Tertulla was the wife of Marcus Licinius Crassus, "the richest man in Rome", and the mother of his two sons.
[2][3] This was highly unusual at the time in Rome but reflected well on her husband as it was considered dutiful and selfless.
There were frequent jokes in Rome that one of her and Crassus' sons looked like a man by the name Axius from Reate.
[11] Tertulla appears as a character in Colleen McCullough's Masters of Rome series, in her novels Tertulla is depicted as being the widow of both of Crassus's brothers, and her son Publius the Younger is actually an earlier child from her marriage to Publius the Elder and not Marcus Crassus.
[12] In McCullough's works she is depicted as being from the gens Axia but chooses to go by "Tertulla" because she was married to three brothers, and because it sounds more Latin.