Atia (mother of Augustus)

Atia (also Atia Balba)

Atia was the daughter of Julia Minor and her husband praetor Marcus Atius Balbus. Atia had at least one younger sister, and possibly an older one. Due to this, she is sometimes called Atia Secunda or Atia Balba Secunda.^[1] She may also have had a brother.^[2][3]

First marriage

Her first marriage was with

In his Dialogus de oratoribus, Tacitus notes her to be exceptionally religious and moral, and one of the most admired matrons in the history of the Republic:

In her presence no base word could be uttered without grave offence, and no wrong deed done. Religiously and with the utmost delicacy she regulated not only the serious tasks of her youthful charges, but also their recreations and their games.

Suetonius' account of Augustus mentions the divine omens she experienced before and after his birth:

When Atia had come in the middle of the night to the solemn service of Apollo, she had her litter set down in the temple and fell asleep, while the rest of the matrons also slept. On a sudden a serpent glided up to her and shortly went away. When she awoke, she purified herself, as if after the embraces of her husband, and at once there appeared on her body a mark in colours like a serpent, and she could never get rid of it; so that presently she ceased ever to go to the public baths. In the tenth month after that Augustus was born and was therefore regarded as the son of Apollo. Atia too, before she gave him birth, dreamed that her vitals were borne up to the stars and spread over the whole extent of land and sea, while Octavius dreamed that the sun rose from Atia's womb. (Suetonius:94:4)^[5]

The day he was born the conspiracy of Catiline was before the House, and Octavius came late because of his wife's confinement; then Publius Nigidius, as everyone knows, learning the reason for his tardiness and being informed also of the hour of the birth, declared that the ruler of the world had been born. (Suetonius:94:5)^[5]

Octavius died in 59 BC, when their son Gaius Octavius (future Roman emperor Augustus) was four years old.

Second marriage

The same year as her first husband died, Atia remarried to Lucius Marcius Philippus, consul in 56 BC. Philippus already had three children at the time; the already adult Lucius Marcius Philippus (consul suffectus in 38 BC who ended up marrying Atia's younger sister), Marcia (the wife of Cato the Younger) and Quintus Marcius Philippus (proconsul of Cilicia in 47 BC).^[6][7][8] It's possible that she and Philippus had children.^[9]

Atia was so fearful for her son's safety that she and Philippus urged him to renounce his rights as Caesar's heir. She died in August or September 43 BC. Octavian honored her memory with a public funeral.

Cultural depictions

A fictionalised

• Atia gens

Footnotes

References

1. ISBN 9781440804212
   .
2. ISBN 978-0-19-814731-2. (Limited Preview of this page at Google Books
   )
3. ISBN 9780198143581
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4. ^ Moore 2017, p. 9.
5. ^ ^{a b} Suetonius. The Twelve Caesars. Retrieved at UChicago.edu
6. ^ Cicero, Epistulae ad Familiares, xiii. 73, 74.
7. ^ Badian, "Two More Roman Non-Entities", pp. 142–144.
8. ^ Sumner, "Lex Annalis", pp. 252–254.
9. ISBN 978-0-19-976216-3
   .

Sources

• Moore, Katrina (2017). "Octavia Minor and the Transition from Republic to Empire" (PDF). Clemson University. ^{[dead link]}

Further reading

• Peace bringers, serpents and providence: exemplifying the Apollonian propaganda of Peace in Ancient Rome of the Augustan Age (ca. 27 BC – AD 14)

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Atia.

• A portrait bust of Atia, from the Getty Museum
• portraits of her family and children