In striking contrast to the many-sided Livia is the less dominating
but more sympathetic Octavia, who lives through her virtues and her
sufferings rather than her talents. This much-loved sister of Augustus
represents the conservative element of the new age, with its amiable
weaknesses and time-honored graces. The idol of her brother, who,
nevertheless, did not hesitate to sacrifice her to his own interests
and ambitions, she was the victim of lifelong misfortune. She was said
to be more beautiful than her rival, Cleopatra. If her likeness in
marble can be trusted, she had not the air of command that one sees in
so many statues of Roman women. There is more of sensibility in the
poise of the delicately shaped head, with its broad, low forehead. In
the drooping corners of the full, tender mouth lies the sorrow of years
fallen into a settled melancholy. But there is no lack of strength
in the face, which shows also a quality of clear sense and practical
judgment. She was noted for dignity, reserve that verged upon coldness,
and great simplicity of manner. Her reputation was without a cloud.
It was the wish of her brother to take her from her first husband and
marry her to Pompey, in order to cement an alliance, but this proposal
she absolutely refused.
After the death of Marcellus she was given, for reasons of State, to
the cowardly and perfidious Antony, the Senate even setting aside a
law that required a woman to wait ten months before remarriage. It
was thought that her beauty, with her graces of mind and character,
might win him from his follies--sad illusion, and source of many
tragedies. She composed grave differences and used her influence for
peace. When she returned from Athens, where she spent the first years
of her marriage and was greatly loved for her gentle qualities and her
fortitude in sorrow, she entreated her brother to forego his warlike
purposes. “The eyes of the world are necessarily turned on one who is
the wife of Antony and the sister of Cæsar,” she said; “and should
these chiefs of the empire, misled by hasty counsels, involve the whole
in war, whatever the event, it will be unhappy for me.” She gained
concessions from each, and averted the immediate trouble.
But this conciliating spirit did not prevent the fickle Antony from
breaking her heart, as he had that of the fiery and ambitious Fulvia.
The strongest proof of her sweetness of temper and greatness of soul
may be found in the fact that she brought up the children of Fulvia
with her own, also the children of Cleopatra, after the latter’s death.
The worst fault ascribed to Octavia was aiding in the divorce of her
own innocent daughter from Agrippa, the stern old soldier who was
chosen by Augustus as a desirable husband for his only child, the young
and widowed Julia. Whatever ambitions she may have had were crushed
by the death of her youthful son. Naturally she did not love the
intriguing sister-in-law, who ruled all about her in a way that was
none the less sure because it was quiet. It is even possible that she
was not unwilling to do what came in her path to circumvent the schemes
of Livia for her own family. “She detested all mothers,” says Seneca,
“and, above all, Livia,” who had domestic joys which she had not. But
Seneca may not have been quite just, as he preferred women of a strong,
heroic type, and this mother of sensibilities so acute that she fainted
when Vergil read his eulogy of Marcellus in her presence, was not
much to his liking. It is more probable, however, that resistance was
useless. Where the emperor decreed, she had only to obey. Once, indeed,
she had shown her loyalty and her strength by refusing a like proposal
in her own case, but the marriage of Julia was vital as a matter of
State, and it is not likely that Augustus would have sacrificed a
thing upon which he had set his heart, to the happiness of any woman
whatever. Perhaps, too, she shared the common belief that private
inclination must never stand in the way of public benefit. It was the
_noblesse oblige_ of good rulers.
Octavia no doubt had her little foibles, though it is not at all
certain that this step was due to one of them; but she did not forget
the duties of her position. She had wide fame as a loyal, charitable,
self-sacrificing, and virtuous woman. In the spirit of the new age,
she patronized talent, and gave a public library to the portico which
Augustus had built in her honor, filling it with valuable paintings of
classical subjects. In the failure of her hopes and the loss of her
illusions, she still devoted herself to the children of Antony as well
as her own, and interested herself in arranging suitable marriages
for them. But these things failed to bring consolation to a bruised
heart, or serenity in the troubles that had fallen upon her. She shut
herself from the world after her last humiliations, and died of her
griefs at fifty-four, revered and idolized by the Roman people, who
resented her wrongs as much as they pitied her sufferings. But the son
she never ceased to mourn had been in his tomb many a year, and the
fickle husband who deserted her had ended his career in disgrace long
before. She did not live to see the downfall of Julia, the death of
her august brother, or the final triumph of Livia. She was spared, too,
the misfortunes that befell some of the children of her love and care.
The details of Octavia’s life are few and meager. Fate gave her a
prominent part to play on the world’s stage, and she played it well,
but with an evident longing to fall back upon her affections. She was
never a woman of initiative, but she was clearly one of moral force,
framed to temper the friction of more powerful individualities, but to
be herself crushed in their collisions. She stands for the purest and
most gracious type of Roman womanhood. Many were stronger, many were
more brilliant, but few left a memory so fragrant or so sweet.