Poppea Brings the Head of Octavia to Nero by G. Muzzioli, 1876, in a private collection

Poppea Brings the Head of Octavia to Nero by G. Muzzioli, 1876, in a private collection.

Octavia was the only daughter of the Emperor Claudius by marriage to his third wife, Valeria Messalina. She was named for her great-grandmother Octavia the Younger, the second eldest and full-blooded sister of the Emperor Augustus. She was born in Rome around 39 or 40, shortly before the assassination of Caligula.  As a young girl, her father betrothed her to future praetor Lucius Junius Silanus Torquatus, who was a descendant of Augustus.  After her mother, Messalina, was executed for conspiring to murder her father, Agrippina arranged for Octavia to marry Nero. Although Octavia was admired as empress by the Roman citizen body and viewed as an 'aristocratic and virtuous wife' (according to Tacitus), Nero hated her and tried on several occasions to strangle her (according to Suetonius).  When Poppaea became pregnant with Nero's child, Nero divorced Octavia claiming she was barren and banished her first to Campania, then to Pandateria claiming she had an adulterous affair with Nero's tutor Anicetus.  When the citizens of Rome paraded through the streets in protest, Nero sentenced her to death.  She was bound and her veins opened in a extremely hot bath so it appeared she died in an act of traditional Roman suicide.  Her head was cut off and sent to Poppaea as portrayed in this painting by Muzzioli.


Image: Poppea Brings the Head of Octavia to Nero by G. Muzzioli, 1876, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

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