Claudia Marcella Major

Claudia Marcella Major (PIR2 C 1102; born some time before 40 BC) was the senior niece of Roman emperor Augustus, being the eldest daughter of his sister Octavia the Younger and her first husband Gaius Claudius Marcellus. She became the second wife of Augustus' foremost general Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa and after that the wife of Iullus Antonius, the son of Mark Antony.

Biography Early life Marcella belonged to the generation whose childhood was marred by the violence of the civil wars of the Roman Republic. Agrippa was a military man loyal to Octavian throughout the civil war. Marcella brought Agrippa a tie to an elite republican family and to Augustus himself, for she was Augustus's niece. however it is uncertain how many overall and how many of them survived to adulthood. It is likely based on the wording in Suetonius Augustus that they have children of both sexes. There appears to have been at least one daughter who married Publius Quinctilius Varus,

In 23 BC the brother of Marcella, Marcus Claudius Marcellus, died and thus widowed Marcella's maternal cousin Julia the Elder. named Iullus and a daughter named Iulla Antonia. Lucius was sent to study in Marseilles (not an official exile) sometime after the disgrace of his father. In 2 BC, Iullus Antonius was forced to commit suicide after being found guilty of adultery with Julia the Elder.

Prior to 1939, scholars believed that Marcella married another husband after the death of Iullus Antonius, namely the Roman Senator and cousin Sextus Appuleius, the grandson of Octavia Major—the older half-sister of her mother— but it has in modern times been accepted that this was not the case.

Legacy Marcelliopsis is a genus of flowering plants from Africa, belonging to the family Amaranthaceae that was named after her.

Ancestry