Domnina (daughter of Nero)
According to a Christian tradition, recorded in The Posthumous Miracles of St. Photeine, Domnina, daughter of the Roman emperor Nero, was converted in to Christianity along with her hundred slave girls, by the samaritan woman Photina. According to the tradition, Domnina ordered that all the tempting gold jewelry she and her servants had be sold and the money distributed to the poor.[1] In one version the converted Domnina took the name Anthousa. The organization Orthodox Church in America identifies her converter Photina as Junia, a friend of Paul the Apostle.[2]
Domnina is not recorded in historical sources, and the story is likely a Christian myth dating to late antiquity, or to the medieval period. Nero's only recorded daughter was named Claudia Augusta, who died in infancy.
A daughter of Nero's is also mentioned in some versions of the medieval fable of 'Virgil in the basket', as the lady who is the subject of the poet's affections. Such tales often blend fact with fiction and freely conflate and combine items from different eras of history, without regard for the actual chronology.
References
- Foster, Richard J.; Beebe, Gayle D. (2009). Longing for God: Seven Paths of Christian Devotion. InterVarsity Press. p. 298. ISBN 978-0-8308-3514-0.
- "Who is Junia?". Department of Christian Education. Orthodox Church in America.
External links
- Ziolkowski, Jan M.; Putnam, Michael C. J. (2008). The Virgilian Tradition: The First Fifteen Hundred Years. Yale University Press. p. 877. ISBN 0-300-10822-2.
- Tunison, Joseph Salathiel (1890). Master Virgil, the author of the Aeneid, as he seemed in the Middle Ages, a series of studies. Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co – via Internet Archive.
- Shapiro, Marianne (2005). From the Critic's Workbench: Essays in Literature and Semiotics. Peter Lang. p. 72. ISBN 978-0-8204-7915-6.