Claudia Octavia
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- For other Roman noble women of this name, see Octavia.
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Claudia Octavia or Octavia Neronis (Classical Latin: CLAVDIA•OCTAVIA<ref>E. Groag, A. Stein, L. Petersen - e.a. (edd.), Prosopographia Imperii Romani saeculi I, II et III (PIR), Berlin, 1933 - C 1110</ref>) (Late 39 or early 40 - 9 June 62) was a Roman Empress, step-sister and first wife to Roman Emperor Nero.
Octavia was the only daughter of Roman Emperor Claudius by his third marriage to his second cousin Valeria Messalina. She was named in honour of her great-grandmother, Octavia Minor, the elder sister of Emperor Caesar Augustus. Her elder half-sister was Claudia Antonia and her full sibling was Britannicus.
She was born in Rome. As a young girl, her father betrothed her to future praetor Lucius Junius Silanus Torquatus, who like Octavia was a descendant of Caesar Augustus.
Octavia's mother was executed in 48, for conspiring to murder her father. Claudius later remarried her paternal first cousin and his own niece Agrippina the Younger. Agrippina the Younger had a son from her first marriage, Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus (future Emperor Nero).
Agrippina the Younger, through her plotting and manipulating, ended the engagement between Octavia and Lucius Silanus and persuaded Claudius to adopt Nero as his son and heir and arranged for Octavia and Nero to marry on 9 June 53.
Claudius died on 13 October 54 and Nero became the new Emperor. Britannicus was poisoned by Nero. Tacitus states that from this moment Octavia became very unhappy, but learned to hide her affections and feelings around her husband. Octavia was caught up between the power struggles between Nero and his mother, which concluded when Nero murdered his mother in March 59.
Tacitus describes her as an ‘aristocratic and virtuous wife‘. Empress Octavia was admired by the Roman citizen body.
Although Octavia was loved by the Roman people, Nero and Octavia had an unhappy marriage. Both Suetonius and Tacitus state that Nero hated Octavia and got very bored of her. At one point, Nero’s friends showed their concerns about his treatment of Octavia, but Nero made excuses to them about her.
According to Suetonius, Nero tried unsuccessfully on several occasions to strangle Octavia. Nero had an affair with a freedwoman named Acte, who was later replaced by Poppaea Sabina.
Nero wanted to marry Poppaea (who was then pregnant with their child). He divorced Octavia, claiming she was barren. Nero and Poppaea married twelve days after the divorce.
Octavia was falsely accused and charged by Nero and Poppaea with adultery and was banished and confined to the island of Pandateria. When Octavia complained at this treatment, her maids were tortured to death.
Octavia's banishment became so unpopular that the citizens of Rome protested loudly, openly parading through the streets with statues of Octavia decked with flowers and calling for her return. Nero (badly frightened) nearly agreed to remarry Octavia, but Poppaea intervened and forced him instead to sign Octavia's death warrant.
A few days later, Octavia was bound and her veins were opened in a traditional Roman suicide ritual. The exceedingly hot vapour-bath in which she was placed suffocated her before she could bleed to death. Octavia’s head was cut off and sent to Poppaea.
Her death brought much sorrow to Rome. According to Suetonius, years later Nero would have nightmares about his mother and Octavia.
The events of the divorce are dramatised in Octavia by Seneca the Younger and, more recently, in Handel's lost opera Nero, Octavia (opera, 1705) by Keiser, and Claudio Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea. Octavia is a character in the novel and television series I Claudius and Claudius the God.
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[edit] Notes
[edit] Sources
- Suetonius - The Twelve Caesars - Claudius and Nero.
- Tacitus - The Annals of Imperial Rome.
[edit] References
- E. Groag, A. Stein, L. Petersen - e.a. (edd.), Prosopographia Imperii Romani saeculi I, II et III, Berlin, 1933 - . (PIR2)
- Levick, Barbara, Claudius. Yale University Press, New Haven, 1990.
- Barrett, Anthony A., Agrippina: Sex, Power and Politics in the Early Roman Empire. Yale University Press, New Haven, 1996.
[edit] External links
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