Octavia the Younger

Octavia the Younger was a Roman noblewoman, the sister of Octavian—later Augustus—and the fourth wife of Mark Antony. After the death of her first husband, Gaius Claudius Marcellus, she married Antony in 40 BCE as part of the political settlement between Antony and Octavian at Brundisium. The marriage briefly reinforced the triumviral alliance, and Octavia herself acted as an intermediary when tensions between the two men threatened renewed civil war.

In 37 BCE Octavia helped facilitate the agreement at Tarentum, but Antony increasingly based himself in the eastern Mediterranean with Cleopatra VII. He eventually divorced Octavia in 32 BCE as conflict with Octavian became unavoidable. Roman sources praise her dignity, loyalty and care for a large household; after Antony and Cleopatra died, she helped raise children from Antony’s earlier relationships, including some of Cleopatra’s children. She remained an honoured member of Augustus’s family until her death in 11 BCE.

Octavia appears in Margaret George’s The Memoirs of Cleopatra, where her marriage to Antony forms part of the political and personal conflict between Rome and Cleopatra’s Egypt. Michelle Moran’s Cleopatra’s Daughter follows the next generation and includes Octavia’s household after Actium, while Alex Gough’s Caesar’s Nemesis uses the wider struggle among Caesar’s heirs and supporters in which Octavia’s family position became politically important.