Clodia (wife of Augustus)

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Clodia or Claudia (* around 54 BC) was the first wife of Octavian, who later became the first Roman emperor as Augustus .

Life

Clodia was the daughter of the notorious popular politician Publius Clodius Pulcher and the emancipated Fulvia . While Plutarch they Clodia is called, it is called in Suetonius Claudia . With reference to the latter passage and the inscription of her brother as Claudius , many modern historians refer to her as Claudia . However, since her brother bears the name Claudius in a letter from Mark Antony and the name Clodius in a letter from Cicero , both forms are likely to have been common to the children of Clodius. The form Clodia is formally correct for Fulvia's daughter , since her father had already changed his gentile name to Clodius at the time of her birth .

After the death of Clodius († 52 BC) Fulvia married the Caesar follower Marcus Antonius, who at the end of 43 BC. BC closed the second triumvirate with Octavian and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus . In order to strengthen this alliance through family ties, Octavian married Clodia, who had now become Antonius' stepdaughter, at the request of the soldiers and Antonius, despite his earlier engagement. According to Suetonius, she had just reached marriageable age, so, according to Roman ideas at the time, she was almost twelve years old.

When Octavian returned to Italy after the victorious battles against the Caesar murderers , he soon got into a dispute with Antonius' wife Fulvia, which finally triggered the Peruvian War (41 BC). Before that, Octavian separated from Clodia by giving an oath that she was still a virgin; she was probably too young to consummate the marriage. Nothing is reported about her later life in the (preserved) sources.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Suetonius, Augustus 62, 1; Plutarch, Antonius 20.
  2. ↑ CIL 6, 1282 .
  3. ↑ Cicero, ad Atticum 14, 13a, 3 and 14, 13b, 4.
  4. ↑ So Bleicken (see Lit.), p. 707; whether the change of name in direct connection with Clodius' transition into the plebs 59 BC BC, is controversial in research.
  5. ↑ Suetonius, Augustus 62, 1; Plutarch, Antonius 20; Cassius Dio 46, 56, 3; Velleius Paterculus 2, 65, 2.
  6. ↑ Suetonius, Augustus 62, 1; Cassius Dio 48, 5, 3.
personal data
SURNAME Clodia
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Claudia
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Wife of Octavian, later Emperor Augustus
DATE OF BIRTH around 54 BC Chr.
DATE OF DEATH after 41 BC Chr.