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
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 (aunt of Nero), Domitia or Domitia Lepida Major. 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 Passienus Crispus, 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 (aunt of Nero). 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
http://www.dl.ket.org/latin1/gallery/arch/ara_pacis.htm .
Antonia died before
25. 
