Julia Drusilla - Cultural References

Cultural References

• In Robert Graves' novel I, Claudius the narrator says that he believes that Drusilla was killed by Caligula, although he admits that he does not have firm evidence of this.

• This was embellished considerably in the 1976 BBC television adaptation, where she was played by Beth Morris. A pregnant Drusilla was subjected to an amateurish Caesarean section (in imitation of the birth of Athena) by an insane Caligula, who then swallows the child as Zeus did, though scenes alluding to the death were cut from it before showing in the United States. They were restored for the VHS and DVD releases.

• Teresa Ann Savoy played Drusilla in the 1979 motion picture Caligula, which showed the more plausible version of Drusilla dying from the fever, though it did follow up with a highly unlikely scene of Caligula licking her corpse in mourning and then having sex with it one last time (although the latter half of the sequence got deleted from all the released versions of the film).