Women's fate in John Williams's Augustus

Toward the end of John Williams's Augustus (1972) the focus sharpens on Augustus' daughter Julia, obviously his equal in intelligence and determination but with never a chance for power or authority on her own; in fact, more and more we see that the women in the family of the Emperor are very much like pawns in the game - divorcing and re-marrying at the command of the Emperor for the sole reason of building alliances and consolidating power. Only Julia balks at this, but in the end she does comply with her father's dictates; he's not a brute and actually feels terrible about ordering her to marry a mean and nasty guy, Tiberious Nero. So the women are forced into unhappy marriages - however, in consolation, there's overall acceptance and tolerance of the women having multiple affairs and flings, with the men stationed in far away military outposts. I don't know much about the various historical figures from ancient Rome, but any reader will recognize the name Nero and deduce that Julia's marriage to him did nothing to advance the fortunes of her family; in fact, much of the text of this novel is from Julia's imagined diary from her time in exile, ca 2 AD, on an island off the coast of Italy - a victim of the hazards of marrying to build family alliances.