[citation needed] Full sister to Augustus, Octavia was the only daughter born of Gaius Octavius' second marriage to Atia, niece of Julius Caesar.

[1] Octavia was born in Nola, present-day Italy; her father, a Roman governor and senator, died in 59 BC from natural causes.

He was a member of the influential plebeian branch of the Claudian family and descended from Marcus Claudius Marcellus, a famous general in the Second Punic War.

Thus, Octavia's husband continued to oppose Julius Caesar, including in the crucial year of his consulship, 50 BC.

However, according to the anonymous Περὶ τοῦ καισαρείου γένους Octavia bore Marcellus four sons and four daughters.

[10] For example, in the spring of 37 BC, while pregnant with her daughter Antonia Minor, she was considered essential to an arms deal held at Tarentum, in which Antony and Augustus agreed to aid each other in their Parthian and Sicilian campaigns.

[12] In 35 BC, after Antony suffered a disastrous campaign in Parthia, she brought fresh troops, provisions, and funds to Athens.

In 35 BC, Augustus accorded a number of honours and privileges to Octavia, and also to his wife, Livia – previously unheard of for women in Rome.

Livia and Octavia were made immune from tutela, the male guardianship which all women in Rome except for the Vestal Virgins were required to have.

She was also consulted in regard to, and in some versions advised, that Augustus's daughter Julia marry Agrippa after her mourning for Marcellus ended.

[19] Her funeral was a public one, with her sons-in-law (Drusus, Ahenobarbus, Iullus Antonius, and possibly Paullus Aemillius Lepidus) carrying her to the grave in the Mausoleum of Augustus.

[20] She was one of the first Roman women to have coins minted bearing her image; only Antony's previous wife Fulvia pre-empted her.

The most famous example is Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres's 1812 painting Virgil reading The Aeneid before Augustus, Livia and Octavia but other artists, including Jean-Joseph Taillasson, Antonio Zucchi, Jean-Baptiste Wicar, Jean-Bruno Gassies and Angelica Kaufmann, have also been inspired to depict this scene.

Octavia's later life, around the time of the death of Marcellus, is depicted in the 1976 television adaptation of Robert Graves's novel I, Claudius.

[27] A highly fictionalized version of Octavia's early life is depicted in the 2005 television series Rome, in which Octavia of the Julii (Kerry Condon) seduces and sleeps with her younger brother, Gaius Octavian, has a lesbian affair with Servilia of the Junii (the series' version of Servilia) and a romantic relationship with Marcus Agrippa (based on the historical Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa), none of which has any historical basis.