Apicata may have been the daughter of Marcus Gavius Apicius, a gourmet who knew Sejanus when the latter was a young man.
He divorced her in the year 23 AD, when it seemed he might be able to marry his lover and co-conspirator Livilla, the wife of Drusus Julius Caesar (son of Tiberius).
According to Cassius Dio, Apicata wrote a letter to Tiberius accusing Sejanus and Livilla of having conspired to murder Drusus eight years earlier.
Before[a] the executions of her younger two children, Aelia Iunilla and Capito Aelianus, Apicata herself committed suicide.
Her co-conspirators were condemned to death, though Dio reports that Livilla herself may have been spared from public execution "out of regard for her mother Antonia.
[10] The modern narrative of Apicata often renders her as an avenger on a treacherous husband and the woman of higher station who broke up her marriage,[8] and possibly scheming as much as her ex-husband, especially if her accusations were not true;[11] contemporary epigraphy suggests in her time she elicited little sympathy and was seen as treacherous herself, and tainted by association with Sejanus.