Octavia (daughter of Claudius)

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Statue of a girl identified with Claudia Octavia
Coin depicting Octavia as Empress (left) and the Hera statue from Samos (right)

Claudia Octavia or Octavia the Younger (* March 40 AD; † June 8, 62 AD) was the daughter of the Roman emperor Claudius and his third wife Messalina . She was the first wife of the emperor Nero .

Life

Octavia was engaged to her relative Lucius Silanus at the age of one . However, when Claudius intended to marry his niece Agrippina in 48 , her son Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, who later became Nero, appeared as a more suitable candidate for marriage. Lucius Silanus was charged with an illicit relationship with his sister Junia Calvina and expelled from the Senate . On the day of Claudius' wedding to Agrippina, he committed suicide. This paved the way for the new empress to betroth Octavia to her son. The problem that Nero, adopted by Claudius , was now officially Octavia's brother, whom she was not allowed to marry under Roman law , was resolved by the bride being adopted pro forma by an Octavier . The wedding took place in AD 53.

When her father died in 54, Octavia became Empress at Nero's side. The death of her brother Britannicus in AD 55, in which, as in the case of her father's case, poisoning was suspected, left her alone in a hostile environment, because Nero rejected his young wife from the start and had numerous affairs, among others. a. with a freedman named Acte . Agrippina, however, who saw her own position threatened by Actes' influence on Nero, sought Octavia as an ally.

Although Nero's lover Poppaea had an influence on the murder of his mother in 59 AD, Nero only divorced Octavia after Burrus' death in 62. The divorce was based on Octavia's sterility. She received the goods of Rubellius Plautus , a great-grandson of Tiberius , who had been murdered shortly before . In order to suppress the protests of the people, whom she admired as legitimate members of the Julio-Claudian imperial family , Nero imputed her adultery and - contrary to his reason for divorce, infertility - an abortion. As Suetonius reports, Anicetus, Agrippina's murderer, finally claimed to be her lover at Poppaea's instigation. That gave Nero an excuse to ban them. Octavia, who resisted the unjustified treatment, was sent to Pandateria and her slaves were brutally murdered to break their resistance. In exile, she was murdered at Poppaea's instigation. Poppaea is said to have brought her head. In contrast to Octavia, who never received the title Augusta , this Poppaea was awarded immediately after the birth of their daughter Claudia on January 21, 63 AD.

reception

The fabula praetexta Octavia attributed to Seneca exists about Octavia , the only surviving drama on a theme from Roman history. In 1677 Anton Ulrich Herzog von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel's novel Römische Octavia was published . In 1782 Vittorio Alfieri completed his tragedy Ottavia. In 2013 Alexander Lohner published the novel Octavia. The wife of Nero , in which the heroine survived Nero's assassination attempt, contrary to tradition.

literature

Web links

Commons : Claudia Octavia  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ Bernhard Kytzler : Women of antiquity. From Aspasia to Zenobia . Artemis, Munich & Zurich 2000, ISBN 3-7608-1224-4 , p. 124.
  2. ↑ Tacitus , Annals 12.4; 12.8.
  3. ^ Gerhard Waldherr : Nero. A biography. Pustet, Regensburg 2005, p. 58.
  4. ↑ Tacitus, Annals 13.9; 13.16 .
  5. ↑ According to Suetonius , Nero 35 , he already had two other wives, Poppaea and Statilia Messalina, during Octavia's lifetime . He is also said to have tried several times to kill Octavia.
  6. ↑ Waldherr: Nero. 2005, p. 76.
  7. ↑ Waldherr: Nero. 2005, p. 96.
  8. ↑ Tacitus, Annals 14: 59-64 .
  9. ^ Suetonius, Nero 35.
personal data
SURNAME Octavia
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Octavia the Younger; Claudia Octavia
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Daughter of the Roman emperor Claudius
DATE OF BIRTH March 40
DATE OF DEATH June 8, 62