A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

3. LIVIA or LIVILLA, the daughter of Drusus senior and Antonia, and the sister of Germanicus and the emperor Claudius. [See the genealogical table, Vol. I. p. 1076.] In her eleventh year B. C. 1, she was betrothed to C. Caesar, the son of Agrippa and Julia, and the grandson of Augustus. She was subsequently married to her first cousin, Drusus junior, the son of the emperor Tiberius, but was seduced by Sejanus, who both feared and hated Drusus, and who persuaded her to poison her husband, which she accordingly did in A. D. 23. Her guilt was not discovered till the fall of Sejanus, eight years afterwards, A. D. 31, when it was revealed to Tiberius by Apicata, the wife of Sejanus. According to some statements Livia was put to death by Tiberius, but according to others she was spared by the emperor on account of her mother, Antonia, who, however, caused her to be starved to death. Such is the account of Dio Cassius (58.11); but from Tacitus saying (Ann. 6.2) that in A. D. 32 the statues of Livia were destroyed and her memory cursed, because her crimes had not yet been punished, it would appear as if he supposed that she had died before the fall of Sejanus. (Suet. Cl. 1; Tac. Ann. 2.43, 84, iv 1, 40, 6.2; D. C. 57.22, 58.11.)