Doomed to Fail - Ep 62: Mother of the Antichrist - Nero's mum, Agrippina the Younger

Episode Date: November 1, 2023

Today, we are covering the story of Agrippina the Younger, Nero's mum (who you will remember from Episode 2). History, as they say, is written by the victors and also by the male victors. So it's a miracle that we know anything about Agrippina at all! She was one of the last of the Julio-Claudians, so close to power as the sister to an Emperor, the wife/niece of the next Emperor, and the mother of the Emperor who had her killed.It is, as usual, a wild ride!Pics via the CC and #AIMain source - Agrippina: The Most Extraordinary Woman of the Roman World: 9781643130781: Southon, Emma: BooksInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail]  Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

In a matter of the people of the state of California versus Hortonthal James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Boom. We're back on Wednesday, Taylor. How you doing? Good. How are you? Are you awake now? Yes, I put my Diet Coke in this martini glass, so I look cooler. I did see you drink kind of the martini glass earlier and was like, man. Taylor did not hold her not drinking before going to the grocery store

sobriety seriously sometimes to keep I did sometimes to keep myself amused during the day I will drink felster water out of different glasses it's fun because it's much more fun to drink water out of a martini glass than it is to just drink it out of the can so yes that's why I had a martini glass at my desk yes absolutely well we're back on Wednesday we are doomed to fail we're going to be covering today Taylor's story which is I assume historic and probably not Vulcan volcano related no we're not doing a volcano today what are we doing are you ready okay great I'm like oh is that my turn um cool so wait did you do an intro oh yeah sorry we are welcome to do

to fail I'm Farr's joined here by Taylor we cover two stories a week, one about true crime, one about history, and we're volcanoes, and or engineering disasters. We don't know because the format of our show is like the weather, it changes constantly. And I'm joining here by Taylor and I'm Farr's. She's Taylor. She's a future corpse. I'm not. I have a couple clarifying points. The shirt says future corpse, which I love. Two, I think that like, so when I talked about Oklahoma in the last episode, the musical, like it came out in 1943, but it's like about the 1800s Oklahoma. You know, it's about like frontier Oklahoma. I wanted to clarify that.

I feel like that was important. Also, important is that Patrick Wilson played Curley, the main character in Oklahoma, on Broadway, which is unbelievable. You love Patrick Wilson. What is your thing with Patrick Wilson? He's just a very, very handsome man. He's so generic looking. He looks like every man. I know.

A fireman. He could be a dad. He could be a teacher. He could be a sex offender. I don't like he could be any one of those characters like he's so generic looking it's not a sex wonder but um I don't think but I don't I don't I appreciate that um yeah I don't know I like him I like him in the conjuring movies I like him in Oklahoma I just like the guy Hey have you seen a five nights at Freddy's that's what it is no it's fun it's on peacock

if you all haven't seen it watch it it's actually a really fun movie Oh fun I will sounds good Unrelated segue. Unrelated segue. Here we go. I said I was going far back this time to ancient, ancient times again, which is lovely. And I know I called Mary Shelley, the mother of the monster when I talked about her because she wrote Frankenstein, obviously. But I want to talk about another mother of a monster, Agrippina, who's Nero's mother.

Whoa. Cool. Right. So we talked about Nero in episode two. I just re-listen to it. It's the one where I say a lot of ums, just kidding. I say a lot of ums and all of them, but it's also the one where I say South Korea a bunch when I met North Korea and I will never forgive myself for it or you for not calling me. So, um, but you consider that to hear

about Nero. No, I shouldn't be forgiven. Absolutely not. So my, my main source for this is by this woman, Dr. Emma Southen, who also wrote the book, A Fatal Thing Happened on the way to the forum that I used in my Nero episode. She wrote a book called Agrippina, the most extraordinary women of the Roman world. Hilariously, yesterday. I wasn't even drunk when I did this. I was in the morning. I Instagram messaged the author to ask her a question.

I know she saw it because she has read receipts on her Instagram messages, but she did not reply, which I do not blame her for. And please don't block me. You're so good with these reaching out to authors thing. I think it's not the first time I've been like, hello. she just like does not answer me and I'm like that is fine and totally fair but um anyway so if you recall nero was the last julio claudian emperor of rome he was a very mean guy got a lot of people killed he wasn't in town when rome burned but he did return to rome and built a huge golden palace and the ashes people were like unamused he was a tyrant they say like the rumor is that he's the

like if when the antichrist comes back or comes the first time or whatever he will look like nero because that's how bad nero was and is remembered as you'll also remember that in the stash yeah in his statues he has a neck beard so like and it's kind of chubby so you're like that's a statue you know so he probably had more neck beard in real life and um another fun thing he did he was in our pompey episode for a second because remember when pompey got like their uh right to have gladiators taken away because they couldn't handle it because they kept having riots because of Niro was kind of funny. His wife was from there, all those things. But he's also the one that won all those musical competitions because he was like the number one fiddler or the weren't fiddles. But you know what I mean? Like the number one, everything. And he was an actor and like all these things. He probably didn't want to be emperor really. He was just like kind of a rich kid who had a lot of power. But he became emperor because of his mother. Because his mother like put him in the positions and made some sacrifices and did these things to make sure that he was the one who would be emperor.

Taylor. Yeah. This isn't a neck beard. It is like this is not like a gas station neck beard. This is like literally he only grew a beard on his neck. Right. Yeah. If I shade all of this and just had a, it's, it looks like the, um, the underside of like a, like a helmet or.

something like the strap of a helmet oh like he has a strap on yes oh my god okay so i want to duck people's yums but yuck too yes definitely yeah facial hair um so one thing about history that i talk about a lot that i'm sure you've heard we talk about there's so much stuff we don't know right and history is written by the victors which means we don't know a lot about people who lost things you know and it's also written by the male victors women just don't write things down because they haven't been able to. You know, they've been like put in positions where, you know, they're a mother. They die early in childbirth. They're not the scholars. Even though I'm certain they wanted to be or had inclinations to do so, they weren't. So the fact that we know anything about Agrippina is really remarkable because we know very little about the women of ancient times. Like, we know like what they did is like what, you know, what women did. We don't know about like specific women as much as we know about Agrippina because she was that special that we hear about her. Makes sense? So it's, like, interesting that we even know about her. Because being a woman sucks is a sentence I wrote.

The thing that I messaged Emma, the author, Dr. Saffin, about is, was she like Hillary Clinton? Like, why are they so glass dealings? And I was, like, really, like, riled up. But that's probably also why she didn't reply. So there's that. Wait, why did you ask? Because, like, I was like, well, is it like a Hillary Clinton situation where, like, she should have been president or, like, you know, but, like, she couldn't because she was a woman, even, like, in 2016. because like there are women in the West like first ladies like Nellie Taft and

Eleanor Roosevelt Hillary Clinton who like could and should have been president you know like they were like really good at things and they could have done it just because there were a woman that either like wouldn't have even thought about it or like didn't get it and then there's like Michelle Obama who's like too smart to want to do it she's like could you imagine no thank you so our first point of contention here Hillary's not president not because she's a woman she's not president she's not president shouldn't fucking campaign in blue dog democratic states she literally assumed that the union vote would go to her and that's exactly the vote that she did not get which was a hundred

thousand people across three states right but a whole bunch of so happened because she was a woman i agree she should have gone to florida she didn't but no fuck florida florida's gone for does that every whatever like the amount of money being dropped him that's done that is a done state like it's not it's definitely not swinging now but in hillary's case if she'd actually campaigned for the union vote in blue dog democratic states and the rust felt quote unquote like she would be president she literally campaigned wrong and i'm sure she would have probably had more you know votes if she wasn't a woman but she also fucked that up it's on her no totally but she also was a woman it's on her for sure but also like it's not the

people who worked for her but being a woman didn't help her like sure Amanda for some reason okay so we got anyway again again we agreed ultimately yeah no i definitely like um yeah there were a lot of assumptions made and she should have tried harder but she she tried so hard her people should have had better strategy but also she was in charge for them so whatever also okay so if we're really gonna get in the weeds of it bill also fucked her like she did get fucked over by bill like being associated with bill did not help so whatever this is not true on we've talked about him before okay so anyway let's go let's stop talking about 2016 let's talk about 15 because i see about this

Well, I am riled up about it, but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about Agrippina. She was born Julia Agrippina, the Younger, on November 6th, 15, the year 15, in Cologne, Germany. It wasn't called Cologne at the time, but that's where she was born. Cologne is gorgeous. I went there one time after high school, and it's so beautiful. There's so many beautiful, like, cathedrals. It wasn't totally, like, destroyed, like Dresden.

A lot of, like, German cities were totally destroyed during World War II. but it wasn't and it's very very pretty but she was born there she was one of the most prominent women in the julio claudian dynasty it's because she's directly related to like julius caesar and claudius the people who like started rome those are the people that she's a part of she's like part of that like the empire family she was the daughter of the roman general germanicus and agrippina the elder she was a granddaughter of augustus who's one of the first roman emperors and her father was when she was at the time she was born her father was the nephew

and heir parent of the second emperor Tiberius so she was like total royalty her dad was going to be emperor Augustus is also kind of a demigod that she thinks she's part God so she has this idea in her head

this whole time that like this godly blood flows through her veins she is part of like the rightful people who should rule Rome all of that you know what i mean um not really it's just like what she was always told like that's like she like truly believes that just how like people in like a lot of people like believe that god made them king you know oh yeah hey it doesn't help your narcissism i just like exists was was

was rome just a country back then rome is an empire what do you mean like italy is like okay so right now Rome is a city in Italy. So back then, what was Rome? Rome was like, Italy wasn't a word. It was like Rome, the Roman Empire ruled over the place that was Italy up through the rest of Europe all the way up to Britain. It's like about to go over to Britain. And then it goes east into like Turkey and like Mesopotamia. And then it also goes south into like the top of Africa.

and Egypt, because this is when, like, Cleopatra and Mark Antony are going to, like, be around this time as well. So it's, like, all that, like, Middle East, all of Europe is a huge thing. And it's all the Roman Empire. So it's like a country. You know? Yes, sort of. It's hard to imagine because, like, Germany. So she was born in Cologne, where that is now. Her dad's name is Germanicus because he, like, conquered a lot of that, like, German land. But the word Germany didn't exist. It was like the German people in Latin or whatever. The country of Germany didn't exist until like, this is, I don't know, late 1800s, early 1900s. Before that, it was just like a bunch of different small like principalities and kingdoms and things. And then it got

together to be one country. So there's no really like idea of like a country and like right now because it's just like there's little people that rule all over the place and then they're going to get folded into this empire and you're in the Roman Empire when Rome brings you things like aqueducts and roads. So when the Roman Empire was in Britain, they were like technically under this tyrannical rule but also did really well. And when Rome left Britain because they needed to go and try to save things in Italy and further south, Britain crumbled because I'm going to take care of anything anymore. You know? But all this stuff, but you should use it, but it's here. So I think, I think the idea of a country is not really a thing yet.

Right. The way we think about it. Orders are not really a thing. Yeah. Yeah. Or they're like everywhere, you know, because you're like, all of a sudden you're in this person's land and this person's land or whatever. Like as a, as a regular dude, you're like, I don't know, man. Who am I paying taxes to today?

You know, you're trying to like not die and who knows. But yeah. So she was born in. Germany. Her dad was like a really big general. People really, really liked him. There's a lot of nicknames in this story in this family. There's tons of people named Nero, Agrippina, Agrippa, Julia, Claudius, Lucius. There's just these same names over and over again. But I think it's also a really distinctly Roman, ancient Roman thing to know a lot about your ancestry. So the Dan Carlin, where he talks about the Roman Empire, he opens talking about Julie. Julius Caesar and how Julius Caesar's house had a room with, like, statues and death masks and, like, basically heads, like, statue heads of his ancestors going back generations. Like, they would, and they would be like, these are the people who are going to be disappointed in you if you, like, don't do this and, like, aren't successful and all of that. So there was, like, a lot of, like, you knew who your family was if you were rich, going back a really long time. And you were like, I come from warriors. I come from emperors. I come from king. So, like, they know that now with, like, the royal family. But, like, my family i know my great great grandma but like that's it you know i don't know that far that far back yeah so that was that was a big part of it too um so agrippina was part of this like royal line she was expected to be successful but be successful at being a woman you know like have a lot of

babies you know have boys things like that that was what an expectation of her her mother agrippina the elder had a ton of babies she had nine kids like before she was 30 like really fast and loose with the babies and her dad was kind of traveling around Europe conquering little principalities everybody loved him everybody thought he was going to be emperor she was like things were good unfortunately her dad dies in turkey probably of some disease that was killing everyone you know everyone dies the disease and everyone was so sad her mother made a huge show of like bringing his ashes into Rome to be entombed all the people in the story are cremated. So she has his ashes and it's, you know, a big deal. He was only 33. So he was

33. He had nine children and he was like going to be emperor when he died. So now Agrippina and her siblings are in Rome. Their great uncle Tiberius, who was the uncle of their dad, is now the emperor. So they have like good stuff going on. They're like doing well. You know what I mean? Yeah. They're like minor prince and princesses or whatever. martini glass I get my dad coke out of my martin glasses are easy to drink out of I know I was going to say

because every time you do it you got to like move half your headset I know it's like I'm like shaking okay so now Agrippina is in Rome she's rich she's expected now to become a wife and a mother and do all that

so she gets married when she's 13 to a guy named Gnias Domastu Abder. Oh, my God. Abberius. It's called him Ghanius. That was terrible. Enobarbis. And Hey, did you see the TikTok I made where I pronounced the name of your last episode? No. I looked it up. And I like, I put it on Instagram and I looked it up, but I think I said it right. But now I can't remember what it is. But anyway, the very Russian. So also, if anyone speaks Latin and wants to give us these, these pronations, you're welcome to. But so when she's 13,

she gets married in the year 28 he is not great he's like twice her age so he's like almost 30 and no one likes him so one one historian describes him as a man who was in every aspect of his life detestable so this guy says and um something about roman weddings when she got married the the way that it would work is she would start at her home and she would get all dressed up and she put on a veil and like you know where all these jewels and then she would walk to his house and someone would carry her over the threshold and they did that because if you like accidentally tripped because you couldn't really see because you had a veil over your face if you accidentally tripped walking into your new home that was a bad omen so they just wanted to take that out of the equation and lift you up over

the husband didn't necessarily have to even be there he wasn't really seem to be like a part of it so you could have a wedding ceremony without him and he would come home and be like I have a wife now I was out shopping or whatever so well easy going knows if he was there or not but they're married she there's some bad rumors about him he was just he just was not a very nice person um he killed a he killed someone one time at a party because they didn't drink as much as he wanted them to he was like trying to get them to drink and they didn't so he killed them he ran over a child playing with a doll like in the street he pulled someone's eye out because they made fun of him like at an event he was charged in many different ways with adultery incest treason gambling cheating

a lot of things. It was just like not a good guy. And he was also Nero's dad. So Nero was born in 37, which is actually a lot later than they got married. It was like, you know, 10 years later when they, when they had Nero, which is weird because her mom was so fertile. Like you would think that she would have had more babies with him, but maybe they just like tried to avoid each other because he was so awful. Was this she was 25? Yeah. Okay. I think so. Yeah. So he's her only child. When they asked his dad what he thought about having a son, he said, quote, I don't think anything produced by me and Agrippina could possibly be good for the state or the people.

Wow. It's not very nice. And sound like they fought all the time. They named him Lucius, Camptus, and Erbarius. He was totally right, right? Maybe that's not true because he was so right. But yeah, they said that. So it was also a thing when you had a baby.

they would take the baby and they would put it on the floor and then the dad would have to accept it or not and he would accept it by picking the baby up and then like taking it as his own so they so he picked him up and and he you know took him into his family how um how do you not accept i mean like if you think that your wife was like potentially having an affair and it could be someone else's baby you know then you look at it and you're like oh you know i don't think it's mine or maybe it like has a deformity and you're like i don't want it so you don't pick it up you just like walk away from it and then you don't have to deal with anything because you just can like get rid of it because you never it was never yours you know um nero was also born breach which means that he was either like foot first or butt first which is like really hard if you have a breach baby now they'll do a a a c-section but in that case obviously they couldn't so it was like a really really difficult birth and we know about it because agrippina

wrote about it in her memoirs so she actually wrote down like a lot about her life and she had put this in here kind of like a battle story like i went through this really terrible thing like having this breached baby and um and i survived and he survived and we don't have her memoirs anymore like they no longer exist but we know that she wrote them because plenty of the elder wrote about it this guy was everywhere and why is he in every story yeah and so i'm like he was everywhere he was everywhere but i guess he's the one that wrote everything so that's why he's everywhere you know you've got to call plenty when something big happens yeah like i don't know what a life that like you we are still reading your book you know 2 000 years later and you died

in pompey and like all the stuff that we know about you like that's pretty pretty wild i don't know yeah um do you remember what nero did after he killed his his wife from the really bad thing that he did he married that he created a castrated unic boy as his lover yes and he like pretended that he was a dead wife for he married so terrible and after

Nero had done that someone said they wish that it's not I mean he really loved his wife I'm so sorry that he kicked her to death. And then he married a castrated boy and pretended that it was her for the for the rest of his life. Okay. Maybe it's not that romantic. I don't know if a romantic is my word. But later people would say that they wish that Nero's dad had buried a castrated boy instead of Agrippina because then Nero never would have been born. So it's kind of

funny. We just don't like any of these people. So anyway, that her first husband dies in 41 of edema, which is when your body bloats and, like, retains a lot of fluids and you basically die. So he died from that. And during this time, Agrippina's brother becomes the emperor. And there's, like, a lot of stuff that happens. They wrote like yada, yada, her brother is not the emperor. His name is Caligula. And incidentally, Caligula means little boots.

It's like a cute little nickname you'd give to a kid. Because his parents loved him. It's kind of cute. He hated it. His name was Gaius, but he, like, people called him Caligula. He, like, he's like, I'm in charge now. Don't call me that, you know. But he got it because when his dad was, you know, going around Germany and all these things, he loved, they loved Guyas so much that they would bring him to all the battles and give him, like, a little baby, woman armor thing and like a little baby Roman armor hats and like little shoes.

And they'd be like, oh, he's coming the little boots. That's fun. That's why he's called Caligula, which is cute. He didn't like it. Obviously, he got older. But, you know, I think I'm going to say Caligula, because it's more fun to say than Gaius. Who knows? But this is Agrippina's first real taste of power, and it's shown in two ways. First, she's given the honors of the Vestal Virgins.

Do you know who the Vestal Virgins were? No. They're like these women, and you're supposed to be a Vestal Version for, like, you know, of decades of your life if you're given this honor. And they keep the fire of Rome licks. like a literal fire they just have to like tend to this fire and they're given all these privileges like they can go places without an escort they can they don't have to like ask man's permission to do things like they're given a lot of power so her and her sisters were given those those things that the vessel virgins had which is a really big deal that she was able to do

stuff without having like a man with her but they're not virgins makes sense well she isn't because she has a baby right and her sisters probably aren't either but um and who knows if the vessel virgins were really virgins. Yes. Okay. Okay. It's just the name. Got it. I mean, the bestal virgins were supposed to not be married. So technically, I think they were supposed to be virgins, but who knows? Got it. It really happened. Um, so this is the one thing that I said I would tell you last week about the etymology of the word fascism. Remember? I mentioned that last week. So one of the things that what she would do when she was, you know, at this point, she could go into town, but she would have, like, guards and people, like, you know, with her to make sure that no one

hurt her. And the guards would hold these bundles of sticks. The word bundle in Italian is fascio. And they would hold these bundles of sticks and they kind of walk in front of her. And they would carry it and act like they were just, like, carrying this wood and, like, everything was fine no big deal but in the wood was an axe so they could at any point kill you which is the idea that like they're pretending everything is fine but at any point you can be ax to death is where the word fascism comes from interesting okay yeah um the second thing that she would you would think

of me more like directly tied you would think like Nero would be like the reason why the name makes you know there's other things there are other problems in rome it's a name it after then a bundle of sticks with an accent out of that whatever totally but i think it's the fact that it was like hidden and that like you're pretending that everything was okay and then like really anyone who killed at any time and nearer definitely did that like of course if you pissingero off he would kill you um so the other thing that gave her a lot of power is she was put on a coin with her sisters so claglia caligula is on the front and her her two sisters are on the back and the first living women on coins. It's like a really big deal. There's a whole bunch of coins in this.

So some people are like, that's great. Others are like, we don't love this. We don't love him being around with his sister so much. And the accused Caligula of having this like complicated incest plot with his sisters and his sister, Ducilla's husband, Lepidus. People were like, they're just having like a sexy incest thing and like accusing them of this over and over again to like, I don't know, to like talk shit about. about Caligula. Okay. And, and, um, but one thing that is true is that he loved his sister, Drusilla the most. He just loved her. He's like, he was obsessed with her. When she died, he was so depressed. They started to be terrible at ruling. So Agrippina worked with Lepidus,

her sister's widower to kill Caligula, her brother. And it doesn't work. They get caught. and Lepidus gets executed and Agrippina and her other sister Lovilla have to go to an island to be exiled for a while

and Nero was taken away from her he's gone somewhere else. So it also reminds me at one point Caligula had been exiled before he was emperor. I can't remember exactly how this happens but when he was a teen

I got exiled to Capri and he was with Tiberius the emperor. They sort of kept him as a child child when he should have been growing up. So he definitely didn't have the emotional maturity other people had because he hadn't done a lot of things because he had been locked up for a while.

But like on Capri, like, I don't know, Cremere River. I didn't know what Capri is. It's a beautiful island in Italy. Is it? That's it. It's gorgeous. Yes. I've been there and it's beautiful.

It's and also like the island that Agrippina was exiled to was called Ponza. It's a volcanic island. So it's beautiful, as you know. And obviously like she wasn't like, put on the beach with like nothing you know there were like she had tons of like enslaved people to take care of her it wasn't like she was by herself i don't understand like if i'm looking at capri now and i'm like dude if this was my life and i'm looking at the food there it's just like why are you even fighting why are you doing anything and it was just like that for him like

he had tons of stuff he wasn't like yeah he wasn't poor he was like rich exile to an island like the food looks so simple like it's just like tomatoes olively parsley pasta shrimp freshly caught obvious like just like do that you don't need to wear a crown like just hang out yeah totally so i know um this is also for our audience not for you but there's a book um called circe about circe who was the the goddess who was in the in like the iliad where um odysseus like stays with her on her island for a while but like her backstory is that like she was exiled to this island by like the gods but emma island in the book seriously that came about a couple years ago she like lives in this like cool cavernous castle on the island by herself with lions so

she has like cats around and then she spends all day just like weaving and like doing crafts and then when she's hungry she opens up as magic cabinet and inside of it there's always bread and wine and cheese and I'm like that sounds amazing yeah sign me up you on myself and do crafts all day and eat wine and cheese and bread nap whatever you want yeah like okay sure whatever so anyway she's exiled and then she ends up coming back um but there's a lot of exiling people instead of killing them and all of that eventually caligula gets assassinated and there's some other things that happen it's possibly there's a plot against him by agrippina to keep near in the line, which makes sense because it's everything that she lived for.

Like she wanted her son to be to be emperor, but also like it was her brother, so kind of who cares, but I guess she tried to kill him before, so she obviously didn't really care. So she, um, her husband dies while she's in exile and she's trying to find a new husband and space for Nero. She goes, um, she ends up going back to Rome because her brother gets assassinated. And now Claudius, who is Agrippina's uncle, her father's brother, become. emperor so he's the uncle to caligula the emperor who just got got assassinated and to agrippina got it yes it's

there's a complicated family tree in this that i'm not going to write down so she's the only person um left from her family now her her family has all been killed in certain different ways claudius has a wife named messalina and she has agrippina sisters killed for some reason so there's all sorts of things in Agrippina's trying to like inch her way back into power. She isn't marrying a dude named Crispus who's rich but a little weird. He died and he left her a lot of money. So people think that she may have killed him or like had him poisoned because to get all the money to be inherited. But also like he's weird.

There's a weird story that plenty of the elder wrote where like Crispus like fell in love with the tree. And he like loved this tree. And he would like, we're whining. it and kiss it and like pretend that he was like hanging out with it he sounds like he has a slight mental defect that went undiagnosed yeah so it's not great so he's married to that that rich guy he died however he died she ended up with a lot of money so he's just like living her life and like getting nero ready to potentially be emperor in the meantime claudius is married to messalina and they have a son named britannicus so britannicus we talked about him in the

nero episode we'll get back to him he's younger than nero he'll always be a child to history because he never grows up um claudius also has a bunch of daughters but who cares because of girls and um so in a bid to help her son be emperor messalina conspires against claudius and she gets killed so now claudius is single and still emperor agrippina's around hanging out with people there's like she obviously like sleeping with people and hanging out but like whatever um there's some like some of the stories that we have about her are like about her sex life and like i think i mentioned this back of the very beginning with Catherine the Great, like, that's not the most interesting thing about you, but it's what we have written down. So it's like what we have about her and who knows what's

true and when isn't. But something, you know, now like the Julio Claudian Empire kind of like hanging in a balance. And they decide that Agrippina will marry Claudius, who is the emperor, who is her uncle. And that is illegal amazingly. That is. that is bad when like all these like first cousins stuff are getting married but marrying your uncle is bad so they have to change the law to be able to get married so she's married he's like a lot older than her obviously he's like her dad's brother but they get married and he um oh i play okay so it's against the law and they get the law changed but not after he said this he says he calls her in one of his speeches my daughter and foster child born and bred in my lap so to speak

who marries her? Yeah. I know. It's exactly what happens in the Game of Thrones Dragon show. Like the uncle and the niece get married and it's awful. Like they're like, we're super happy. And you're like, are you?

It's gross. She's your uncle. So now she's married to the emperor. She's empress. So she's on coins again. This is her second time on coins. Things are going well. One of Claudius's kids is a woman named Octavia.

And Agrippina wants Octavio. Octavia to marry Nero to make him more popular, more in line. So poor Octavia had been married to someone, and Agrippina demanded that she married Nero. So they accused her fiancé of incest with his sister, which is like, okay, you just marry your uncle. You're going to start, like, throwing the incest card around or other people. Like, kind of not the time, but she does that. That is worse, though.

Brother and sister's worse. Okay. Uncle incest. but beats out brother sister incest and brother sister incest yeah beat out parent child incest mm-hmm opposite not be like this is worse yeah i'm going from worse wait i'm going from best to worst versions of incest it's all bad yeah so unfortunately poor um octavia's first love dies by suicide after all these accusations so that sucks to be him um so Okay. Claudius's daughter is Octavia.

Claudius adopts Nero because he's married to Nero's mom slash his niece, Agrippina. That's when they give him the name Nero is when he's adopted by the emperor. Claudius has to disown Octavia so that Nero won't marry his sister. Because otherwise they would technically be like step-siblings. So he has to disown Octavia. So she's like a different person. but she's also like his cousin she's not like not related to him but first cousins are fine so he marries his cousin slash step sister okay this the family tree here is like it's like when you read the bible and it's like this guy's related to that guy and that guy is the son of that guy and it's like Jesus like just it's all politically motivated exactly exactly so just some like fun little stories that happen during this time so Nero is like a teenager but he's married Octavia. If you remember, everybody really liked her. She was like, she was like, okay, I'll just, I'll be a good wife, you know, all the things. Eventually, Nero does have her, has her killed and people are really sad about it. Um, he, Nero kind of like is, like, it's exactly like, Game of Thrones dragon version. What is that show called? Life of the Dragon. I don't, I don't know. You're not going to be surprised to hear that I've never seen that show.

Way of Dragon. Anyway, exactly like that, because he like snakes out and like, you know, go, to bars in the middle of the night. He probably has a bunch of illegitimate kids. You know, he's just like a teenager just going out there, even though he's married to Octavia. Some fun things that happen to Agrippina while she's Empress. So she, um, they turn Cologne, the city that she was born in into a little colony called Colonia Claudia Ara Agripenis or Agripenesium. Um, and it's like a little colony for veterans to go and like live their lives and do crafts and they become glass manufacturers. And that's why a lot of, like, beautiful glass comes from that part of Germany. What is cool?

It's the first colony ever to be named after a Roman woman, which is cool. She was given a really fancy carriage that was reserved for priests. So she was really, like, becoming, like, powerful in her own right. She became, like, the head of some, like, factions of the Praetorian Guards of, like, the armies. She would also sometimes wear clothes that were kind of, like, stepping. over some boundaries. She'd wear like a cloak that she shouldn't wear or a color she shouldn't wear. Just like be a little bit more powerful than like maybe she should have been as a woman. So she's kind of like starting to step into these spaces. A fun thing that's another aside is she was

friends with the dude named Narcissus. So like everyone has the same name. I don't know. He was an engineer. So actually I saw about this when you were talking about engineering disasters because I got one for you. They decided to drain the Fusine Lake in Italy because they needed that land for farming and they needed to divert the water. So to drain the lake, they built these massive underground tunnels, but they built them like by hand. There was no dynamite. There were no power tools. Like by hand built these huge underground tunnels. And then they had this big party and they had this fake battle in the lake with 20,000 people and like all these boats pretending to have this mock battle doing all these things.

At the end of the battle, they like hit a button and the lake was supposed to drain. And it didn't. Nothing happened. and everybody was like really embarrassed and then a couple months later they tried it again and it drained too fast and everyone almost drowned like Agrippina

and Claudius Yeah So stupid It's like a big spectacle You know and then the second time they didn't have the battle They just had like some people on the water And then they they were like eating at like a banquet table And then the water like rushed in

And everybody almost drowned so that's fun she also somehow met um king herod like of the bible the guy who killed all the babies but i can't really remember figure out exactly how they met but this is it's bible times during this time um so you'll remember from episode two that her and nero conspired to kill claudius her husband slash uncle slash the emperor probably with poison remember they had that witch in the basement yeah yeah is that probably so this witch in the basement who like poisons people. And they give Claudius poison and he doesn't die because he's like a big fat guy who loves eating and drinking. So he's used to having like a ton of like food and all

these different things. And then he ends up like and he ends up throwing up because he drank like a barrel of wine. So he didn't get poisoned. That's when drinking can save a life. It's hilarious. Exactly. So he like that guy in the Titanic, remember that story like that cook on the Titanic who um was like yeah every five minutes i'll go back to my room and just like drink more whiskey and then there were like his like blood temperature like never went down because he was so drunk he was so smart good for him yeah something to go out um so and eventually they do they do kill claudius with poison um Wikipedia counts 12 people who died directly because of agrippina whether or not she like had them killed or killed them directly um

It was probably more with, like, political decisions and things that she made. But when he died, when Claudius died, she really wanted to control the narrative. She wanted Nero to become emperor. Nero had already drowned Britannicus, his stepbrother. So, like, he was already gone. He was the one to do it. But right away, you can tell that people were whispering to Nero, like, your mom is trying to do something. She's trying to take your power.

She's trying to do things. And so she was on coins for the third time. She was around. she was always behind the scenes but never actually like allowed in allowed into the Senate she couldn't actually do those things because she was still a woman she tried one time to like kind of go in and he wouldn't let her and it was

embarrassing so like you know she's a little bit like they're starting to kind of separate their intentions her and Nero he was young but he was like Roman royalty young like he'd been through a lot it's possible that Agrippina was trying to get Britannicus to be in power and then

Nero had him drowned so now he tries to kill her. Do you remember how he tries to kill his mom? You don't have to remember this. I do not. He stages a shipwreck and tries to get the ship to crash and have her die, have her drown in that shipwreck. Essentially, like, who cares about everyone on the ship? Let's deliberately sink the ship so that my mom drowns and no one knows that I did it. This seems needlessly complicated. Have someone push her downstairs. Like that is much easier.

Yeah. They said that before she died, like years before she died, she went to see a psychic. And the psychic said, her son will be emperor, but he will kill her. And she said, let him kill me, provided he becomes emperor. So she, that's probably not true. But, you know, that's like the thing that she has. Eventually, there's a lot of different stories about how she died. but he sent a slave to stab her for him.

And so the slave stabbed her, like, in a palace somewhere. They had had, like, a really nice night of, like, hanging out. And then he put her on this boat, they, like, almost crashed. And she got home and she was, like, traumatized. And then he had someone come and stab her. So it took a while to kill her. He probably tried to poison her, too. But she was probably one of those people, like, everyone should be at this time

where you, like, try to make yourself immune to different poisons, you know? He should have just tried the homeless guy stabbing her in the first place. I know. so yeah anyway that's how she dies she wasn't the first woman woman that Nero killed but you know she got what she wanted her son became emperor she died in 59 she was only 44 so she had been married three times all three of her husbands had died and her son ended up killing her in in a really weird way and then later after Nero was overthrown. and he was killed. They did build a statue of her at some point because they, you know, used her as a good example of like a Roman woman and a Roman mother. But she was, yeah, she had just been through a lot in 44 years. And it was a crazy life. She lived a big 44 years. A big 44 years. I mean, she was like exiled a couple times. She was on coins three times.

She lived in these like beautiful places. She had the ear of the emperor in many different ways. she had traveled all over you know pretty pretty cool i mean for a woman that's the way to do it you should be rich and not die in childbirth that's another thing another key and have your kid to hire a homeless man to kill you by stabbing you in the back yeah yes yeah he was he was an enslaved person who wasn't necessarily homeless but yes we don't know we don't know if the man had the enslaved guy had a home right right right that author you should write that author and ask for that I'm afraid she's going to block us. I'm writing it from our team Instagram. So who knows? She's going to say. Yeah. Yeah. I'm definitely going to tag her when I say this was my main source for this book. So for this podcast. So I'm sure. Yeah. Well, hopefully. Hopefully she'll come around. Then you can do your next interview. You can do your next author interview.

Yeah. Yeah. That'll be fun. So funny. So fun. I mean, I would love it. I think she's too famous for me. So what made you want to go back to ancient Rome? There's so much ancient stuff that I haven't gone. I spent so much time in the last 500 years. So I was trying to tell a story from like before again. And I also have always wanted to read this book. So I wanted to go back and read it. And also, I know one of our part of our surprise that we're doing for our fans in the future.

We're going to be talking a lot more about women's history. And I, this is a really big one, I think. as like one of the first, like one of the Roman women that we know the most about because we don't know a lot about a lot of them. And even what we know about Rome is just like all from plenty of the elder because he happened to write everything down. But like there's plenty of people who didn't write shit down. But we just like happen to know this like a little tiny bit of it.

And we get, we catch this glimpse of a woman who, you know, worked really hard. And then we catch a glimpse of her and other women's stories as well. Like I think it's very close to to an Anne Boleyn who she. you know, let herself be executed so her daughter could be queen, essentially, you know, boil it down. So these women who do everything for their families, for their sons, for their children, and history just like gets a little snippet of them. And then some historians, like ancient historians, sexist historians are like, you know, she was a, you know, she just like slept around and she wanted all this power. But then you're like, well, so did everyone else, you know, like,

okay, so literally everyone else. Taylor, would you let yourself be executed so that your kids can be city commissioners? Absolutely not, no. I think that, no. Senators, U.S. senators. No. I don't think, I don't know. No, I don't think I have that. I don't think, I think that's fine.

I feel like they also, yeah, I'd be like, nah, I think that they can just get regular jobs. That's fine, yeah. but I don't have that royal bloodline so what do I know you know it's you might you can only go back the same world you can only go back to your great grandparents

that's so true maybe this is all just because I have some sort of ancient Roman bloodline when the maybe I'm related to Agrippina because her dad was like in Germany so maybe he was like fucking around with some of my people and we're related somehow I mean we're all related you said but there's only

a thousand of us and we're Oh, related. Oh, my God. It goes back so close. Oh, my goodness. You're right. We're pretty much royalty. This is a story about me.

This is about me. Yes. Yes. Yes. Almost exactly mirrors my life. And the times I've been exiled, so. That's it. Lovely.

Well, thank you for sharing. Yeah. little journey back you know what i was thinking while you were talking i was like man somebody should really make a movie about the fall of the roman empire i'm sure they have you think there's a there's a there's literally a tv show called rome that was on like HBO for a while i'm gonna go back and listen to dan carlin's roman episode oh my god it's like 10 hours of content it's not like an episode it's probably longer than 10 hours to be realistic but yeah it's a it's a wonderful Yeah. Sweet. Well, thanks for sharing. Is there anything you want to share before we hop off?

Yeah, my friend Lonnie texted me laughing about how when we were talking about all the pepper that the Romans got from Indonesia. And I said, that's not my opinion. It's just colonialism. She thought that was really funny. So thank you, Lonnie, for laughing at that. And if anybody finds my joke's funny, let me know. I need validation. text far as let him know um send us an email um send us an email at dumdenfeld pod at gmail.com you can instagram message us um i won't leave you on red like i've been left on really blowing this woman spot up oh my god she's so cool she's going to block me us in two seconds so i just want to do it as i get as i get in there um but yes follow us on the socials at dvdefel pod the email is dunditfel pod at u.com

and we will join you all again next week thank you awesome thank you thanks farth