when Caesar was eagerly engaged in a great struggle with [Servilia's half-brother] Cato and the attention of the senate was fixed upon the two men, a little note was brought in from outside to Caesar. Cato tried to fix suspicion upon the matter and alleged that it had something to do with the conspiracy, and bade him read the writing aloud. Then Caesar handed the note to Cato, who stood near him. But when Cato had read the note, which was an unchaste letter from Servilia to Caesar, with whom she was passionately and guiltily in love, he threw it to Caesar, saying, "Take it, thou sot," and then resumed his speech.
Caesar was very fond of Servilia and, years later, when he returned to a chaotic Rome after the Gallic Wars, he offered her a priceless black pearl. Also, in the words of Life of Julius Caesar, 50.2:
But beyond all others Caesar loved Servilia, the mother of Marcus Brutus, for whom in his first consulship [in 59] he bought a pearl costing six million sesterces. During the civil war, too, besides other presents, he knocked down some fine estates to her in a state auction at a nominal price, and when some expressed their surprise at the low figure, Cicero wittily remarked: "It's a better bargain than you think, for there is a third off [in Latin, Tertia - a pun on her daughter Junia Tertia ]." And in fact it was thought that Servilia was prostituting her own daughter Tertia to Caesar.
Some also rumoured Tertia to be Caesar's child, but it is unlikely both rumours could be true at once.
Assassination of Caesar
After the assassination of Caesar by her son Brutus (and her son-in-law Cassius), the conspirators met at Servilia's house. Despite this, she herself escaped the purges of the second triumvirate unscathed. After Brutus' death she lived in the care of Cicero's friend Titus Pomponius Atticus. Her son's ashes were sent to her from Philippi and she died naturally, as did her youngest daughter Junia Tertia.
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