    12

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    It wouldn't be that easy.  There were rival claimants to the seat of

    imperial authority.  First in line were two of Augustus' old friends and

    confidants.  But more important, there were Augustus' three

    grandchildren by the previous wife.  One by one, according to Graves,

    the rivals died off.  Some collapsed mysteriously.  Others came down

    with lingering diseases.  Yet others suffered inconsequential wounds,

    but were given the wrong medical treatment.  Surely Livia's expertise

    in poisons and her network of murderous helpers--much like the

    cooperatively cannibalistic crones in Effie the gorilla's clique--had

    nothing to do with these deaths.

    Finally, only Livia's children were left, as Graves put it, "to carry

    on the line... Livia's line."24  Livia, like Effie, had eliminated her

    children's rivals and guaranteed her offspring a spot on the top of the

    heap.  At least she had the good taste not to eat her victims.

    One Empress in China roughly 1,700 years ago took Livia's

    ambition several giant steps further.  To insure her children power

    over the Empire, she eliminated every single individual in a rival

    extended family.  In all probability, this minor act of manslaughter was

    not limited to a mere handful of human obstacles.  Chinese noble

    families of the period usually had hundreds or even thousands of

    members.25

    Livia, Effie and the Chinese Empress were as bloodthirsty as any

    male.  And the motivation that drove them was distinctly

    maternal--the desire to give every advantage to their young.

    Women are violent.  In fact, females are as much a part of the

    apparatus that triggers male violence as the men themselves.  Nobel

    Prize-winning ethologist Konrad Lorenz described a common behavior

    in several species of ducks.  The female  runs out to the edge of her

    husband's territory and tries to provoke another duck, then runs back

    to her male, stands next to him, and looks back over her shoulder at the

    enraged rival in the hope that her mate will jump into the fray.26  Many

    are the human females who have tried to stir up a similar fight.27

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