She is best known for being the second wife of Marcus Junius Brutus, the most famous of Julius Caesar's assassins, and appears primarily in the letters of Cicero.

[16] He argued that it was against natural law to keep a girl of Porcia's youth and beauty from producing children for his allies and impractical for her to overproduce for Bibulus.

Cato disliked the idea of marrying his daughter to a man who was four times her age, and refused to break an arranged contract he held with Biblius.

In 52 BC, Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars came to an end, but he refused to return to Rome, despite the Senate's demands that he lay down his arms.

Claudia was very popular for being a woman of great virtue, and was the daughter of Appius Claudius Pulcher, who had been Brutus's ally for many years.

As soon as she overcame her pain, she returned to Brutus and said: You, my husband, though you trusted my spirit that it would not betray you, nevertheless were distrustful of my body, and your feeling was but human.

Therefore fear not, but tell me all you are concealing from me, for neither fire, nor lashes, nor goads will force me to divulge a word; I was not born to that extent a woman.

[31][32][33]Brutus marveled when he saw the gash on her thigh and after hearing this he no longer hid anything from her, but felt strengthened himself and promised to relate the whole plot.

On the day of Caesar's assassination, Porcia was extremely disturbed with anxiety and sent messengers to the Senate to check that Brutus was still alive.

When she came across a painting depicting the parting of Hector from Andromache in the Iliad, however, she burst into tears, feeling it reflected her own sorrow.

It was believed by a majority of contemporary historians that Porcia committed suicide in 42 BC, reputedly by swallowing hot coals.

Modern historians find this tale implausible, however, and one popular speculation has Porcia taking her life by burning charcoal in an unventilated room, thus succumbing to carbon monoxide poisoning.

[5] Most contemporary historians, however, (Cassius Dio, Valerius Maximus, and Appian) claim that she killed herself after hearing that Brutus had died following the second battle of Philippi.

[47] Plutarch also repeats the story of swallowing charcoal, but disbelieves it:[48] As for Porcia, the wife of Brutus, Nicolaüs the philosopher, as well as Valerius Maximus, relates that she now desired to die, but was opposed by all her friends, who kept strict watch upon her; whereupon she snatched up live coals from the fire, swallowed them, kept her mouth fast closed, and thus made away with herself.

And yet there is extant a letter of Brutus to his friends in which he chides them with regard to Porcia and laments her fate, because she was neglected by them and therefore driven by illness to prefer death to life.

[49]Plutarch also acknowledges the false image that Porcia displays, explaining that she was "frightened with every little noise and cry," "possessed with the fury of the Bacchantes," and had passed out and carried into her home.

[51] According to the political journalist and classicist Garry Wills, although Shakespeare has Porcia die by the method Plutarch repeats, but rejects, "the historical Porcia died of illness (possibly of plague) a year before the battle of Philippi"[52]...“but Valerius Maximus [mistakenly] wrote that she killed herself at news of Brutus’s death in that battle.