Abstract

The year of Livia's birth is nowhere explicitly recorded in any ancient sources, and can be determined only by calculating back from the date given in the sources for the year of her death. Both Tacitus and Dio place that death securely in A.D. 29. Tacitus limits himself to the observation that by then she had lived into extreme old age, aetate extrema, but Dio adds the more precise and useful information that at the time of her death she had lived for eighty-six years: ef ξ καì ὀγδοκουτα τη ζσασα Less usefully, Pliny the Elder states that Livia herself attributed her eighty-two years to her consumption of Pucine wine, which she drank exclusively . Whatever the merits of Pliny's health tips, his chronological information is of little service in determining when she was born