Antonia Major

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Roman imperial dynasties
Julio-Claudian dynasty

Augustus Children    Natural - Julia the Elder    Adoptive - Gaius Caesar, Lucius Caesar, Agrippa Postumus, Tiberius Tiberius Children    Natural - Julius Caesar Drusus    Adoptive - Germanicus Caligula Children    Natural - Julia Drusilla    Adoptive - Tiberius Gemellus Claudius Children    Natural - Claudia Antonia, Claudia Octavia, Britannicus    Adoptive - Nero Nero Children    Natural - Claudia Augusta

Antonia Major (in Latin: Antonia Maior, PIR² A 884) (b. August/September 39 BC), also known as Antonia the Elder, was a daughter to Mark Antony and Octavia Minor and niece to Augustus, Rome’s first Roman Emperor.

She was born in Athens, Greece and after 36 BC her mother, along with her siblings and herself were brought to Rome. She was raised by her mother, her uncle and her aunt Livia Drusilla. According to Cassius Dio, after her father died, her maternal uncle allowed her and her younger sister Antonia Minor to benefit from their father's estate in Rome.

Little is known of her, yet she was held in high regard, like her sister Antonia Minor, mother of the Roman Emperor Claudius, who was celebrated for her beauty and virtue.

Around 26 BC/25 BC, Antonia married Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus (consul 16 BC). Their children were:

• Domitia - she married, consul and senator Decimus Haterius Agrippa and bore him a son Quintus Haterius Antoninus. Agrippa died in 32. Her second husband was Gaius Sallustius Crispus Passienus, consul suffect in 27, proconsul of Asia and consul in 44 (who later married her sister-in-law, Agrippina the Younger).
• Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus (PIR² D 127) - This consul of 32 married his second cousin Agrippina the Younger; they were the parents to Roman Emperor Nero.
• Domitia Lepida (PIR² D 180) - She first married her cousin, the consul Marcus Valerius Messalla Barbatus to whom she bore a daughter, Roman Empress Valeria Messalina. After the death of her first husband, she married Faustus Cornelius Sulla, cos. suff. in 31 and gave him a son, Faustus Cornelius Sulla Felix (who would become consul in 52). At the beginning of Claudius' reign, she married Gaius Appius Junius Silanus, cos. in 28 (who was put to death in 42).

On the Ara Pacis (an altar from the Augustan Era), displays Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus and his elder sister Domitia. The woman behind Domitia and Domitius is their mother Antonia Major and the man next to Antonia Major is her husband Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus. This can be seen at [1]. Antonia died before 25.

[edit] References

• E. Groag, A. Stein, L. Petersen - e.a. (edd.), Prosopographia Imperii Romani saeculi I, II et III, Berlin, 1933 - . (PIR²)