustus.
“Livia: a blight upon the nation as a mother, a blight upon the house of Caesar as a stepmother,” wrote Tacitus, the 1st century Roman historian and politician, in his damning assessment of Livia Drusilla. The ancient historian elaborated that Livia seduced and manipulated her husband, Emperor Augustus, as she cast her spiderweb spell, and banished (or had killed) every potential heir to the throne in order to promote her own son (Augustus's stepson Tiberius) as his successor. The empress was even suspected of foul play when the emperor finally dropped dead in 14 CE in his seventies. But let’s step back for a moment and set the stage for suspected murder.
Livia Drusilla was born on January 30th, 59 BCE as the daughter of Marcus Livius Drusus Claudianus by his wife Alfidia. Her father married her at the age of 16 to Tiberius Claudius Nero, her cousin of patrician status who was fighting with him on the side of Julius Caesar's assassins against Octavian (the future Augustus). Her first child, the future emperor Tiberius, was born in 42 BCE. In 40 BCE, the family was forced to flee Italy in order to avoid the recriminations of Octavian in the aftermath of the siege of Perusia.
After peace was established, a general amnesty was announced and Livia returned to Rome where she was personally introduced to Octavian in 39 BCE. At this time, she was heavily pregnant with her second son, Nero Claudius Drusus. Legend said that Octavian fell immediately in love with her, despite the fact that he was still actually married to Scribonia. Octavian divorced Scribonia two months later, on the very day that she gave birth to his daughter Julia the Elder. Tiberius Claudius Nero was persuaded (or forced) by Octavian to divorce Livia and the two lovebirds married in January, waiving the Roman traditional waiting period.
It was only two short years later, writes Robin Lane Fox, that wicked gossip began filtering through Rome that Livia was “poisoning rivals and procuring young girls for the moral Augustus and smuggling them secretly into the house on the Palatine.” Interestingly, her marketing image was quite different. By 36 BCE, Livia shared the “sacrosanctity” of a tribune with her husband – a most unrepublican honor for a female! She provided financing for the restoration of temples in Rome for cults which were associated with respectable women and provided her name for public porticos in Rome showcasing colonnades with trompe l’oeil landscape paintings and public displays of contemporary works of art.
But the whisperings of gossip grew louder and louder. Rumor had it that Livia was behind the sudden death of Augustus' nephew Marcellus in 23 BCE. After Julia the Elder's two elder sons, whom Augustus had adopted as sons and successors, had “mysteriously” died, the one remaining son, Agrippa Postumus, who was adopted at the same time as Livia’s son Tiberius, was sent into exile and eventually murdered. The spider webs threads were slowly weaving their way back to Livia.
Augustus himself died on August 19th, 14 CE. In his will, he left one third of his property to Livia, and the other two thirds to Tiberius, the newly crowned Emperor. These dispositions permitted Livia to maintain her status and power after her husband's death, under the new name of Julia Augusta. Rumors swept through Rome, according to Tacitus, that Augustus was maliciously poisoned by Livia. The most famous of these rumors was that Livia, unable to poison his food in the kitchens because Augustus insisted on only eating figs picked fresh from his garden, smeared each fruit with poison while still on the tree in order to preempt him. In Imperial times, a variety of fig cultivated in Roman gardens was called the “Liviana,” perhaps because of her reputed horticultural abilities, or as a tongue-in-cheek reference to this rumor of cold-blooded murder.
The novelist Robert Graves drew on Tactitus’ accounts when he wrote “I, Claudius,” his gripping novel about the family, told from the perspective of Livia's stuttering grandson, the Emperor Claudius. The empress emerges from his book as a scheming and jealous busybody with an enviable wardrobe and acid tongue. Playing the role in the 1976 TV adaptation, Siân Phillips captured magnificently the ease with which this icy “materfamilias” was said to have manipulated and murdered the men around her – and I remember her at the time scaring me even more furiously than the Wicked Witch of the West.
Livia and her figs followed me into the kitchen this week. I imagine her (or more specifically Siân Phillips) suggesting that the juicy bite of a ripe fig plucked from the tree would be the perfect remedy for such a sticky hot humid day on the terrace. I present my figs lounging atop the perfect temptation of a pistachio olive oil cake seductively scented with lemon zest and rose water. Will there be gossip? I kinda hope so.
“If you'd have been there. If you'd have seen it. I betcha you would have done the same!”
Pistachio Olive Oil Cakes with Fresh Figs
3 Loaf Cakes (or 1 Loaf and 24 Muffin-Size Cakes)
2 cups pistachios (finely ground)
3 cups granulated sugar
Zest of 2 lemons
1 ½ cups high quality olive oil
6 eggs, room temperature
1 cup buttermilk
2 tsp vanilla paste
2 tsp rose water (optional)
3 ½ cups all-purpose flour
4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp fine sea salt
8-9 fresh figs
Confectioner’s sugar for final dusting
1) Preheat your oven to 325 degrees and spray your loaf pans with non-stick spray and line with parchment (or fill two muffin pans with liners and prep one loaf pan).
2) To grind your pistachios, add ½ cup at a time to a food processor and process to a fine grind. You want to keep the amounts small so that it doesn’t turn into paste.
3) In a medium bowl, whisk together the all-purpose flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
4) In the bowl of a standing mixer, whisk together the sugar and lemon zest until fully mixed and aromatic. Add the eggs and olive oil and mix until fluffy – about 1 minute. Switch to the paddle and mix in the buttermilk, vanilla paste, rose water, vanilla and the ground pistachios.
5) Remove the bowl from the mixer and fold in the dry mixture until fully incorporated.
6) Divide the batter between the three loaf pans, or fill up the muffin liners ¾ full.
7) Bake the loaves for 40-50 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean. If baking in muffin tins, reduce the baking time to 18-20 minutes just until the top is golden and firm to the touch.
8) Let the cakes cool five minutes. Slice the figs into ¼” slices and lay one slice on each mini-cake or divide between the top of the three loaves.
9) Sprinkle the top with confectioner’s sugar.
