A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country/Fulvia
After the victory gained at Philippi by Octavius and Antony, the latter went into Asia to settle the affairs of the east, and Octavius returned to Rome, where, happening to quarrel with Fulvia, she took arms against him; and was not satisfied with retiring to Præneste, and drawing thither the knights and senators of her party, but armed herself in person, gave the word to the soldiers, and harangued them.
"She was a woman," says Plutarch, "not born for spinning or housewifry, nor one that could be content with the power of ruling a private husband; but a lady capable of advising a magistrate, and of ruling the general of an army, so that Cleopatra had great obligations to her, for having taught Antony to be obedient." Antony, however, upbraided her so bitterly for entering into this war, that she went into Greece, where she contracted a disease through the violence of her anger, of which she died. During the massacres committed by the triumvirate on the great and leading men of the city, in which her husband was a principal actor, Fulvia assisted him to the utmost of her power. She put several persons to death of her own accord, to gratify either her avarice or revenge. Antony caused the heads of the principal to be set on a table before him, that he might feast his eyes with the sight. Amongst them was that of Cicero, which he ordered to be fixed on the rostrum, where that great orator had often so gloriously defended his country; but first, Fulvia took the head, spat upon it, and placing it on her lap, drew out the tongue, which she pierced several times with her bodkin, uttering all the while the most opprobrious and reviling language. "Behold," says Mr. Bayle, "a woman of a strange species. There are some villains whom we are almost forced to admire, because they shew a certain greatness of soul in their crimes; here is nothing to be seen but brutality, baseness, and cowardice, and one cannot help conceiving an indignation full of contempt."