Claudia Octavia
39 – 62 · Generation V · Julio-Claudian
Claudia (AD 39 – AD 62). Married to Nero and discarded by him; banished, then executed, at twenty-two. The daughter of Claudius and Messalina, she was first betrothed to Lucius Junius Silanus, until her new stepmother Agrippina had him accused of incest and driven to suicide. She was then promised to Agrippina’s son and, after being adopted into another family so that the adoptive siblings could lawfully wed, married Nero in 53. As empress she received statues and sacrifices but was denied the title Augusta, and after her brother Britannicus died at Nero’s table she learned, as Tacitus tells it, to conceal every feeling. The marriage was loveless; Nero preferred Acte and then Poppaea Sabina. In 62 he divorced her for supposed sterility and then smeared her with charges of adultery. Her banishment set off riots in Rome in her favour, but on Pandateria soldiers cut her veins and finished her in a steam-filled room. Her story is told in the Roman play Octavia.
Place in the family
- Claudia Octavia was a great-great-niece of Augustus Caesar.
One of 17 people of Julio-Claudian (85 BC–68) in this archive. Rome’s first imperial family: the Julii and the Claudii joined by marriage and adoption, Augustus to Nero.
Line of descent: Tiberius Claudius Nero → Drusus the Elder → Claudius Caesar → Claudia Octavia.
Parents
- Claudius Caesar (10 BC – 54)
- Valeria Messalina (20 – 48)
Siblings
- Nero Caesar (37 – 68) (adopted)
- Britannicus Caesar (41 – 55)