In the long Chiaramonte Gallery of the Vatican Museum is an exquisite and uninjured bust of Domitia Longina as a girl; the face is one that holds the passer-by, it is so sweet, so beautiful, so full of a glorious soul.
In the Florence Gallery is one of the same woman after Domitian had snatched her away from Lamia, and hidden her in his Alban villa. Lovely the face is still, but the beautiful soul has lost its light, the softness has gone out of the face, and the shadow of a darkened life broods over it.
At Albanum the solitary Domitia had the satisfaction of being attended by her servant Euphrosyne, and the faithful Eboracus was also allowed to be there as her minister.
She occasionally visited her mother in Rome, but the chasm between them widened. Duilia could not understand her daughter’s refusal to accept the inevitable and failure to lay hold of her opportunities, and, as she termed it, “eat her rat.” The older Duilia grew, the less inclined she was to acknowledge her age, and the more frivolous and scheming she became. She was never weary of weaving little webs of mystery and of contriving plans; and the initiating of all these was a supper. She was well off, liked ostentation, yet was withal of a frugal mind, and never ordered costly dishes, or broached her best wine without calculation that they would lead to valuable results.
It was possible that Vespasian might have interfered in favor of Domitia, had he been made to understand how strongly she disliked the union, but Domitia herself was never able to obtain an interview with the aged Emperor, and Duilia took pains to assure him that the marriage had been contracted entirely with her approval, that the union with Lamia had been entered on without feeling on either side, in obedience to an expressed wish of Corbulo before his death, and that her daughter was quite content to be released.
The period was not one in which the personal feelings of a girl were counted as deserving of much thought, certainly not of being considered by an Emperor, and Vespasian took no steps to relieve Domitia. Titus was better aware of the facts, and had some notion of the wrench it had been to the young married people, but he was not desirous of having the matter reopened. It would not conduce to the credit of the Flavian house, and that was in his eyes a matter of paramount consideration—as the process of deification of the Flavians had already begun.