Lollia Paulina
Lollia Paulina (PIR2 L 308) (died 49) was a noble Roman woman who lived in the 1st century.
Life
Her father was Marcus Lollius Paulinus, who was a formal consul and her mother was Volusia Saturnina, a sister of senator and consul Lucius Volusius Saturninus. Her maternal grandmother was a distant relative to Emperor Tiberius. Her father’s maternal uncle was senator and consul Marcus Aurelius Cotta Maximus Messalinus and paternal grandfather was the general Marcus Lollius Paulinus. Paulina’s younger sister was Lollia Saturnina and married the consul Decimus Valerius Asiaticus and they had a son.
Paulina became quite rich as the heir to her relative’s estates. Her first husband was suffect consul in 31 and a Roman Governor, Publius Memmius Regulus. Tacitus describes him as a man of ‘dignity, who was a person of influence and good name‘. Regulus died in 62. Emperor Caligula ordered Paulina from Regulus (she was at the province that Regulus was governing) after Caligula heard a remark on how beautiful her grandmother was.
Paulina was forced to divorce Regulus in order to marry the emperor. Caligula married her as his third wife in 38 and Paulina became an Empress. He divorced her after six months because she was infertile and forbade her to sleep with or go near another man.
In later years, Paulina became a rival to Caligula‘s sister Agrippina the Younger and was considered a choice for wife to Emperor Claudius. In 49, Agrippina the Younger charged her with black magic; Paulina did not get a hearing. Her property was confiscated and she left Italy.
Tacitus tells us that Paulina was forced to commit suicide under the watch of a colonel of the Guards, and seems to suggest that this was under the orders of Agrippina the Younger.
She is mentioned in Pliny the Elder's Natural history as an example of ostentation, reportedly wearing a large share of her inheritance to a dinner party in the form of jewellery, worth some 40 million sestertius. A sepulchre to her honour was not erected till the reign of Emperor Nero.
References
- Ancient Library 1904
- Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars
- Tacitus, The Annals of Imperial Rome
- E. Groag, A. Stein, L. Petersen - e.a. (edd.), Prosopographia Imperii Romani saeculi I, II et III, Berlin, 1933 - . (PIR2)