Vipsania Marcella

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Vipsania Marcella is a name retrospectively given by historians to a possible daughter or daughters of the ancient Roman general Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa and his second wife Claudia Marcella Major, the eldest niece of emperor Augustus.[1]

History

It was once thought that Agrippa and Marcella only had one surviving child together,

his first wife Pomponia, not Marcella.[5] Meyer Reinhold rebutted and argued that Varus wife was the daughter of Pomponia, L. Koenen has entertained this possibility as well,[6] while Franziska Knopf thought that Haterius wife could be Marcella's daughter.[7] Some historians also think that Varus and Lepidus wives were not separate people. Nonetheless Syme's view hold majority opinion in the 21st century.[8]

Cultural depictions

In Robert Graves' books, I, Claudius and Claudius the God, a single daughter of Agrippa and Marcella is mentioned to exist. She is depicted as having committed suicide for unexplained reasons early on, but later in the story Roman empress Livia claims that she killed herself over guilt for committing incest with her father, to secretly instigate his poisoning.

Notes

  1. Roman naming conventions
    all daughters of a man were named the same thing in Republican Rome, the feminized form of their fathers nomen and as Agrippa was a Vipsanius all his daughters would have been named Vipsania.

References

  1. ^ Suet., Aug. 63.1.
  2. .
  3. ^ Meyer Reinhold, "M. Agrippa's Son-in-Law P. Quinctilius Varus," CPh 67 (1972), 119–21).
  4. ^ R. Syme, The Augustan Aristocracy, Oxford, 1986, p. 125.
  5. .
  6. ^ American Journal of Ancient History. Vol. 1–4. 1976. p. 140.
  7. .
  8. ^ Nogueira, Adeilson (2020). Gens Nas Moedas Romanas. Clube de Autores.