A half-sister to the dynasty’s final heirs
Claudia Antonia was the eldest surviving child of Claudius, and his only child by his second wife, Aelia Paetina — making her a half-sister to both Britannicus and Claudia Octavia, Claudius’s children by Messalina. She married twice during the reigns of Claudius and Nero, well away from the political center her half-siblings occupied.
An unwanted proposal in a year of civil war
After Nero’s suicide in 68 CE ended the Julio-Claudian line, the short-lived emperor Otho, seeking to bolster his legitimacy through marriage into the old dynasty, is said to have proposed marriage to Antonia. She refused him.
Killed in 69 CE
Antonia was put to death in 69 CE, according to Suetonius on Otho’s orders, on the accusation that she had encouraged a rebellion against him. She was among the last direct descendants of Claudius to die in the political violence that followed the dynasty’s collapse.
Historical sources
Suetonius, Otho 10
Otho’s proposal to Antonia and her death.
Tacitus, Annals 12.2
Antonia’s parentage and her mother, Aelia Paetina.
Portrait: Marie-Lan Nguyen / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.5. Cropped and resized for display.