Livia

Livia Drusilla (30 January 59 BC – AD 29) was Roman empress from 27 BC to AD 14 as the wife of emperor Augustus. She was known as Julia Augusta after her formal adoption into the Julian family in AD 14. Livia was the daughter of Roman senator Marcus Livius Drusus Claudianus and his wife Alfidia. She married Tiberius Claudius Nero around 43 BC, and they had two sons, Tiberius and Drusus. In 38 BC, she divorced Tiberius Claudius Nero and married the political leader Octavian. The Senate granted Octavian the title Augustus in 27 BC, effectively making him emperor. Livia then became the Roman empress. In this role, she served as an influential confidant of her husband and was rumored to have been responsible for the deaths of a number of Augustus' relatives, including his grandson Agrippa Postumus. After Augustus died in AD 14, Tiberius became emperor. Livia continued to exert political influence as the mother of the emperor. She died in AD 29. She was the grandmother of the emperor Claudius, great-grandmother of the emperor Caligula, and the great-great-grandmother of the emperor Nero. In AD 42, Livia was deified by Claudius, who acknowledged her title of Augusta. Livia Drusilla was born on 30 January 59 BC as the daughter of Marcus Livius Drusus Claudianus by his wife Alfidia. The diminutive Drusilla often found in her name suggests that she was not her father's first daughter. She may have had a brother named Gaius Livius Drusus who had a daughter named Livia Pulchra. Her father also adopted Marcus Livius Drusus Libo. She was married around 43 BC. Her father married her to Tiberius Claudius Nero, her cousin of patrician status who was fighting with him on the side of Julius Caesar's assassins against Octavian. Her father committed suicide in the Battle of Philippi, along with Gaius Cassius Longinus and Marcus Junius Brutus, but her husband continued fighting against Octavian, now on behalf of Mark Antony and his brother Lucius Antonius. Her first child, the future emperor Tiberius, was born in 42 BC.