Paulina became quite rich as the heir to her relatives' estates. Her first husband, Publius Memmius Regulus, was suffect consul in 31 and a Roman Governor. Tacitus describes him as a man of ‘dignity, who was a person of influence and good name‘. Regulus died in 62. The Emperor Caligula ordered Paulina to leave Regulus (she was, at the time, in the province that Regulus was governing) after the Emperor heard a remark about the beauty of her grandmother.
Paulina was forced to divorce Regulus in order to marry Caligula, who took her as his third wife in 38 CE. He divorced her six months later, because she had not become pregnant, and forbade her to sleep with, or go near, another man.
Later, Paulina became a rival to Caligula‘s sister Agrippina the Younger and was considered a possible wife for the Emperor Claudius. In 49, Agrippina charged her with black magic; Paulina did not get a hearing. Her property was confiscated and she left Italy.
Tacitus tells us that Paulina was forced to commit suicide, under the watch of a colonel of the Guards, and suggests that the suicide was ordered by Agrippina.
She is mentioned in Pliny the Elder's Natural history as an example of ostentation and as reportedly wearing a large share of her inheritance to a dinner party in the form of jewellery, worth some 40 million sestertius. A sepulchre to her honour was erected in the reign of the Emperor Nero.
