#classic studies

Here are some pictures of me properly celebrating the occasion, thanks to my dad for being an awesome photographer.

Oh! She also said that she knew for real that Homer was real because she felt his vibes when she sat on his stone in Daskalopetra (Chios).

First of all, thank you so much for the question!

Vipsania is definitely another woman worth mentioning on the history of the early Roman Empire!

Vipsania Agrippina was the daughter of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa (Augustus right hand, and probably his left one too) and Quinta Caecilia Attica, the beloved daughter of Cicero's best friend in the whole world Atticus (seriously, before losing his head, Cicero sent a dozen letters to him complaining about absolutely everything, I'll put a link below if you want to read a few, they are absolutely worth reading).

So Vipsania was born on the 33 B.C.E. and, as it happens with every single woman on antiquity, we don't know anything about her until her marriage to Tiberius, Livia's eldest son. Surprisingly enough, they were truly in love with each other and had the happiest marriage imaginable: they lived together, they had a son, Young Drusus (who married Julia Livila, Germanicus daughter years later) and everything looked fine.

Unfortunately, happiness never lasted for too long when it comes to this family and so, Agrippa died, leaving Julia (Augustus' only daugter and the one who was supposed to be mother of the future emperors) a widow and a single mother with five children. Tiberius was forced to divorce his wife Vipsania to marry Julia, and let me just tell you that the descriptions on his behavior afterwards as they are told by ancient sources is one of the saddest things ever. He got so upset after seeing her one day across the street that they had to make sure he never saw her again. I will make a separate post about it, but I highly reccomend you to watch I Claudius to see how devastated Tiberius was.

Although it is funny how the sources do not dwell too much on how she felt. They just say that she remarried, to a consul named Gaius Asinius Gallus, with whom she had five more children, earning the right to manage her belongings without the need of a legal tutor.

She died on the year 20 by natural causes, and she seems to have lived a peaceful life. The same cannot be said about her second and first husband. Asinius was trialed and exiled by Tiberius under the charge of adultery and died of starvation. Tiberius new marriage did not last for too long since he left Rome to go to Rodes, being too tired of his family's political intrigues and Julia, his wife, decided to live her life as she wanted and obviously, everyone was horrified that she slept with a few men and went to parties and her own father exiled her permanently.

The thing is, Vipsania was one of those woman who were lucky enough to be left alone and what could have been a really complicated existance inside the imperial house, became a quite peaceful one in her own place, at least, that's what I decide to believe.

Hope you liked it and feel free to ask me anything. Here is the link to Cicero's letters to Atticus:

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