Atia the Elder, known primarily as the mother of Octavian Augustus, the first emperor of Rome. Born in 85 BCE as the daughter of Marcus Atius Balbus and Julia the Younger, sister of Julius Caesar, Atia was part of one of Rome’s most influential families. Her life is an example of a typical woman of that time, focused on taking care of the home, devoted to her family and trying to take care of her children’s development.
Tacitus, in his work Dialogus de oratoribus, presented Atia as a religious, extremely moral person and as one of the most respected matrons of the Republic. Based on this opinion, we can assume that Atia raised Octavian in the spirit of traditional Roman values, instilling in him respect for the heritage of the Julius family. Moreover, Julius Caesar, a great relative of Octavian, finally decided to appoint Gaius as his heir, which proves that the boy showed character traits worthy of his successor, and he probably owed them to his mother.
As the widow of Gaius Octavius (who died in 58 BCE), Atia took care of the future of her son, who was five years old at the time of his father’s death. She certainly had a great influence on her son’s development and enabled him, together with her second husband Lucius Marcus Philippus, to obtain a good education and then a strong political position in a society full of intrigues and civil wars.
Atia the Elder is an interesting and relatively well-known character in the world thanks to the series “Rome”, in which the creators of the work presented her as an ambitious, manipulative and amoral character. This is not a vision consistent with the sources known to us; what’s more, in the series she had an affair with Mark Antony, which is also not true.
