This paper concerns the figure of Servilia, a matrona who lived in the late Roman
Republic and who was the mother of M. Junius Brutus, the half-sister of Cato of Utica,
the mistress and close friend of Julius Caesar. During her existence, she was the focus of
a web of relationships with politicians belonging to different parties. In particular, the
study aims to reconstruct her political behaviour ‘behind the curtain’ during the historical
events which occurred after Caesar’s assassination, when she played a very important
role for the Caesaricide faction, until the death of Brutus and Cassius. The analysis of
literary sources, in particular Cicero’s corre-spondence, allows to underline, on the one
hand, the actions that qualify her as a woman extra mores, though legitimized by the
pietas that she displayed in her son’s interest; on the other hand, the use of traditionally
masculine media, especially the verbal one, which alienates Servilia from the feminine
canon of the mos ma-iorum but which justifies her enterprise because of the particular
historical context of the late Roman Republic.
