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Vistilia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Vistilia was a Roman woman who lived in the first century and came from a family that held the praetorship. Her brother was probably Sextus Vistilius, a former praetor, who was a former close friend to late Roman General Nero Claudius Drusus. Nero Claudius Drusus was the younger brother to Roman Emperor Tiberius. In 32, Tiberius charged him for criticizing the morals of his great-nephew, Caligula. For this, Tiberius excluded Sextus from his company. Sextus committed suicide in 32.
Vistilia was married six times and had seven children. The most famous among them were Milonia Caesonia, who became a Roman Empress and fourth wife to Roman Emperor Caligula, Caesonia’s younger half-brother Roman General and Consul Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo, who was the father to Roman Empress Domitia Longina, P. Suillius Rufus, a senator and infamous prosecutor in the reign of Claudius, the senator and poet P. Pomponius Secundus, and his brother Q. Pomponius Secundus, also a senator during the reign of Tiberius.
According to Tacitus (Annals 2.85), another Vistilia, probably the daughter of Sextus Vistilius and thus the elder Vistilia's niece, was a public prostitute who advertised her services to the aediles of Rome. In 19, the Roman Senate passed a law that no Roman woman whose father or grandfather was of equestrian status or higher could register as a prostitute.
Vistilia was accordingly tried by the Roman Senate for immorality. Her husband, Titidius Labeo, asked why he had not tried to enforce the statutory penalty, stated the consultation period (which was 60 days) had not yet expired. The senate decided to prosecute only Vistilia (under Roman law, husbands who did not immediately punish adulterous wives could be tried as pimps) (Justinian, Digest 48.5.2). Vistilia was found guilty of prostitution and she was deported to the Greek Island of Seriphos.