Portia julius caesar age
- •
Meet the only woman privy to the plot to kill Julius Caesar
In Rome Porcia watched as Caesar amassed power. Rather than resign herself to a dictatorship, she continued to believe in the old republic. In 45 B.C. she married Marcus Junius Brutus, a onetime ally of Caesar who would famously turn against him. During the war, Brutus sided with Pompey, but in the aftermath of the war, Caesar pardoned him and even made him governor of Cisalpine Gaul (northern Italy). Brutus’s sympathies for the old republic, however, had not waned. Marrying Cato’s daughter (and divorcing his wife Claudia to do so) was a way to reaffirm his commitment.
Plans and plots
In the months that followed, Brutus, along with other senators alarmed by Caesar’s ambition, embarked on a plot to assassinate him. Although politics was primarily a male domain in Roman culture, Porcia pledged to aid her husband because of her family’s beliefs. According to Plutarch, she noticed a change in her husband and questioned him. When Brutus wouldn’t answer, she wounded her own thigh with a knife. The act was a plea that her h
- •
Portia (c. 70–43 BCE)
Roman patrician. Name variations: Porcia. Born around 70 bce; died in 43 bce (some sources cite 42 bce); daughter of Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensus (Cato of Utica), known as Cato the Younger, and Atilia; married Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus (died 48 bce); married Marcus Junius Brutus (one of the assassins of Julius Caesar); children: (first marriage) three sons, only one of whom (also named Bibulus) outlived her.
The daughter of Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensus (Cato the Younger) and his first wife Atilia , Portia was born around 70 bce and had a brother who was named after their father. Cato the Younger belonged to the Roman Optimate (conservative) faction, and as such remained an ardent opponent of any perceived threat to the political status quo in general, and of Julius Caesar in particular, throughout his life. Portia zealously embraced the political ideals of her father and seems to have had no objection to her arranged marriage with Bibulus, another lifelong adversary of Caesar. (When Bibulus and Caesar were consular colleagues in 59 bce, Bibulus' at
- •
Porcia Catonis (or Porcia “of Cato”), was the daughter of the renowned Roman Stoic philosopher Cato the Younger—an enemy of the dictator Julius Caesar—and his first wife, Atilia. She was known for her beauty and bold personality, as well as for her marriage (her second) to Marcus Junius Brutus, who famously took part in the assassination of Julius Caesar.
She was born between 73 BCE and 64 BCE and died by either suicide or illness around 42 BCE. Accounts of her possible suicide claim she killed herself by swallowing hot coals, but overall the circumstances of her death are still disputed.
Porcia of Cato was written about by Plutarch, a Greek essayist and biographer who later became a Roman citizen, and others, and has been portrayed many times in popular culture such as in Shakespeare’s play, Julius Caesar, in books like The Ides of March, and in TV and movies adapting Shakespeare’s work.
Much of her life was only documented in relation to Cato and Brutus, but within those accounts, we can gather that she was a daring and interesting woman that continues to fascinate his
Copyright ©bilders.pages.dev 2025