ATIA BALBA CAESONIA

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'Atia Balba Caesonia' (85 BC-43 BC) was the mother of the first Roman emperor Augustus, and daughter of Julius Caesar's sister Julia Caesaris. The name 'Atia Balba' was also borne by the other two daughters of Julia Caesaris and her husband Marcus Atius Balbus. The sisters were sometimes known as Atia Balba Prima, Atia Balba Caesonia and Atia Balba Tertia.
Atia Balba Caesonia was married to the Macedonian governor and senator Gaius Octavius. Their children were Octavia Minor and Gaius Octavius Thurinus, later Augustus. In 59 BC, Gaius Octavius died on his way to Rome to stand for the consulship, and Atia married Lucius Marcius Philippus, the consul of 56 BC and a supporter of Julius Caesar. He loved raising his stepchildren alongside his own son and daughter from a previous marriage and arranged Octavia's first marriage, to the consul and senator Gaius Claudius Marcellus Minor.
In his ''Dialogus de oratoribus'', Tacitus notes Atia to be exceptionally religious and moral, and one of the most admired matrons in the history of the Republic:

In her presence no base word could be uttered without grave offence, and no wrong deed done. Religiously and with the utmost delicacy she regulated not only the serious tasks of her youthful charges, but also their recreations and their games.

Suetonius' account of Augustus mentions the divine omens she experienced before and after his birth:

When Atia had come in the middle of the night to the solemn service of Apollo, she had her litter set down in the temple and fell asleep, while the rest of the matrons also slept. On a sudden a serpent glided up to her and shortly went away. When she awoke, she purified herself, as if after the embraces of her husband, and at once there appeared on her body a mark in colours like a serpent, and she could never get rid of it; so that presently she ceased ever to go to the public baths. In the tenth month after that Augustus was born and was therefore regarded as the son of Apollo. Atia too, before she gave him birth, dreamed that her vitals were borne up to the stars and spread over the whole extent of land and sea, while Octavius dreamed that the sun rose from Atia's womb.

The day he was born the conspiracy of Catiline was before the House, and Octavius came late because of his wife's confinement; then Publius Nigidius, as everyone knows, learning the reason for his tardiness and being informed also of the hour of the birth, declared that the ruler of the world had been born.

Atia was so fearful for her son's safety that she and Philippus urged him to renounce his rights as Caesar's heir. She died during her son's first consulship, in August/September 43 BC. Octavian gave her the highest honours at her funeral. Philippus later married one of her sisters.

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Popular culture

A highly fictionalized version of Atia is a major character in the HBO/BBC television series ''Rome''. She is portrayed as a licentious, self-absorbed and manipulative schemer whose sexual escapades include Mark Antony.

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Augustan Portraits: Parents. A portrait of Atia Balba Caesonia can be seen under Section 4: Parents.