Portia (Julius Caesar)

Porcia Catonis (c.70 BC – June 43 BC (or October 42 BC)), (Porcia "of Cato", in full Porcia Catonis filia, "Porcia the daughter of Cato") also known simply as Porcia, occasionally spelled "Portia" especially in 18th-century English literature, was a Roman woman who lived in the 1st century BC. She was the daughter of Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensis and his first wife Atilia. She is best known for being the second wife of Marcus Junius Brutus, the most famous of Julius Caesar's assassins, and for her suicide, reputedly by swallowing hot coals.

Porcia was born between 73 BC and 64 BC. She had an affectionate nature, was addicted to philosophy and was full of an understanding courage.Plutarch describes her as being prime of youth and beauty. When she was still very young, her father divorced her mother for adultery.

At a young age she was married first to Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus, her father's political ally. This marriage occurred between 58 BC and 53 BC. With him she may have had a son, Lucius Calpurnius Bibulus, although modern historians believe Porcia was too young to have mothered Lucius, and that he was Bibulus' son by his previous marriage, as he was old enough to fight in the battle of Philippi in 42 BC. He died in 32 BC.

A few years later, Quintus Hortensius desired to make an alliance with Cato and asked for Porcia's hand in marriage. However, Bibulus, who was infatuated with his wife, was unwilling to let her go. Hortensius offered to marry her and then return her to Bibulus once she had given birth to an heir. Such an arrangement was not uncommon at the time. He argued that it was against natural law to keep a girl of Porcia's youth and beauty from producing children for his allies and impractical for her to overproduce for Bibulus. Nonetheless Bibulus refused to divorce her and Cato disliked the idea of marrying his daughter to a man who was four times her age. Instead, Cato divorced his wife, Porcia's stepmother Marcia, and gave her to Hortensius; he remarried her after Hortensius died.

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