Pompeia

Who is Pompeia?

Pompeia Magna was the daughter and only child of political rebel Sextus Pompey and Scribonia. Pompeia was the only child born to the sons of triumvir Pompey. Her paternal grandparents were Pompey and Mucia Tertia. Her maternal grandparents were consul of 34 BC, Lucius Scribonius Libo and an unnamed woman from the gens Sulpicius, the family that the Roman Emperor Galba descended from on his paternal side. Her parents are distantly related. Sextus was a great uncle to her maternal grandfather, which Libo was a son to Cornelia Sulla. Cornelia Sulla was a daughter to Pompeia Magna and Faustus Cornelius Sulla. Pompeia Magna and Sextus Pompeius were siblings.

In 39 BC, at the peace of Misenum, Sextus Pompey had betrothed Pompeia to Marcus Claudius Marcellus, the nephew to the heir of Roman Dictator Julius Caesar, Octavian and a son to Octavian’s elder sister Octavia Minor. Pompeia and Marcellus in the end never married. She accompanied her father as they fled into Anatolia in 36 BC. After this moment, Pompeia is not mentioned again by the Roman ancient sources, though a list of female slaves owned by the Parthian general Suren makes reference to "one Pompeia, a slave who rules her master, greatly cherished though poor and friendless". However, Suren died in 53 BC, 11 years before Pompeia Magna was born.