Caeso'nia
or according to Dio Cassius (59.23), MILONIA CAESONIA, was at first the mistress and afterwards the wife of the emperor Caligula.
She was neither handsome nor young when Caligula fell in love with her; but she was a woman of the greatest licentiousness, and, at the time when her intimacy with Caligula began, she was already mother of three daughters by another man. Caligula was then married to Lollia Paullina, whom however he divorced in order to marry Caesonia, who was with child by him, A. D. 38.
According to Suetonius (
Suet. Cal. 25) Caligula married her on the same day that she was delivered of a daughter (Julia Drusilla); whereas, according to Dio Cassius, this daughter was born one month after the marriage. Caesonia contrived to preserve the attachment of her imperial husband down to the end of his life (
Suet. Cal. 33,
38; Dion. Cass. 59.28); but she is said to have effected this by love-potions, which she gave him to drink, and to which some persons attributed the unsettled state of Caligula's mental powers during the latter years of his life. Caesonia and her daughter were put to death on the same day that Caligula was murdered, A. D. 41. (
Suet. Cal. 59;
D. C. 59.29;
J. AJ 19.2.4.)
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