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of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Assyria. She contri buted much to the improvement of Babylon, and built a bridge to connect the two parts of the city divided by the Euphrates, and also extensive embankments along the river. She gave orders there should be an inscription on her tomb, signifying that her successors would find great treasures within, if they were in need of money; but that their labour would be ill repaid if they open ed it without necessity. Cyrus opened it from curiosity, and found within it only these words: "If thy avarice had not been insatiable, thou never wouldst have violated the monuments of the dead !"

Other historians suppose her to have been the wife of Evil-Merodach, sou and successor of Nebuchadnezzar, who also governed during the lunacy of his father. She was a woman of extraordinary abilities, and did all that she could by human prudence to sustain a tottering empire. She lived in the sixth century before Christ.

to his own daughter, and declared him heir to the empire. But he died early, not without suspicion of being poisoned by Livia, wife of Augustus. His mother sank under this blow, and mourned bitterly for him till her death.

Virgil wrote in honour of this youth an eulogy in the conclusion of the sixth Æneid; and it is said that Octavia fainted on hearing him read it, but rewarded the poet afterwards with ten sesterces for each verse, of which there are twenty-six. Octavia died B. C. 11, leaving two daughters whom she had by Antony. Great honours were paid to her memory by her brother and the Senate. So destitute was she of all petty jealousy, that after the death of Antony and Cleopatra, when their children were brought to Rome to grace her brother's triumph, she took them under her pro tection, and married the daughter to Juba, king of Mauritania.

OCTAVIA,

Daughter of Caius Octavius, and sister to Augustus Caesar, was one of the most illustrious ladies of ancient Rome. She was first married to Claudius Marcellus, who was consul. She bore this husband three children. After his death she married Antony, and in this way brought about a reconciliation between Antony and her brother Octavianus, afterwards the emperor Augustus Caesar. These nuptials were solemnized B. C. 41. Three years after, Antony went with his wife to spend the winter at Athens. Here, becoming again exasperated against Augustus by evil reports, he sailed for Italy; but Octavia a second time induced a reconciliation between them. Antony went to the East soon afterwards, leaving Octavia in Italy ; and though she discovered that he did not intend to return, she remained in his palace, continuing to take the same care of everything as though he had been the best of husbands; acting the part of a kind mother to the children of his first wife. She would not consent that Antony's treatment of her should cause a civil war. At length she was ordered to leave the house by Antony, who sent her at the same time a divorce. This treatment of Octavia exposed An tony to the hatred and contempt of the Romans, when they saw him prefer to her a woman of Cleopatra's abandoned character, who had no ad vantage of her rival either in youth or beauty. Indeed, Cleopatra dreaded Octavia's charms so much that she had recourse to the most studied artifices to persuade Antony to forbid Octavia to come to him ; and she accompanied him wherever he went.

After Antony's death, fortune seemed to natter Octavia with the prospect of the highest worldly felicity. The son she had by her first husband, Marcellus, was now about twelve, and was a boy of great genius, and of an unusually cheerful, digni fied and noble disposition. Augustus married him

OLYMPIAS,

Daughter of the king of Epirus, married Philip, king of Macedonia, by whom she had Alexander the Great. Her haughtiness and suspected infidelity induced Philip to repudiate her, and marry Cleopatra, niece of Attains. This incensed Olympias, and Alexander, her son, shared her indignation. Some have attributed the niurder of Philip to the intrigues of Olympias, who paid the greatest ho nour to the dead body of her husband's murderer. Though the administration of Alexander was not altogether pleasing to Olympias, she did not hesitate to declare publicly, that he was not the son of Philip, but of Jupiter. On Alexander's death, B. C. 324, Olympias seized on the government, and cruelly put to death Aridajus, one of Philip's illegitimate sons, who had claimed the throne, and his wife Eurydice, as well as Nicanor, the brother of Cassander, with a hundred of the principal men of Macedonia. Cassander besieged her in Pydna, where she had retired, and after an obstinate defence she was obliged to surrender. Two hundred soldiers were sent to put her to death, but the splendour and majesty of the queen overawed them, and she was at last massacred by those whom she had injured by her tyranny. She died

about 316, B. C.

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