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The Death Row Baseball Team and Other Odd Episodes in History

Khalid Elhassan May 18, 2020 34 min

Death Row All Stars: A Story of Baseball, Corruption, and Murder - State Penitentiary — Alston's All Stars. Daily Mail

17. Augustus Was So Serious About Morality Laws That he Exiled His Daughter and Granddaughter, and Killed His Great Grandson

Augustus’ daughter, Julia the Elder. Wikimedia

One of Emperor Augustus’ morality laws, enacted in 18 BC, codified a father’s traditional rights if he caught somebody engaged in adultery with his daughter. The father could legally kill the lover, as well as his daughter, whether in his own house or in the house of his son-in-law. Ironically, Augustus’ own daughter, Julia the Elder, ran afoul of those anti-adultery laws.

The exiled Julia the Younger, imagined in ‘Grotto in the Gulf of Salerno’ by Joseph Wright of Derby, 1774. Imgur

The emperor did not kill his daughter, but to save face, he had her exiled in 2 BC, first to a small island, then to a tiny village in the toe of Italy. She remained in exile for the rest of her life. In 8 AD, Augustus’ granddaughter, Julia the Younger, also got caught up in an adultery scandal with a Roman Senator. The emperor exiled her to a remote island, where she gave birth to a love child. Augustus ordered the infant exposed.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.