Abstract
“The philosopher Julia,” as she is called by a 3rd century historian, lived during the period which followed Marcus Aurelius the Stoic and preceded Plotinus the Neoplatonist.1 Though, so far as we know, she did not write any philosophical works, she devoted herself to the study of philosophy when her busy life as an empress permitted. Among those who have been called philosophers she is, with the possible exception of Marcus Aurelius, unique in having her name on more than three hundred and fifty different varieties of coins and on more than one hundred and eighty public buildings or statues and in being officially declared a divinity.2
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Notes
Philostratus, The Lives of the Sophists, tr. by W.C. Wright (London: William Heinemann; New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1922 ), pp. 300–301.
Gerard J. Murphy, The Reign of the Emperor L. Septimius Severus from the Evidence of the Inscriptions ( Jersey City, N.J.: St. Peters College Press, 1945 ), pp. 103–104
Mary Gilmore Williams, “Studies in the Lives of Roman Empresses: Julia Domna,” American Journal of Archaeology vol. 6 (1902), p. 304 & p. 297
Maurice Platnauer, The Life and Reign of the Emperor Lucius Septimius Severus (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1970 reprint of 1918 edition), p. 144.
Godfrey Turton, The Syrian Princesses: The Women Who Ruled Rome A.D. 193–235 (London: Cassell & Co., 1974), pp. 3–13; Platnauer, op. cit., p. 46.
On Julia’s name, see Anthony Birley, Septimius Severus: The African Emperor (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1971), pp. 118, 297
On the sun-god Elagabalus, see Herodian of Antioch, History of the Roman Empire from the Death of Marcus Aurelius to the Accession of Gordian III,tr. by Edward C. Echols (Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1961), Bk 5, chap. 3, p. 139.
Williams, p. 275; Joseph McCabe, The Empresses of Rome ( New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1911 ), p. 202.
Joseph Owens, A History of Ancient Western Philosophy ( New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1959 ), pp. 157–165
Kathleen Freeman, Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers ( Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1948 ), pp. 125–129.
Philostratus, Letter 73: “To Julia Augusta,” in Letters of Alciphron, Aelian, and Philostratus, tr. by A.R. Benner & Francis H. Fobes (Cambridge: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, 1949 ), pp. 541–545.
B.F. Harris, “Apollonius of Tyana: Fact and Fiction,” The Journal of Religious History, vol. 5 (1969), pp. 189–199.
Owens, op. cit.,pp. 30–33; Iamblichus, Life of Pythagoras,tr. by Thomas Taylor (London: John M. Watkins, 1965, reprint of 1818 ed.).
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© 1987 Kluwer Academic Publishers
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Zedler, B.H. (1987). Julia Domna. In: Waithe, M.E. (eds) A History of Women Philosophers. A History of Women Philosophers, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3497-9_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3497-9_8
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