Portico of Octavia

This guide to the Portico of Octavia in Rome tells the story of the emperor Augustus's sister, married off to the general Mark Antony as a political deal in 40 BCE and celebrated by Rome as its ideal woman. It follows what she endured as Antony's attention turned elsewhere, and how she chose to respond rather than retreat into scandal. She had become the first living woman ever pictured on Roman coinage, her face cast in bronze across the empire.