Claudia Octavia (Classical Latin: CLAVDIA•OCTAVIA) (late AD 39 or early AD 40 – 8 June AD 62) was an Empress of Rome. She was a great-niece of the Emperor Tiberius, paternal first cousin of the Emperor Caligula, daughter of the Emperor Claudius, and stepsister and first wife of the Emperor Nero. Asteroid 598 Octavia is named after her.
Octavia was the only daughter of the Emperor Claudius by his third marriage to his second cousin Valeria Messalina. She was named for her great-grandmother Octavia the Younger, the second eldest and full-blooded sister of the Emperor Augustus. Her elder half-sister was Claudia Antonia, Claudius's daughter through his second marriage to Aelia Paetina, and her full sibling was Britannicus, Claudius's son with Messalina.
She was born in Rome. As a young girl, her father betrothed her to future praetor Lucius Junius Silanus Torquatus, who was a descendant of Augustus.
Octavia's mother was executed in 48, for conspiring to murder her father. Claudius subsequently married his niece (and Octavia's first cousin) Agrippina the Younger. Nero (at that time known as Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus) was Agrippina's son from her first marriage.
Belfast Telegraph | 23 Jun 2018