Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/665

Rh whole mind and soul was fixed on this single object, and such was her deportment through the latter part of life, as if she had been at a funeral. She appeared in her weeds before her children and grand children; a circumstance which greatly displeased her family, as if she was totally bereaved, whilst they were living and well.

Seneca likewise adds, that she rejected all poems wrote in honour of Marcellus's memory, and compliments of every kind. This however must be taken with some grains of allowance, at least if the story be true, which has never yet been questioned, that Virgil, reading that admirable eulogium on this youth, in the conclusion of the sixth Æneid, to Augustus, when she was with him, they both burst into tears, and Virgil was forced to inform them the book was near ending, otherwise they would not let him go on. It is said, likewise, that Octavia fainted away, at the repetition of those words, Tu Marcellus eris: and that it was with the greatest difficulty she was recovered; after which she rewarded the poet with no less than ten sesterces; that is, as some compute it, 78l. 2s. 6d. for each verse, of which there are twenty-six in the whole.

Octavia, according to Dio, died, 744, ten years before Christ, leaving two daughters by Marc Antony, Antonia major, and Antonia minor, the elder married Domitius Ænobarbus, and the younger Drusus, brother of Tiberius. Octavia's eldest daughter by Marcellus was first married to Agrippa, and afterwards to Antony, youngest son of Marc Antony by Fulvia. It is said that Augustus dedicated a temple and some porticos to the memory of his sister Octavia.

OGINA,