Claudia Octavia

Life

Octavia was the elder of two children born to Claudius and his third wife, Valeria Messalina. Her younger brother was Britannicus. She had older half-siblings through her father's earlier marriages: a half-sister, Claudia Antonia, from Claudius's second marriage to Aelia Paetina, and a half-brother, Claudius Drusus, from his first marriage to Plautia Urgulanilla, though Drusus died before she was born. She was named for her great-grandmother Octavia the Younger, sister of Emperor Augustus.

Early life

Born in Rome around 39 or 40 during the reign of her cousin Caligula, she became the emperor's daughter after Caligula's assassination in January 41 and Claudius's accession. Shortly afterward, her brother Britannicus was born on February 12, and that same year Claudius betrothed her to Lucius Junius Silanus Torquatus, a descendant of Augustus. In 48, Messalina was executed after an affair with the senator Gaius Silius, which Claudius viewed as a potential coup.

Claudius' remarriage and the rise of Nero

Political concerns led Claudius to remarry, and in 49 he married Agrippina the Younger, Octavia's first cousin and the daughter of his brother Germanicus. Agrippina brought her son Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, whom Claudius adopted in 50; the boy changed his name to Nero Claudius Caesar Drusus Germanicus. Agrippina then had Octavia's fiancé Silanus publicly accused of incest with his sister, forcing him to resign as praetor and commit suicide on the same day as Claudius and Agrippina's marriage.

She then had Octavia betrothed to Nero; the marriage was arranged in 48 and formalized in 53. Because they were now legally brother and sister, Octavia was first adopted into another patrician family. On October 13, 54, Claudius died unexpectedly—ancient sources accused Agrippina of poisoning him with mushrooms—and Nero was acclaimed emperor that same day. Octavia became empress but was denied the title Augusta.

Life as empress

The next year, Britannicus died suddenly during a banquet where Octavia, Nero, and Agrippina were all present; Nero attributed it to epilepsy, but ancient writers charged him with poisoning his stepbrother. After Britannicus's death, Octavia and Agrippina grew close. Nero began affairs with Claudia Acte, a freedwoman, and then with Poppaea Sabina, wife of his friend Marcus Salvius Otho. In March 59, Nero murdered his mother with the help of the admiral Anicetus.

Tacitus describes Octavia as 'a noblewoman of proven virtue' with a 'modest demeanour,' but Nero hated their marriage and attempted to strangle her on several occasions, according to Suetonius. In 62, after the death of praetorian prefect Sextus Afranius Burrus and the retirement of Seneca the Younger, Nero's conduct shifted. Poppaea became pregnant, and Nero divorced Octavia, claiming sterility, giving her properties that had belonged to Burrus and Rubellius Plautus.

Divorce, banishment, and death

He married Poppaea shortly after—Suetonius says twelve days later. Nero and Poppaea accused Octavia of adultery with Eucaerus, a flute player from Alexandria. The new praetorian prefect Ofonius Tigellinus tortured Octavia's maidservants, including Pythias, to corroborate the charge but was largely unsuccessful. Octavia was exiled to Campania.

The people of Rome responded with widespread public protests, which historian Vasily Rudich called 'the most pronounced mass disturbance in the city of Rome under Nero until the very moment of his overthrow.' Nero then had Octavia executed.

In fiction

Octavia's divorce from Nero is the subject of the play Octavia, the only surviving complete example of Roman drama based on Roman history.