Vipsania Marcella is a name retrospectively given by historians to a possible daughter or daughters of the ancient Roman general Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa and his second wife Claudia Marcella Major, the eldest niece of emperor

Augustus Caesar Augustus (born Gaius Octavius; 23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14), also known as Octavian, was the first Roman emperor; he reigned from 27 BC until his death in AD 14. He is known for being the founder of the Roman Pr ...

History

It was once thought that Agrippa and Marcella only had one surviving child together, a daughter whom no real information about was available, this daughter was given a composite name to distinguish her from her sisters from Agrippa's other marriages. But as new information was discovered and men such as

Quintus Haterius Quintus Haterius (c. 63 BCAD 26) was a Roman politician and orator born into a senatorial family. Career Haterius was a Populares orator under Augustus, but his style of oration was sometimes criticised. In Seneca's Epistle, "On the Proper Styl ...

, Publius Quinctilius Varus, and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, ''The Augustan Aristocracy'', Oxford, 1986, p
125
began to be speculated to have been Agrippa's sons-in-law by a daughter or daughters of Marcella opinions began to shift.

Ronald Syme Sir Ronald Syme, (11 March 1903 – 4 September 1989) was a New Zealand-born historian and classicist. He was regarded as the greatest historian of ancient Rome since Theodor Mommsen and the most brilliant exponent of the history of the Roman ...

believed the wives of each men were three different people, one Vipsania who married Varus, a Vipsania who married Lepidus and one Vipsania who married Haterius, but Syme also argued that Haterius wife was a daughter of Agrippa by his first wife Pomponia, not Marcella.

Meyer Reinhold Meyer Reinhold (September 1, 1909 – July 2002) was an American classical scholar and also a specialist in Jewish studies. He was co-author or editor of 23 books. With his wife Diane he had two children, Helen Reinhold Barrett, later Dean of the G ...

rebutted and argued that Varus wife was the daughter of Pomponia, L. Koenen has entertained this possibility as well, while Franziska Knopf thought that Haterius wife could be Marcella's daughter. Some historians also think that Varus and Lepidus wives were not separate people. Nonetheless Syme's view hold majority opinion in the 21st century.

Cultural depictions

In Robert Graves' books, ''

I, Claudius ''I, Claudius'' is a historical novel by English writer Robert Graves, published in 1934. Written in the form of an autobiography of the Roman Emperor Claudius, it tells the history of the Julio-Claudian dynasty and the early years of the Ro ...

'' and ''Claudius the God'', a single daughter of Agrippa and Marcella is mentioned to exist. She is depicted as having committed suicide for unexplained reasons early on, but later in the story Roman empress Livia claims that she killed herself over guilt for committing incest with her father, to secretly instigate his poisoning.

Notes

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Marcella Vipsanii Agrippae Ancient Roman prosopographical lists of women