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Roman noblewoman, full sister of Augustus

Octavia the Younger (Octavia Minor; c. 66 BC – 11 BC) was the elder sister of the first Roman emperor, Augustus (known also as Octavian), the half sister of Octavia the Elder, and the fourth wife of Mark Antony. She was also the great grandmother of the Emperor Caligula and Empress Agrippina the Younger, maternal grandmother of the Emperor Claudius, and paternal great grandmother and maternal great great grandmother of the Emperor Nero. One of the most prominent women in Roman history, Octavia was respected and admired by contemporaries for her loyalty, nobility and humanity, as well as for maintaining traditional Roman feminine virtues.

Octavia was born around 66 BC. Full sister to Augustus, Octavia was the only daughter born of Gaius Octavius' second marriage to Atia, niece of Julius Caesar. Octavia was born in Nola, present day Italy; her father, a Roman governor and senator, died in 59 BC from natural causes. Her mother later remarried, to the consul Lucius Marcius Philippus. Octavia spent much of her childhood travelling with her parents. Marcius was in charge of educating Octavia and her brother Octavian, later known as Augustus.

Some time before 54 BC, her stepfather arranged for her to marry Gaius Claudius Marcellus. He was a member of the influential plebian branch of the Claudian family and descended from Marcus Claudius Marcellus, a famous general in the Second Punic War. In 54 BC, Octavia's great uncle Julius Caesar is said to have been anxious for her to divorce her husband so that she could marry Pompey, who had just lost his wife Julia (Caesar's daughter, and thus Octavia's cousin once removed). The couple did not want to get a divorce, so instead and married Cornelia Metella. Thus, Octavia's husband continued to oppose Julius Caesar, including in the crucial year of his consulship, 50 BC. Civil war broke out when Caesar invaded Italy from Gaul in 49 BC. All three were born in Italy. However, according to the anonymous Περὶ τοῦ καισαρείου γένους Octavia bore Marcellus four sons and four daughters. Her husband Marcellus died in May 40 BC.

By a Senatorial decree, Octavia married Mark Antony in October 40 BC, as his fourth wife (his third wife Fulvia having died shortly before). This marriage had to be approved by the Senate, as she was pregnant with her first husband's child, and was a politically motivated attempt to cement the uneasy alliance between her brother Octavian and Mark Antony; however, Octavia does appear to have been a loyal and faithful wife to Antony. Between 40 and 36 BC, she travelled with Antony to various provinces and lived with him in his Athenian mansion. There she raised her children by Marcellus as well as Antony's two sons; Antyllus and Iullus, as well as the two daughters of her marriage to Antony, Antonia Major and Antonia Minor who were born there.

The alliance was severely tested by Antony's abandonment of Octavia and their children in favor of his former lover Queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt (Antony and Cleopatra had met in 41 BC, an interaction that resulted in Cleopatra bearing twins, Alexander Helios, a boy, and Cleopatra Selene, a girl). After 36 BC, Octavia returned to Rome with the daughters of her second marriage. On several occasions she acted as a political advisor and negotiator between her husband and brother. For example, in the spring of 37 BC, while pregnant with her daughter Antonia Minor, she was considered essential to an arms deal held at Tarentum, in which Antony and Augustus agreed to aid each other in their Parthian and Sicilian campaigns. She had won over her brother's advisers Agrippa and Maecenas and convinced him to renew their alliance. She was hailed as a "marvel of womankind." In 35 BC, after Antony suffered a disastrous campaign in Parthia, she brought fresh troops, provisions, and funds to Athens. There Antony had left a letter for her, instructing her to go no further. Mark Antony divorced Octavia in late 33 BC. In 33, Antony sent men to eject her from his house in Rome. She became sole caretaker of their children, except for Antyllus who was already with his father in the East. After Antony's suicide in 30 BC, her brother executed Antyllus but allowed Octavia to raise Antony's younger son Iullus by Fulvia as well as his children by Cleopatra (the two sons Alexander Helios and Ptolemy Philadelphus, and one daughter, Cleopatra Selene II).

A famous anecdote, recorded in the late fourth century vita of Virgil by Aelius Donatus, in which the poet read the passage in Book VI in praise of Octavia's late son Marcellus and Octavia fainted with grief, has inspired several works of art. The most famous example is Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres's 1812 painting Virgil reading The Aeneid before Augustus, Livia and Octavia but other artists, including Jean Joseph Taillasson, Antonio Zucchi, Jean Baptiste Wicar, Jean Bruno Gassies and Angelica Kaufmann, have also been inspired to depict this scene. Octavia's later life, around the time of the death of Marcellus, is depicted in the 1976 television adaptation of Robert Graves's novel I, Claudius. The role was played by Angela Morant, and should not be confused with her great granddaughter Claudia Octavia (also referred to as "Octavia" in the series), Claudius's daughter and wife of the future emperor Nero, who was played by Cheryl Johnson. In the 1963 film Cleopatra, she is played by Jean Marsh in an uncredited role. A highly fictionalized version of Octavia's early life is depicted in the 2005 television series Rome, in which Octavia of the Julii (Kerry Condon) seduces and sleeps with her younger brother, Gaius Octavian, has a lesbian affair with Servilia of the Junii (the series' version of Servilia) and a romantic relationship with Marcus Agrippa (based on the historical Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa), none of which has any historical basis. In the TV series Domina (2021), Octavia was played by Alexandra Moloney and Claire Forlani.