Pompeia Paulina
Pompeia Paulina († some years after 65 AD) was the second wife of the Roman statesman and philosopher Seneca .
Life
Pompeia Paulina was the daughter of the Roman knight Pompeius Paulinus from Arelate and sister of Aulus Pompeius Paulinus , who held the suffect consulate shortly before 54 AD .
After Seneca returned from exile, he married the probably much younger Pompeia Paulina as his second wife. Despite their close ties, the couple had no children.
Because Seneca was allegedly an accomplice to the failed Pisonian conspiracy , he received the order from Emperor Nero in April 65 AD that he must commit suicide. Seneca took this message calmly, hugged his wife and implored her to endure his death with firmness. Nero had only ordered the philosopher's suicide; nevertheless Pompeia Paulina wanted to take her own life with her husband. Seneca agreed to this plan and so both of them cut their wrists. However, since Seneca was bleeding slowly to death, he had his wife taken to another room. Nero, who had been informed immediately of Pompeia Paulina's suicidal intentions, did not want any defamation about unnecessary cruelty and therefore ordered that she be prevented from bleeding to death as well. His soldiers instructed the servants to connect the veins of the probably already unconscious woman. So her life was saved. According to Tacitus , however, there was talk that Pompeia Paulina had no serious intentions to commit suicide. This seems to have been an untrue rumor, as she had apparently suffered such severe blood loss that she has since been sickly and was unnaturally pale. From then on she was primarily concerned with the memory of her deceased husband and only survived him by a few years.
Giovanni Boccaccio dedicated a vita to Pompeia Paulina as the 94th of a total of 106 famous women in his work De mulieribus claris (1356–64).
literature
- Rudolf Hanslik : Pompeius 130). In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume XXI, 2, Stuttgart 1952, Col. 2292 f.
- Pompeia Paulina . In: Bernhard Kytzler : Women of antiquity . Insel-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3-458-33598-6 , p. 135.
Remarks
- ↑ Werner Eck : Pompeia 6). In: The New Pauly (DNP). Volume 10, Metzler, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-476-01480-0 , Sp. 89.
- ↑ Seneca, Epistulae morales ad Lucilium 104, 2; De vita beata 17, 2; see. Cassius Dio 61, 10, 3.
- ↑ Tacitus, Annalen 15, 63f .; Cassius Dio 62, 25, 1f.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Pompeia Paulina |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Paulina, Pompeia |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | second wife of Seneca |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1st century BC BC or 1st century |
| DATE OF DEATH | after 65 |