Atia Balba

85 BC – 43 BC · Generation I

Atia was the mother of Augustus and the niece of Julius Caesar. Born about 85 BC, she was the daughter of the praetor Marcus Atius Balbus and Caesar’s sister Julia, and is sometimes called Atia Balba Secunda because she had at least one sister. Through her daughter Octavia she was also great-grandmother of Germanicus and of the emperor Claudius.

Her first husband was Gaius Octavius, praetor in 61 BC and afterwards governor of Macedonia, whose family came from Velitrae. They had two children, Octavia, born about 66 BC, and Gaius Octavius, the future Augustus, born in 63 BC. Suetonius later collected the omens said to surround his birth, among them a story that a serpent came to Atia as she slept in the temple of Apollo, so that the child was regarded as the son of the god. Her husband died in 59 BC, when the boy was four.

The same year she married Lucius Marcius Philippus, who became consul in 56 BC and already had three children. When Caesar was murdered in 44 BC and his will made her son his heir, Atia and Philippus feared for his safety and urged him to refuse the inheritance. He did not. She died around 43 BC, and her son, now Octavian, honoured her with a public funeral.

Place in the family

• Atia Balba was the mother of Augustus Caesar.
• The archive records 12 of her descendants, across 5 generations.

Read more on Wikipedia

Partners

• Married Gaius Octavius of Velitrae (100 BC – 59 BC) in 70 BC — 2 children together

Children

• Augustus Caesar (63 BC – 14)
• Octavia the Younger (69 BC – 11 BC)

Life

• 85 BC — Born
• 70 BC — Married Gaius Octavius
• 43 BC — Died

Sources

1. Atia (mother of Augustus) · Wikipedia
2. Augustus · Wikipedia