Porcia

(1) The sister of Cato Uticensis, married L. Domitius Ahenobarbus, consul B.C. 54, who was slain in the battle of Pharsalia. She died in 46.

(2) The daughter of Cato Uticensis by his first wife Atilia. She was married first to M. Bibulus, consul B.C. 59, to whom she bore three children. Bibulus died in 48; and in 45 she married M. Brutus, the assassin of Iulius Caesar. She inherited all her father's republican principles, and likewise his courage and firmness of will. She induced her husband, on the night before the fifteenth of March, to disclose to her the conspiracy against Caesar's life, and she is reported to have wounded herself in the thigh in order to show that she had a courageous soul, and could be trusted with the secret. She put an end to her own life after the death of Brutus in 42. The common tale was, that her friends, suspecting her design, had taken all weapons out of her way, and that she therefore destroyed herself by swallowing live coals (Plut. Brut. 53). The real fact may have been that she suffocated herself by the vapour of a charcoal fire, which, as we know, was a frequent means of selfdestruction among the Romans.