Octavia

1. Ὀκταουία. The elder daughter of C. Octavius, praetor, B. C. 61, by his first wife, Ancharia, and half-sister of the emperor, Augustus. (Suet. Aug. 4.) Plutarch erroneously makes this Octavia the wife of Marcellus and of M. Antonius.

2. The younger daughter of C. Octavius, by his second wife, Atia, and own sister of the emperor, Augustus, was married first to C. Marcellus, consul, B. C. 50, and subsequently to the triumvir, M. Antonius. (Suet. l.c.) Plutarch (Plut. Ant. 31), as has been remarked above, makes the elder Octavia the wife of the triumvir; and he has lately found a supporter of his opinion in Weichert (De Cassio Parmensi, p. 348, &c.), though some modern scholars, adopting the views of Perizonius, have decided in favour of the authority of Suetonius. The question is fully discussed by Drumann (Geschichte Roms, vol. iv. p. 235), who adheres, on good reasons as it appears to us, to the opinion of Perizonius; but for the arguments adduced on each side of the question we must refer the reader to Drumann.

Octavia had been married to Marcellus before the year B. C. 54, for Julius Caesar, who was her great uncle, was anxious to divorce her from Marcellus that she might marry Pompey, who had then just lost his wife, Julia, the only daughter of Caesar. (Suet. Jul. 27.) Pompey, however, declined the proposal, and Octavia's husband continued to be one of the warmest opponents of Caesar. [Marcellus, No. 14.] But after the battle of Pharsalia he sued for and easily obtained the forgiveness of the conqueror; and Octavia appears to have lived quietly with her husband at Rome till the assassination of the dictator in B. C. 44. She lost her husband towards the latter end of B. C. 41; and as Fulvia, the wife of Antony, died about the same time, Octavianus and Antony, who had lately been at variance, cemented their reconciliation by the marriage of Octavia to Antony. Octavia was at the time pregnant by her former husband, but the senate passed a decree by which she was permitted to marry at once. This marriage caused the greatest joy among all classes, and especially in the army, and was regarded as a harbinger of a lasting peace. Octavianus was warmly attached to his sister, and she possessed all the charms, accomplishments and virtues likely to fascinate the affections and secure a lasting influence over the mind of a husband. Her beauty was universally allowed to be superior to that of Cleopatra, and her virtue was such as to excite even admiration in an age of growing licentiousness and corruption. Plutarch only expresses the feelings of her contemporaries when he calls her χρῆμα θαν- υαστὸν γυναικός. (Plut. Ant. 31.) Nor at first did this union disappoint public expectation. By the side of Octavia, Antony for a time forgot Cleopatra, and the misunderstandings and jealousies which had again arisen between her brother and husband, and which threatened an open rupture in the year 36, were removed by her influence and intervention. But Antony had by this time become tired of his wife; a virtuous woman soon palled the sated appetite of such a profligate debauchee, and he now longed to enjoy again the wanton charms of his former mistress, Cleopatra. The war with the Parthians summoned him to the East, to which he went with all the greater pleasure, as in the East he would again meet with the Egyptian queen. Octavia accompanied him from Italy as far as Corcyra, but upon arriving at that island he sent her back to her brother, under the pretext of not exposing her to the perils and hardships of the war (D. C. 48.54) ; though, according to other authorities, he parted with her in Italy. (Plut. Ant. 35; Appian. B. C. 5.95.) On arriving in Asia, Antony soon forgot, in the arms of Cleopatra, both his wife and the Parthians, and thus sullied both his own honour and that of the Roman arms. Octavia, however, resolved to make an effort to regain the lost affections of her husband. In the following year, B. C. 35, she set out from Italy with reinforcements of men and money to assist Antony in his war against Artavasdes, king of Armenia; but Antony resolved not to meet the woman whom he had so deeply injured, and accordingly sent her a message, when she had arrived as far as Athens, requesting her to return home. Octavia obeyed; she was great-minded enough to send him the money and troops, and he mean enough to accept them. It is stated that Octavianus had supplied her with the troops because he foresaw the way in which Antony would act, and was anxious to obtain additional grounds to justify him in the impending war. On her return to Rome, Octavianus ordered her to leave her husband's house and come and reside with him, but she refused to do so, and would not appear as one of the causes of the war ; she remained in her husband's abode, where she educated Antony's younger son, by Fulvia, with her own children. (Plut. Ant. 53, 54.) But this noble conduct had no effect upon the hardened heart of Antony, who had become the complete slave of Cleopatra; and when the war broke out in B. C. 32, he sent his faithful wife a bill of divorce. After the death of Antony she still remained true to the interests of his children, not-withstanding the wrongs she had received from their father. For Julus, the younger son of Antony, by Fulvia, she obtained the special favour of Augustus, and she even brought up with maternal care his children by Cleopatra. She died in B. C. 11, and was buried in the Julian heroum, where Augustus delivered the funeral oration in her honour, but separated from the corpse by a hanging. Her funeral was a public one; her sons-in-law carried her to the grave; but many of the honours decreed by the senate were declined by the emperor. (D. C. 54.35; Senec. ad Polyb. 34.)

Octavia had five children, three by Marcellus, a son and two daughters, and two by Antony, both daughters. Her son, M. Marcellus, was adopted by Octavianus, and was destined to be his successor, but died in B. C. 23. [Marcellus, No. 15.] Of her two daughters by her former husband, one was married to Ms. Agrippa, and subsequently to Julus Antonius [Marcella], but of the fate of the other daughter we have no information. The descendants of her two daughters by Antonius successively ruled the Roman world. The elder of them married L. Domitius Ahenobarbus, and became the grandmother of the emperor Nero; the younger of them married Drusus, the brother of the emperor Tiberius, and became the mother of the emperor Claudius, and the grandmother of the emperor Caligula. [Antonia, Nos. 5 and 6.] A complete view of the descendants of Octavia is given in the stemma on p. 7.

(The authorities for the life of Octavia are collected by Drumann. Geschichte Roms, vol. v. pp. 235-244. The most important passages are :--Appian, App. BC 5.64, 67, 93, 95, 138; D. C. 47.7, 48.31. 54, 49.33, 1. 3, 26, 51.15, 54.35; Plut. Ant. 31, 33, 35, 57, 59, 87; Suet. Jul. 27, Aug. 4, 61.)

One of the most important public buildings erected in Rome in the reign of Augustus was called after Octavia, and bore the name of Porticus Octaviae. It must be carefully distinguished from the Porticus Octaviaa, which was built by Cn. Octavius, who commanded the fleet in the war against Perseus, king of Macedonia. [Octavius, No. 3.] The former was built by Augustus, in the name of his sister, whence sone writers speak of it as the work of the emperor, and others as the work of Octavia. It lay between the Circus Flaminius and the theatre of Marcellus, occupying the same site as the porticos which was built by Q. Caecilius Metellus, after his triumph over Macedonia, in B. C. 146 [Metellus, No. 5], and enclosing, as the porticus of Metellus had done, the two temples of Jupiter Stator and of Juno. The Porticus Octaviae contained a public library, which frequently served as a place of meeting for the senate, and is hence called Curia Octavia. The whole suite of buildings is sometimes termed Octaviae Opera. It contained a vast number of statues, paintings, and other valuable works of art, but they were all destroyed, together with the library, by the fire which cons sumed the building in the reign of Titus (D. C. 66.24). There is some doubt as to the time at which Augustus built the Porticus Octaviae. It is usually stated, on the authority of Dio Cassius (49.43), that the building was erected by Octavianuts, after the victory over the Dalmatians, in B. C. 33; hut this appears to be a mistake; for Vitruvius, who certainly did not write his work so early as this year, still speaks (3.2.5, ed. Schneider) of the Porticus Metelli, and we learn from Plutarch (Plut. Marc. 30) that the dedication at all events of the Porticus did not take place till after the death of M. Marcellus in B. C. 23. (Vell. 1.11; D. C. 49.43; Plut. l.c. ; Liv. Epit. 138; Suet. Aug. 29; Plin. Nat. 36.4. s. 5; Festus, p. 178, ed. Müller; Becker, Handbuch der Römischen Alterthümer, vol. i. pp. 608-612.)

3. The daughter of the emperor Claudius, by his third wife, the notorious Valeria Messalina, was born about A. D. 42; since Tacitus, speaking of her death in A. D. 62, says that she was then in the twentieth year of her age. (Tac. Ann. 14.64 ) She was called Octavia after her great grandmother, the sister of Augustus [No. 2]. As early as the year 48, Octavia was betrothed by Claudius to L. Silanus, a youth of distinguished family and much beloved by the people; but Agrippina, who had secured the affections of the weak-minded Claudius, resolved to prevent the marriage, in order that Octatvia might marry her own son Domitius, afterwards the emperor Nero. She had no difficulty in rendering Silanus an object of suspicion to Claudius; and as Silanus saw that he was doomed, he put an end to his life at the beginning of the following year (A. D. 49), on the very day on which Claudius was married to Agrippina. Octavia was now betrothed to the young Domitius, but the marriage did not take place till A. D. 53, the year before the death of Claudius, when Nero, as he was now called, having been adopted by Claudius, was only sixteen years of age, and Octavia but eleven. (Tac. Ann. 12.58.) Suetonius, with less probability, places the marriage still earlier (Ner. 7). Nero from the first never liked his wife, and soon after his succession ceased to pay her any attention. He was first captivated by a freedwoman of the name of Acte, who shortly after had to give way to Poppaea Sabina, the wife of Otho, who was afterwards emperor. Of the latter he was so enamoured that he resolved to recognize her as his legal wife; and accordingly in A. D. 62 he divorced Octavia on the alleged ground of sterility, and in sixteen days after married Poppaea. But Poppaea, not satisfied with obtaining the place of Octavia, induced one of the servants of the latter to accuse her of adultery with a slave; but most of her slaves when put to the torture persisted in maintaining the innocence of their mistress. Notwithstanding this she was ordered to leave the city and retire to Campania, where she was placed under the surveillance of soldiers; but in consequence of the complaints and murmurs of the people, Nero recalled her to Rome. The people celebrated her return with the most unbounded joy, which, however, only sealed her ruin. Poppaea again worked upon the passions and the feais of her husband; Anicetus was induced to confess that he had been the paramour of Octavia; and the unhappy girl was thereupon removed to the little island of Pandataria, where she was shortly after put to death. The scene of her death is painted by the masterly hand of Tacitus. She feared to die; and as her terror was so great that the blood would not flow from her veins after they were opened, she was carried into a lath and stifled by the vapour. It is even added that her head was cut off and sent to Rome to glut the vengeance of Poppaea. Her untimely end excited general commiseration. (Tac. Ann. 11.32, 12.2-9, 58, 13.12, 14.60_64; Suet. Cl. 27, Ner. 7, 35; D. C. 9.31, 33, 61.7, 62.13.) Octavia is the heroine of a tragedy, found among the works of Seneca, but the author of which was more probably Curiatius Maternus. See Octavia Praeteata. Curiatio Materno vindicat. Bonnae. 1843.

celebrated in history on account of the emperor Augustus belonging to it. It was a plebeian gens, and is not mentioed till the year B. C. 230), when Cn. Octavius Rufus obtained the quaestorship. This Cn. Octavius left two sons, Cneius and Caius. The descendants of Cneius held many of the higher magistracies, and his son obtained the consulship in B. C. 165; but the descendants of Caius, from whom the emperor Augustus sprang, did not rise to any importance, but continued simple equites, and the first of them, who was enrolled among the senators, was the father of Augustus. The gens originally came from the Volscian town of Velitrae, where there was a street in the most frequented part of the town, and likewise an altar, both bearing the name of Octavius (Suet. Aug. 1, 2; Vell. 2.59; D. C. 45.1). This is all that can be related with certainty respecting the history of this gens; but as it became the fashion towards the end of the republic for the Roman nobles to trace their origin to the gods and to the heroes of olden time, it was natural that a family, which became connected with the Julia gens, and from which the emperor Augustus sprang, should have an ancient and noble origin assigned to it. Accordingly, we read in Suetonius (Suet. Aug. 2) that the members of this gens received the Roman franchise from Tarquinius Priscus, and were enrolled among the patricians by his successor Servius Tullius ; that they afterwards passed over to the plebeians, and that Julius Caesar a long while afterwards conferred the patrician rank upon them again. There is nothing improbable in this statement by itself ; but since neither Livy nor Dionysius make any mention of the Octavii, when they speak of Velitrae, it is evident that they did not believe the tale; and since, moreover, the Octavii are nowhere mentioned in history till the latter half of the third century before the Christian aera, we may safely reject the early origin of the gens. The name of Octavius, however, was widely spread in Latium, and is found at a very early time, of which we have an example in the case of Octavius Mamilius, to whom Tarquinius Superbus gave his daughter in marriage. The name was evidently derived from the praenomen Octavus, just as from Quintus, Sextus, and Septimus, came the gentile names of Quintius, Sextius, and Septimius. In the times of the republic none of the Octavii, who were descended from Cn. Octavius Rufus, bore any cognomen with the exception of Rufus, and even this surname is rarely mentioned. The stemma on page 7. exhibits all the descendants of Cn. Octavius Rufus. The descendants of the emperor Augustus by his daughter Julia are given in Vol. I. p. 430, and a list of the descendants of his sister Octavia is annexed here; so that the two together present a complete view of the imperial family. In consequence of the intermarriages in this family, part of this stemma repeats a portion of the stemma in Vol. I. p. 430, and also of the stemma of the Drusi given in Vol. I. p. 1076 ; but it is thought better for the sake of clearness to make this repetition.

There are a few other persons of the name of Octavii, who were not descended from Cn. Octavius Rufus, or whose descent cannot be traced. Most of them bore cognomens under which they are given, namely, Balbus, Ligur, Miarsus, NASO : those who have no cognomens are given under Octavius after the descendants of Cn. Octavius Rufus.

(1) A daughter of Gaius Octavius and Accia, and sister to the emperor Augustus. All the historians praise the beauty and virtues of this celebrated woman. She was first married to Marcus Marcellus, a man of consular rank, and every way worthy of her; and after his death she became the wife of M. Antonius, this latter union being deemed essential to the public welfare, as a means of healing existing differences between Antonius and Octavianus. It was with this view that the Senate abridged the period of her widowhood and of her mourning for her first husband, who had been dead little more than five months. Antonius, however, was incapable of appreciating the excellence of her character. After her marriage she followed him to Athens, where she passed the winter with him (B.C. 39), though keeping far aloof from the dissolute pleasures to which he abandoned himself. Without her interposition, civil war would even then have broken out between Octavianus and Antonius. By urgent prayers she appeased her husband, who was incensed against her brother for his suspicions, and then, disregarding the difficulties of the journey and her own pregnancy, she went with his consent from Greece to Rome, and induced her brother to consent to an interview with Antonius, and to come to a reconciliation with him. When Antonius went to make war against the Parthians, she accompanied him to Corcyra, and at his order returned thence to remain with her brother. New quarrels arose between Octavianus and Antonius. To have a pretext for a rupture, the former ordered his sister to go to her husband, in the expectation that he would send her back. This actually happened. Antonius was leading a life of pleasure with Cleopatra at Leucopolis, when letters from Octavia at Athens informed him that she would soon join him with money and troops. The prospect of this visit was so unwelcome to Cleopatra that she persisted in her entreaties until Antonius sent his wife an order to return. Even now, however, she endeavoured to pacify the rivals. Octavianus commanded her to leave the house of a husband who had treated her so insultingly; but, feeling her duties as a wife and a Roman, she begged him not, for the sake of a single woman, to destroy the peace of the world, and of two persons so dear to her, by the horrors of war. Octavianus granted her wish; she remained in the house of Antonius, and occupied herself with educating, with equal care and tenderness, the children she had borne him and those of his first wife Fulvia. This noble behaviour of hers increased the indignation of the Romans against Antonius. At last, when war broke out between Antonius and Octavianus, he divorced her, and ordered her to leave his mansion at Rome. She obeyed without complaint, and after his death reared the children he had had by Fulvia and Cleopatra. She died in B.C. 11. Her children numbered five—three by Marcellus and two by Antonius, the last being daughters. Her son, M. Marcellus, was adopted by Augustus, and was intended by him for his successor; but he died in B.C. 23. (See Marcellus.) Her elder daughter by Antonius was the grandmother of the emperor Nero, and the younger was the mother of the emperor Claudius and grandmothor of Caligula.

(2) The daughter of the emperor Claudius, born A.D. 42. She was first betrothed by Claudius to L. Silanus, who put an end to his life, as Agrippina had destined Octavia to be the wife of her son, afterwards the emperor Nero. She was married to Nero in A.D. 53, but was soon deserted by her young and profligate husband for Poppaea Sabina. After living with the latter as his mistress for some time, he resolved to recognize her as his legal wife; and accordingly he divorced Octavia on the alleged ground of sterility, and then married Poppaea, A.D. 62. Shortly afterwards Octavia was falsely accused of adultery, and was banished to the little island of Pandataria, where she was put to death. Her untimely end excited general commiseration. Octavia is the heroine of a tragedy, found among the works of Seneca, but the author of which was more probably Curiatius Maternus.

• temple of: Paus. 2.3.1