Perhaps I read more than necessary for my new book out from Curbstone, Agrippina the Younger. I wasn’t a deep fan of Ancient Roman history—I didn’t have the broader context of the city’s appearance on the world’s stage, its terrible crescendo to a powerful empire. To try to get my arms around something so enormous—and so fervently beloved to spark a TikTok trend—I hit the books. I wanted to understand everything from the broad (why did that battle happen?) to the granular (what were their childbirth practices?). Compressing that down into spare poems can feel like putting pressure on a chemical compound—it will only condense if something snaps away. “Kill your darlings” we’re told, and kill them I did.
But one cut left me squirming, like I was killing something that I shouldn’t: Claudia Octavia. While Agrippina, the focus of the book, had political savvy and flashes of luck that ultimately landed her in the imperial seat, Octavia seems doomed from the start. Or, actually, perhaps not quite that early. But she was a young noblewoman chewed up by the system of Roman politics, totally innocent and dead at twenty-two despite playing by the rules.
The circumstances that led to Octavia’s death go back decades. The Emperors Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero were all of the same family and ruled in succession—a dynasty of power that would never again happen in ancient Rome. But it got wobbly with the death of Augustus—the high-water mark for Roman emperors. After Caligula’s assassination (another big wobble) and level-headed Claudius’ imperial assumption, the sense of stability is palpable even thousands of years later. Claudius married his niece Agrippina (also weird then!) to strengthen imperial ties. He adopted her son Nero. Then Nero, not Claudius’ biological son Britannicus, would become emperor when Claudius died. All well and good, after a little rule bending. Then—why not?—Claudius’ stepson Nero was betrothed to Nero’s stepsister, Octavia. This was to ensure a long line of successors descended from Augustus, a veritable parade of progeny for the dynasty to endure. But the moment I read Octavia, then ten, was betrothed to the infamous then-tween Nero, my gut went cold. Even before I knew what became of her, at best Octavia’s life would be defined by a horrible man. They married when she was thirteen, a year before her father Claudius’ death.
When Nero’s reign began, his mother Agrippina initially managed her son and the empire with aplomb. Are we surprised the teenaged boy eventually rebelled against his parent? Of course not—especially with our modern sensibilities. But he could rebel because it was his mother, not a father or uncle. Once Agrippina started to think her stepson Britannicus might be a better emperor than Nero, the latter had Britannicus poisoned at a public dinner. Octavia was there, forced to contain her emotions at the sight of her brother’s attack, which Nero waved off as the boy was carried away. As the ancient historian Tacitus writes (with notable warmth toward a woman), Octavia “had learned to hide her griefs, her affections, her every emotion.” Nero and Octavia were two years into their wretched marriage. Her father, mother, and now brother were dead. She must have felt terrified, afraid, and alone. After her brother’s murder, Octavia’s vulnerability was obvious to Agrippina. She grew close to her still-teenaged stepdaughter.
Several historians tell of Nero’s abuse of Octavia, and how he frequently made hateful remarks about her. The young emperor’s advisors told him the marriage needed to remain intact so Nero’s reign would appear legitimate. Then the advisors retired or died. Nero exiled his mother from the city. Then Nero’s lover became pregnant. Things began to unravel for Octavia, as the few people who would convince Nero otherwise about their marriage were gone or dead. Nero claimed Octavia was sterile, divorced his stepsister, and gave away her properties. He quickly married his pregnant lover.
Somehow, this wasn’t punishment enough. Nero created trumped up charges of adultery in hopes to sully Octavia’s impeccable reputation. Nero convinced an ally to claim he had an affair with the empress, and that Octavia had had an abortion to conceal the infidelity (an allegation that directly countered the grounds for his divorce). Octavia’s maidservants were tortured in hopes to procure damning information. Her maidservants gave them nothing. Still, Octavia was banished from Rome. Its citizens took to the streets in droves, carrying statues of Octavia and destroying the quickly carved likenesses of Nero’s new wife.
If at this point you’re ripping a piece of paper into little pieces or gnawing on your fingers—I’m with you. Reading about Octavia’s circumstances, her abject disempowerment at the orders of such a lunatic, is maddening. This all happened despite the fact she was an emperor’s child and part of a noble family. She performed the role of Roman woman—of few words, poised, demure—with such perfection even the misogynist ancient historians love her. None of this was enough.
I’m sorry to say Octavia doesn’t escape Nero, fading into the margins of history with an anonymous life of quiet and safety. Instead, she was shuttled from one place of exile to an island where her grandmother, aunt, and a woman cousin had all died under previous emperors. After a few days there, Nero ordered soldiers to kill her. They attempted to make her assassination look like a suicide, which they botched. She met her end when soldiers threw her in a room of hot steam, where she suffocated. The likely dramatized coda is that Nero’s new wife ordered Octavia’s head be delivered to her to confirm her death.
My poems that described Octavia’s experiences fell away because the book was far too long, and many things had to go—but I felt wretched over her disappearance. Even here, in a feminist text that essentially shakes its fist at the enormity of history always leaving women out, she didn’t have a place. My uneasy peace was giving Octavia one important appearance and, I hope, a claim at some agency ruthlessly denied her. Just before Nero’s overthrow and death, he apparently suffered from nightmares. In the poem describing his demise, I start:
Visions in sleep start Dead wife Octavia dragging
him by the hair into shadow He sees himself
blanketed in ants with their silvery wings endless
Or feels his way through darkness then a light
on the mausoleum its doors flung apart
Here, she can be part of the reason for his downfall, his debilitating dread, dragging him into the afterlife.
To the ancient historians, because she was a “model” Roman woman, Octavia was the perfect victim to the villainous Nero. The characteristics of these figures were pumped up to the point of caricature—what we now see in novels and TV and are quick to clock and decry. Yet the people protesting in the streets probably loved Octavia for a reason, and I doubt it was only because of her lineage and that she kept her mouth shut. So, I hope Octavia spat words back at her shitty husband, was able to claim bits of joy and pleasure, even if by herself. In moments of extremity, such acts are the greatest agency we can claim.
DIANA ARTERIAN is the author of the poetry collection Playing Monster :: Seiche and has twice been a finalist for the National Poetry Series. Her writing has appeared in BOMB, The Georgia Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, The New York Times Book Review, and elsewhere. A poetry editor for Noemi Press, Arterian writes The Annotated Nightstand column at Lit Hub. She lives in Los Angeles.
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