A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Octavia, daughter of Caius Octavius
OCTAVIA,
Daughter of Caius Octavius, and sister to Augustus Cæsar, was one of the most illustrious ladies of ancient Rome. She was first married to Claudius Marcellus, who was consul. She bore this husband three children. After his death she married Antony, and in this way brought about a reconciliation between Antony and her brother Octavianus, afterwards the Emperor Augustus Caesar, These nuptials were solemnized B.C. 41. Three years after, Antony went with his wife to spend the winter at Athens. Here, becoming again exasperated against Augustus by evil reports, he sailed for Italy; but Octavia a second time induced a reconciliation between them.
Antony went to the East soon afterwards, leaving Octavia in Italy; and though she discovered that he did not intend to return, she remained in his palace, continuing to take the same care of every thing as though he had been the best of husbands; acting the part of a kind mother to the children of his first wife. She would not consent that Antonyms treatment of her should cause a civil war. At length she was ordered to leave the house by Antony, who sent her at the same time a divorce. This treatment of Octavia exposed Antony to the hatred and contempt of the Romans when they saw him prefer to her a woman of Cleopatra's abandoned character, who had no advantage of her rival either in youth or beauty. Indeed, Cleopatra dreaded Octavia's charms so much that she had recourse to the most studied artifices to persuade Antony to forbid Octavia to come to him; and she accompanied him wherever he went.
After Antony's death, fortune seemed to flatter Octavia with the prospect of the highest worldly felicity. The son she had by her first husband, Marcellus, was now about twelve, and was a boy of great genius, and of an unusually cheerful, dignified, and noble disposition. Augustus married him to his own daughter, and declared him heir to the empire. But he died early, not without suspicion of being poisoned by Livia, wife of Augustus. His mother sank under this blow, and mourned bitterly for him till her death.
Virgil wrote in honour of this youth an eulogy in the conclusion of the sixth Æneid; and it is said that Octavia fainted on hearing him read it, but rewarded the poet afterwards with ten sesterces for each verse, of which there are twenty-six. Octavia died B. C. 11, leaving two daughters whom she had by Antony. Great honours were paid to her memory by her brother and the Senate.
So destitute was she of all petty jealousy, that after the death of Antony and Cleopatra, when their children were brought to Rome to grace her brother's triumph, she took them under her protection, and married the daughter to Juba, King of Mauritania.