part of a kind mother to the children of his first wife. She would not consent that Antonyms treatment of her should cause a civil war. At length she was ordered to leave the house by Antony, who sent her at the same time a divorce. This treatment of Octavia exposed Antony to the hatred and contempt of the Romans when they saw him prefer to her a woman of Cleopatra's abandoned character, who had no advantage of her rival either in youth or beauty. Indeed, Cleopatra dreaded Octavia's charms so much that she had recourse to the most studied artifices to persuade Antony to forbid Octavia to come to him; and she accompanied him wherever he went.
After Antony's death, fortune seemed to flatter Octavia with the prospect of the highest worldly felicity. The son she had by her first husband, Marcellus, was now about twelve, and was a boy of great genius, and of an unusually cheerful, dignified, and noble disposition. Augustus married him to his own daughter, and declared him heir to the empire. But he died early, not without suspicion of being poisoned by Livia, wife of Augustus. His mother sank under this blow, and mourned bitterly for him till her death.
Virgil wrote in honour of this youth an eulogy in the conclusion of the sixth Æneid; and it is said that Octavia fainted on hearing him read it, but rewarded the poet afterwards with ten sesterces for each verse, of which there are twenty-six. Octavia died B. C. 11, leaving two daughters whom she had by Antony. Great honours were paid to her memory by her brother and the Senate.
So destitute was she of all petty jealousy, that after the death of Antony and Cleopatra, when their children were brought to Rome to grace her brother's triumph, she took them under her protection, and married the daughter to Juba, King of Mauritania.
OCTAVIA,
Daughter of Claudius, Emperor of Rome, and Messalina, was betrothed to Silanus; but through the intrigues of Agrippina, the neice and fourth wife of Claudius, she was married, when only fifteen, to the Emperor Nero. This wretched tyrant soon divorced her to marry Poppæa, who had her banished to Campania. She was recalled by the people; but Poppæa, resolved on her ruin, caused her to be again banished to an island. There she was ordered to kill herself by opening her veins. She died at the age of twenty. Her head was cut off and carried to Poppæa. To great personal charms, Octavia added modesty, sweetness, beneficence, purity of manners, talents, and irreproachable conduct; and the people in Rome mourned her loss with the greatest grief. She died about the year 56.
OLDFIELD, ANNE,
A celebrated English actress, was born in Pall-Mall in 1683. Her father, an officer in the army, left her poor; but the sweetness of her voice, and her inclination for the stage noticed by Farquhar, the comic writer, decided her destiny. She became the mistress of Mr, Maynwaring, and after his death of General Churchill. But notwithstanding these derilections, she was humane and benevolent
