A daughter raised in her mother’s household
Antonia Major was the elder daughter of Marcus Antonius and Octavia Minor, born in the last years of the Republic. After her father’s defeat and death, she was raised in Rome in her mother Octavia’s household alongside her younger sister Antonia Minor and the surviving children of Marcus Antonius and Cleopatra. She is a far less documented figure than her sister, who left a long public career; Antonia Major appears in the sources chiefly through her marriage and her descendants.
Grandmother of an emperor she likely never knew
Antonia married Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, consul in 16 BCE and a member of one of Rome’s oldest patrician families. Their son, Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus, married Agrippina the Younger and fathered the future emperor Nero — making Antonia Major his paternal grandmother. No secure record survives of when she died.
A face on the Ara Pacis, perhaps
Unlike her sister, no freestanding portrait bust is confidently identified as Antonia Major. Some scholars have proposed that a veiled woman on the south processional frieze of the Ara Pacis, shown among a group with children identified as the young Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus and his sister, represents Antonia and her husband. The identification rests on the arrangement of figures rather than an inscription, and is a scholarly proposal rather than a settled fact.
Historical sources
Suetonius, Nero 5
Antonia’s marriage to Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, tracing Nero’s paternal ancestry.
C. B. Rose, “Ahenobarbi, Appuleii and Some Others on the Ara Pacis”, American Journal of Archaeology 90 (1986)
The proposed identification of the Ahenobarbus family, including Antonia Major, on the Ara Pacis south frieze.
Relief: Amphipolis / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0. Cropped for display. The identification of this veiled figure as Antonia Major is a scholarly proposal, not a certainty.