Livia Drusilla

Wife of Augustus for fifty-two years and the most influential woman of early imperial Rome. Her son by a previous marriage, Tiberius, was eventually adopted by Augustus and succeeded him, making her in effect the matriarch of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Suetonius and Tacitus both insinuated, never proved, that she helped accelerate the deaths of Augustus's other potential heirs to clear the path for her son.