Servilia Caeponis is best known for being the lifelong mistress of Julius Caesar. She was born into the Servilli gens, an ancient patrician family that traced its family tree back to a Roman hero of the fifth century BC, anmed Gaius Servilius Ahala. Servilia's father was Quintus Servilius Caepio and her mother was Livia Drusa. Her parents divorced when Servilia was still a child but not before giving birth to her two younger siblings, a brother named Quintus Servilius Caepio after his father, and a sister who shared her name. As was the ancient Roman custom daughters were only given the feminine form of the family name. Since they shared the same name, the younger sister was known as Servilia the Younger.
After her parents divorced, her mother married Marcus Porcius Cato and became mother to Servilia's half-brother, Marcus Porcius Cato (known as Cato the Younger) who became a fierce political opponent of Julius Caesar. When she was still a child, both her mother and stepfather died leaving Servilia and her full and half siblings to be raised by her uncle, Marcus Livius Drusus.
Sometime before 85 BC, Servilia married Marcus Junius Brutus. The couple had only one child that is recorded by history, a son also named Marcus Junius Brutus. Servilia's first husband died in 77 BC during the civil conflict between the forces of Sulla led by Pompeius Magnus (Pompey the Great) and those of the populares. Brutus was murdered by Geminius, an ally of Pompeius Magnus. Following the death of her husband, Servilia married Decimus Junius Silanus. The couple had three daughters, all named Junia.
History doesn't record when Servillia began her relationship with Caesar but it was some time before 64 BC and likely much earlier. It was later rumored that Marcus Junius Brutus the Younger was Caesar's son, but this is unlikely, as Caesar was fewer than seventeen years older that young Brutus. In 63 BC, during a debate in the Senate, Servilia sent Caesar a love letter that was apparently quite scandalous. The letter was handed to Caesar during the debate over the fates of the Catiline conspirators. Sevilia's half-brother Marcus Cato, an outspoken and often virulent political opponent of Caesar's assumed the letter was from one or more of the conspirators and angrily demanded he read the letter to the assembled senators. When Caesar declined, Cato demanded he be allowed to read the letter. When he did read it, Cato was embarrassed and mortified by the intimate details of the letter from his half-sister to his bitter rival.
While there is more to be told about this remarkable woman, Nomenclator: Initium only follows her life to this point and it would be a disservice to the reader to reveal any more until the story unfolds in the coming Nomenclator novels.
