Claudia Octavia, the tragedy of Nero's first wife.
The tragedy of Octavia, as many tragedies do, starts with a woman's lament on how life has treated her so far. Her mother was killed on the imperial gardens when she was still a child, her father was murdered by her stepmother only four years later and her little brother was poisoned by her husband during a family dinner.
There is no better way to tell the story of this woman than through the dark and sad verses of a roman tragedy. Octavia was the eldest daughter of Messalina and Claudius, and she was born on the year 40 A.D., before her father became Rome's third emperor.
Octavia must have lived a fantastic life while her mother was still the emperor's wife, but on the year 48 A.D., the eight year old girl lost her mother to a tribune stabbing her on the charges of adultery (we will explain it way more when we get to Messalina's story, but get ready for an unbelivable story when we do). And just like that, not even a year after, her father remarried to his own niece, Agrippina, and Octavia's life suddenly became a nightmare.
She had been engaged to a man named Silanus, who was accused of adultery and commited suicide on the day she got married to Nero, her stepbrother, not the best way to begin a marriage, if you asked me... Her brother was slowly pushed away from imperial power by being presented in public as a child while Nero, Agrippina's son and Octavian's new husband, was given quite a lot of honors and, to everyone's surprise, ended up being adopted by Claudius and named his succesor.
If this already looks bad, there is so much more to come. On 54 A.D., Agrippina allegedly tried to murder her husband with a very nice looking mushroom (I will never get over the delectabili boleto). Claudius, being Claudius, had drunk and eaten too much already and ended up having to be killed by a poisoned feather which his doctor subtly stuck to his neck while nobody was paying attention...
So now Octavia was married to the emperor, whose mother had just killed her dad. She tried to keep a low profile because she realized that maybe staying silent was the best way to survive, even when Nero got tired of his mum threatening him whith supporting Brittanicus to substitute him as emperor and decided to kill his stepbrother on a dinner party. Octavia watched her brother collapse on the table and all she could do was to remain there, no matter how much losing her only family left hurt.
What Octavia has been though so far looks like enough for Shakespeare to write a few plays on her. But the last Julio-Claudian princess of the Roman Empire's story is not over yet, unfortunately for her.
It's 59 A.D. and Nero has had enough of her mum for the rest of his short life, so he decides to end her, which is way harder than he initially thought. The thing is, Nero is being pushed by his lover, a beautiful girl named Poppea, which the emperor has taken from Otho (yes, the one who got to be emperor for five minutes in ten years time) to kill his mum in order to be able to het married to her. And if you are wondering, but isn't Nero already married to Octavia? The answer is: not for long.
Octavia's final months make what she has already gone through look like it was nothing. Nero divorced her on the grounds that she was infertile. Then, after the people of Rome protested for the way she was being treated and clearly pointed out that they would rather have her than Poppea, Nero realized that the only way to go if he wanted Poppea to be his wife was to send Octavia away. So after he had accused her of infertility, Nero decides to bribe a freedman to admit having comitted adultery with the emperor's wife, and that Octavia had had an abortion to try to cover it all up.
Octavia was exiled to Pandataria (The smallest island you could ever imagine) and two seconds later a few tribunes tied her up, cut her veins open and, since her blood was flowing too slowly, they put her in a hot bath for her to asphyxiate.
She was just 22 years old.
Octavia's story struck me from the first second I read about her for so many reasons, she never speaks up, she never tries to take more power than any roman woman was allowed to have, she just happened to have the worst luck imaginable, and she suffered so much when she was so young... I highly recommend you to read the tragedy about her, which you can find here: https://www.loebclassics.com/view/seneca_younger-octavia/2018/pb_LCL078.527.xml
I will keep on writting the stories of these amazing woman and their terrible endings, If you are curious about them and want to know more, feel free to send me a message whenever you like! I hope you find roman history as fascinating as I do!
pixelskylines
baratheonpilled
dededos
kaledo-art
romaincrisis
janainaart
origamiaround
