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in the age of the little boys or girls they commemorate. It was also a very dangerous time for the mother and many women died during or soon after childbirth. The Roman aristocracy used marriage to cement political alliances, so women like Julia were usually young – quite often in their mid teens – for their first pregnancy.
    In this case everything seems to have gone smoothly. A boy was born and when the midwife laid the infant down for inspection there was no sign of deformity or unusual weakness. Julia would produce two more sons in fairly rapid succession and all grew into healthy adults, and she would herself enjoy a long life. Some children were rejected by their parents, but in well-off families this was usually only the case if they had serious defects or seemed far too weak to survive. There was no question of that in this case and once Antony’s father was shown his son, he and Julia quickly accepted the child. 1
    Ritual was everywhere in Roman society and marked every stage of an individual’s life. Fires were lit on the family altars in the house. The witnesses would also make offerings when they returned to their own homes. On the night of 21/22 January, the family held a vigil and performed a series of rituals as part of a purification ceremony
(lustratio).
The next morning priests observed the flight of birds to predict what the future held for the boy. He was also presented with a talisman or charm called the
bulla.
This was normally of gold and was placed in a leather bag around the boy’s neck. He would wear this until he became an adult.
    On the day of the purification the boy was formally named as Marcus Antonius and soon afterwards this was registered officially. ‘Antonius’ was the family or clan name – in Latin, the
nomen.
Most Roman aristocrats had three names, the
tria nomina
and the
nomen
were followed by a
cognomen
peculiar to that section of the wider family or clan. Julia’s father was called Lucius Julius Caesar. The Julii were a large and very ancient group, and the more specific ‘Caesar’, which first appeared at the turn of the third and second centuries BC, helped to differentiate the various branches of the line. Some families, including the Antonii, never felt this necessary, probably because there were not many branches of the line. 2
    â€˜Marcus’ was the
praenomen
equivalent to our first name (or in Britain, still habitually, the Christian name). Although it was not an absolutely fixed system, aristocratic families tended to employ the same names in the same order for each generation. Antony’s father was also called Marcus Antonius, as was his father. In due course his two brothers were named Caius and Lucius. In formal documents each would also be listed as ‘son of Marcus’.
    It was important in Roman public life to identify a man very specifically. The same was not true of women, who could not vote or stand for office. Girls received only a single name, their father’s
nomen
in the feminine form. Therefore Antony’s mother was Julia because her father was a Julius. Any daughter born to an Antonius was named Antonia and if more than one daughter was born these were simply numbered – at least for official purposes. Families tended to employ nicknames to avoid confusion.
    Julia was a patrician, but her husband’s family was plebeian and so were her children. The patricians were Rome’s oldest aristocracy and in the early days of the Republic only they could hold the consulship. Over time many wealthy plebeian families forced their way into politics and were able to demand a greater share of power. It was eventually established that one of the two consuls each year must be plebeian, and as time passed it became reasonably common for neither to be a patrician. Some patrician lines dwindled in wealth and influence, and others died out altogether. By the first century BC the overwhelming majority of