Antonia Minor
Antonia Minor | |
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Octavia Minor |
Antonia Minor, her oldest son, her daughter, and several of her grandchildren.
Biography
Birth and early life
She was born in Athens, and after 36 BC was taken to Rome by her mother with her siblings. She was the youngest of five. Her mother had three children, named
She was raised by her mother, her uncle, and her aunt,
Marriage and family
In 16 BC, she married the Roman general and future consul (9 BC) Nero Claudius Drusus. Drusus was the stepson of her uncle Augustus, second son of Livia Drusilla, and brother of future Emperor Tiberius. They had many children, but only three survived: the famous general Germanicus, Livilla, and the Roman Emperor Claudius.[1]
A poem by Crinagoras of Mytilene mentions Antonia's first pregnancy, which may be of a child before Germanicus who must have died in infancy or early childhood.[1][2][3]
Drusus died in June 9 BC in Germany, due to complications from injuries he sustained after falling from a horse. After his death, although pressured by her uncle to remarry, she never did.
Antonia raised her children in Rome. Tiberius adopted Germanicus in 4 AD.
Conflict with Livilla
In 31 AD, a plot by her daughter Livilla and Tiberius’ notorious Praetorian prefect, Sejanus, to murder the Emperor Tiberius and Caligula and to seize the throne for themselves, was exposed by Apicata, the estranged ex-wife of Sejanus. Livilla allegedly poisoned her husband, Tiberius' son, Drusus Julius Caesar (nicknamed "Castor"), in 23 AD to remove him as a rival.
Sejanus was executed before Livilla was implicated in the crime. After Apicata's accusation, which came in the form of a letter to the emperor, several co-conspirators were executed while Livilla was handed over to her formidable mother for punishment. Cassius Dio states that Antonia imprisoned Livilla in her room until she starved to death.[5]
Succession of Caligula and death
When
Antonia died on 1 May 37. Suetonius and Cassius Dio claim she was driven to suicide by Caligula. According to Barrett, [6]
But since he had not reached Rome until 28 March, and was absent from the city for much of April, collecting the remains of his mother and brother, there would hardly have been much time to drive Antonia to her death by insulting behaviour. It is also difficult to imagine that he would have paid her no honours on her death, as Suetonius implies. She died at a time when the euphoria of the beginning of his reign was still rampant, and quite apart from any question of personal affection, a public slight at this time to the most respected woman in Rome, whose death was marked in local Fasti, would have been politically unimaginable.
When Claudius became emperor after his nephew's assassination in 41 AD, he gave his mother the title of Augusta. Her birthday became a public holiday, which had yearly games and public sacrifices held. An image of her was paraded in a carriage.
Cultural depictions
She is remembered in De Mulieribus Claris, a collection of biographies of historical and mythological women by the Florentine author Giovanni Boccaccio, composed in 1361–62. It is notable as the first collection devoted exclusively to biographies of women in Western literature.[7]
Antonia is one of the main characters in the novel
She is a leading character in the novel by Lindsey Davis, The Course of Honour (1997), where she guides and advises Claudius and his supporters.
In the 1968 ITV historical drama The Caesars, Antonia was indirectly mentioned by Tiberius (played by André Morell), who noted that Germanicus was a blood relative of Augustus on his mother's [Antonia] side.
Colleen Dewhurst portrayed Antonia opposite Susan Sarandon as Livilla in the 1985 miniseries A.D.
Isabelle Connolly (adult) and Beau Gadsdon (child) portrayed Antonia in British-Italian historical drama television series Domina (2021).
Notes
- ^ Also known as Antonia the Younger or simply Antonia.
References
- ^ ISBN 9780415080293.
- ISBN 9780415341271.
- ^ Ypsilanti, Maria (2003). An Edition with Commentary of the Selected Epigrams of Crinagoras (PDF) (Thesis). University College London.
- ^ (Suetonius Tiberius 15, Gai. 1., Div. Claudius 2)
- ^ Cassius Dio Histories 58.11.7
- ^ Barrett, A. A., 1989, Caligula. The Corruption of Power, 62. The date is derived from the Fasti Ostienses which states that Antonia died on the Kalends of May, 'K. Mais Antonia diem suum obit', supplied by Smallwood, E., 1967, Documents Illustrating The Principates of Gaius, Claudius and Nero, Cambridge University Press, no. 31, p. 28.
- ISBN 0-674-01130-9.
Sources
Ancient
- Plutarch - Life of Mark Antony
- Suetonius- Caligula (Gaius) & Claudius
- Tacitus - Annals of Imperial Rome
- Valerius Maximus, Factorum et dictorum memorabilium libri iv.3.3
Secondary
- E. Groag, A. Stein, L. Petersen - e.a. (edd.), Prosopographia Imperii Romani saeculi I, II et III, Berlin, 1933 - . (PIR2)