This paper aimed to examine the positions adopted by Antonia Minor and dictated
by political reasons on the occasion of the death of her oldest son, Germanicus and her
only daughter, Livilla. The presence of Antonia during her son’s public funeral and posthumous
honours is attested by the epigraphic evidences of the Tabula Siarensis and the
SC de Cn. Pisone Patre, although Tacitus records her absence (Ann., III 1-3). Allegedly,
the daughter Livilla helped her lover Sejanus in poisoning her husband Drusus the
Younger and, according to Cassius Dio (LVIII 11, 7), Tiberius handed Livilla over to her
mother, who starved her to death: in this act, Antonia Minor seems to exercise a right
of the paterfamilias, the power of life and death over his children. Her authority perhaps
derives from her status of univira, a woman who had only one husband throughout her
life, and from her blood ties with Augustus and her kinship with Tiberius. Hence Antonia
Minor is portrayed as consistently loyal to the dynasty.
