The Ancients - Agrippina the Younger

Episode Date: July 26, 2020

Agrippina the Younger (AD 15 - 59) was one of the most prominent women in the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Born during a time of radical political change in the Roman Empire, she had a very powerful pedigree. Great granddaughter of Augustus. Niece of Tiberius. Daughter of Germanicus. Sister of Caligula. She was also a wife of the Emperor Claudius and the mother of the infamous Nero. Today she is remembered as one of the most notorious women of ancient Roman history, thanks largely to her negative portrayal in the works of Cassius Dio, Suetonius and Tacitus. But how much of what they say is true? Joining me to help sort the fact from the fiction is Carey Fleiner, Senior lecturer in Classical Roman History at the University of Winchester. A brilliant communicator, Carey convincingly explains how the material record reveals a very different Agrippina to the infamous power-hungry murderess depicted by Roman writers. This was a fantastic chat and it was great to have her on the show to chat all things Agrippina. A couple of clarifications from parts of the interview:Agrippina was 22 when she gave birth to Nero.Suetonius included the remark 'I have swords as well as islands'Gaius Sallustius Crispus Passienus was the name of Agrippina's second husband. He had been prominent during the reign of Tiberius (not Julius Caesar)

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. Agrippina the Younger, she is one of the most remarkable women of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. The daughter of the famed Germanicus, the sister of the crazed Caligula, the wife of the Emperor Claudius, and of course, the mother of the infamous Nero.

And it's fair to say that the sources have not been kind to Agrippina the Younger, the woman who supposedly masterminded the death of the Emperor Claudius with poisoned mushrooms and, of course, the poisoned feather. But what is the fact in this portrayal? What do we believe is the truth? And what do we believe is the fiction? Well, joining me to answer this question is Kerry Fleiner. Kerry is a fantastic classicist and medievalist, and she is also a brilliant communicator. So it was an absolute pleasure to have her on the show to explain all things Agrippina. Here's Kerry.

Kerry, it's great to have you back. It's good to be back under very different circumstances, but that's all right. Well, under very different circumstances indeed, but history goes on. And I've been very much looking forward to this. Agrippina the Younger, this is a woman who seems to have fallen victim to the writings of later Roman historians. Oh, it's not even later Roman historians. Her bad press actually begins during her lifetime. There are writings from her lifetime. She's an interesting figure to study because you've got this bad press on the one hand and these historians on the one hand and who they're writing for. And on the other hand, you've got a material record that tells a completely different story.

And on the other hand, you've got a material record that tells a completely different story. So it's a matter of looking at her or any other strong Roman woman and putting together a collection of sources, looking at very different sources to figure her out, to piece her together. And who are these Roman sources? The main sources where people are going to meet her are the same sources where people get to know Nero and Claudius and the whole story. The most immediate accessible sources are what I call with my students the big three. And that's going to be Tacitus, Suetonius and Diocasius. So they're the ones everybody knows. They're the ones who left behind the most complete record because you've got Suetonius with his biographies and the Twelve Caesars.

With Tacitus, you've got his massive work. Well, it's incomplete, but it's the Annales, which covers Claudius and Nero's reigns. And these are the ones that people are going to be familiar with, because you can get them in Penguin paperbacks and the Loeb series and what have you. There are, in fact, many, many sources that do cite her. So she's mentioned in Josephus, she's mentioned in Pliny the Elder, a lot of inscriptions, coins and what have you. But again, it's what's going to be most accessible to an undergraduate or to somebody making a movie or pop history.

And why do you think Tastus Suetonius and Cassius Dio, how do you think they view powerful women in the early imperial period? It's a good question. These guys are, well, one is a biographer, so Suetonius is a biographer, and Tacitus is a rhetorician. And both of them have this purpose of writing where they're teaching lessons. And the lessons that are being taught is how to behave in public life, i.e. how to be a politician. And that is aimed at a male audience. So because they're writing at a male audience, because they're writing at people who might take lessons from them on how to behave in political life, they tend to judge the men they're writing about on their household and on the women in their household. That was meant to be the woman's role in higher Roman society. She represents the domestic side of a Roman politician's life.

If he can't keep his wife and children under control, how can you trust him as a politician? How can you trust him to run the government or to hold his particular office? So these writings, or to hold his particular office. So these writings, they're aimed at men who would be thinking about going into politics. They're written a generation or more than a generation later. They're almost 100 years later, 70, 100 years later, looking back on this particular era. So they're also writing for an audience of the following dynasty from the Julio-Claudians. So of course, they're going to be critical of that dynasty. Fascinating. So it's trying basically for later writers to try and make future emperors avoid this soft power influence, as it were.

I think you can put it that way. You have history and image very strongly controlled during the era of the Julio-Claudians, which of course goes from Augustus from about 27 BC through to Nero, our man here, who commits suicide in 68. They controlled history very carefully. There are very, very few actual historians, quote-unquote, during this period. The people that Augustus patronized, for example, are going to be Virgil and Horace, and writers who make the Julio-Claudians look like the destined family to rule Rome. There are no real historians in this period. Our guys, I'm going to include Josephus in this, are writing much later.

They're being patronized by the Flavians. Certain Flavians, such as Domitian, he's the last of the Flavian emperors, also had a tight control over history. So when you have Suetonius and Tacitus writing, they're actually writing during the reigns of Trajan and Hadrian. So they're coming much later. They're familiar with what's happening with the Flavians. They don't like Domitian. So they're going to be very critical of these reigns that came before. So they're powerful emperors, Trajan and then again later Hadrian with Suetonius. They're going to become the new role models.

So they're looking back at what not to do of these previous weaker emperors. So let's have a look at Agrippina in a bit more depth then. Let's start with her early life. So she is born at this time of radical political change in the Roman Empire. But she's also born into one of the most prominent families of the time. She was born in 15, so AD 15. And at that time, that's the year after Augustus dies. So Tiberius has just become emperor. And she's got a really powerful pedigree. Her mother is Agrippina the Elder, who was a

tremendous enemy of Tiberius, actually, so there's a lot of baggage there, but a very popular woman. So her mother is Augustus's granddaughter, so Agrippina the Younger herself is a direct descendant of Augustus, and of course she is going to play this up. Her father is Germanicus. He is a bloodline Claudian, so he's directly descended from Livia he's adopted into the Julian family so Agrippina the younger and her siblings are the true Julio Claudians because they're born of these two of these two families very powerful pedigree she's she's descended from Antonia so she's got Mark Antony in her background as well so you've got Augustus there Claudius Antony but it is very very. So you've got Augustus there, Claudius, Antony. But it is very,

very turbulent at the time that she's born. To be honest with you, there's not much known about her very, very early life. So at the time when she would have been a child is the time when her mother was in conflict with Tiberius. And of course, her mother ends up being exiled, then executed by Tiberius. She's got brothers who are executed by Tiberius. And it's a very, very dangerous time for her. So you imagine being this small girl growing up in this atmosphere. She's married when she's 13. She's married to a man who's about 25 years older than she is. This is Gnaeus Domitius Anabarbus. The Anabarbi were a powerful family during the Republic, but by the time you get to Gnaeus, they've kind of fallen into obscurity. He's considered a bit of a kind

of a waste of space, quite frankly, and it's this strange relationship between the two of them. They have only one child together. Agrippina is only about 15 when Nero is born, and they have this one child together. And even Anna Barbara says, well, anything that's a product of our union is not going to come to any good. You think, oh, God, thank you. That's magical, my prince. So she's got this tumultuous childhood that you just have to imagine. What is this like? You know, her mother being dragged off in exile. Then it's her brother Caligula, Gaius, who ends up becoming emperor. So her fortunes change a little bit during his reign. So we don't know much about her childhood, but how can that not shape you,

seeing what's going on around you? It's remarkable what you say there. You said her mother is exiled, then executed. Obviously her father, Germanicus, who has that very mysterious death in Syria. And surely that must affect her. But also, as you say, this political marriage married off, as it were, to this not remarkable figure. It kind of sounds as if Tiberius is trying to get rid of this possible threat by marrying her off to this distant, so not very important figure.

I would have to agree with that. The quarrel that Agrippina the Elder has with Tiberius has to do with succession. Augustus wanted Germanicus to succeed him, so Germanicus and Tiberius had been co-heirs for a while, and as you say, Germanicus mysteriously dies in Syria, which of course is imagined in I Claudius. That's what all my students know. Oh, we know what happened to him. Subsequently, Agrippina the Elder's son should have been in the line of succession, and that's how she saw it. So this is Drusus and Nero, not our Nero, but Drusus and Nero, who are Caligula's brothers. And this is one of the things that Agrippina the Elder was fighting for. She felt that it should be her sons, not Tiberius. She saw that Tiberius

was swinging the succession over to the Claudians and taking it away from Augustus' true heirs. And absolutely, even though Agrippina is just a young girl, women have no official political power, they have a tremendous amount of influence. Anybody who married her is going to gain this influence. this influence. So even Anabarbus, had he not been out, I don't know, peeling grapes or whatever it was he did in his dotage, he could have actually made a claim for, I'm going to call it the throne, even though they weren't kings, he could have made a claim through her. So you marry this pedigree, it strengthens your pedigree. Fortunately, quote unquote, for Tiberius or whatever, he's going to die and she ends up widowed. So we talk about about this we talk about the death of tiberius and the death of ahina barbus and you mentioned it earlier agrippina's fortunes change when caligula comes to power they change

well they change literally and and figuratively she does have a second husband and we don't know too much about him um that's pasquenius he was very well spoken he's if i'm not mistaken and i frequently am a descendant of sallust so he's got he's got this grand background he had been a jurist during the time of julius caesar and he was he was very careful with his speech that he managed to survive this particular period. He's very, very wealthy. And as I said, we don't know too much about him because he also dies very young. Agrippina was blamed for that. It was claimed that she poisoned him.

But she, of course, gets all of his money at that point. So she's had the second marriage. Some of the things that I've argued about her education and her political savvy, it makes me wonder, because he himself, because Pasquinius was so well-educated, because he was a jurist, did she learn anything from him? However, in terms of her life at the beginning, under the reign of Caligula, she was very, very privileged. Now, this is actually before Pasquinius, because she pregnant or she have Nero at the time? I can't remember my timeline, I'm sorry. It's so bunched together. But during the beginning of Caligula's reign, of course, he was very good to his sisters. He gave

them all sorts of privileges. For example, he gave Agrippina and one of her sisters the rights of the Vestal Virgins. And this doesn't mean she became a Vestal Virgin, but it means that she became emancipated financially because the Vestals were. And this meant that she's got many more privileges and independence, unlike other women, even in the imperial family would have had. So she's got all these rights and privileges to appear in public on her own. She's got a special seat that she can have at the games that makes her very prominent. She's even got the accrual of a sports car that she can tootle around Rome in that only belongs to the Vestals. Very important part of Gaius's court. He's going to, for example,

issue coinage with his sisters on it. He uses a lot of family imagery at the beginning of his reign because he wants to remind people, he's a descendant of Augustus, that women are so important to him. There's a famous coin, you know, this is audio only, but if you look online, he issued a coin of his three sisters as the three graces, I believe, and he's got the names on the coin. The Ashmolean has one, and the British Museum has one. And it's the first time a woman is named on a coin he's doing with his sisters. He also puts them in oaths. So when you had to swear an oath at the law court, you also swore your fidelity on these sisters' names. So things are going really, really well. Unfortunately for Agrippina, things take a downturn. Gaius becomes, of course, very paranoid. He famously suffers this illness, and I'm not getting into that. But turns on his sisters one of his one of the sisters dies drusilla is the sister who dies um

agrippina and her other sister are accused of treason so they're accused of plotting against him by this point agrippina has been widowed a second time so she's got nero as a little boy there's my timeline brought it back um and he's going to exile Agrippina. So she's going to go from being the absolute pinnacle of power in terms of what a woman could have at the Julio-Claudian court to being exiled to an island where she's forced to die for sponges with the slaves. That was her punishment. That was very humiliating. When she complained about that, you know, how can you exile me? I don't want to be in exile. It's in Cassius dia and i would i would have given anything to have john hurt read this for me but apparently caligula's response to her complaints was i have swords as well as

islands and it's just it's just so tasty where he's threatening that well you should be lucky you're still alive but she became a very good swimmer. So hold that thought. Hold that thought indeed. I mean, so she is in exile for some time with Caligula. And just a reminder, she is Caligula's sister. Yes. There are six of them that survive. Germanicus and Agrippina have an enormous brood of children. I think there's nine total.

So there's six that live to adulthood. The two oldest are Drusus and Nero. Again, not our Nero. And they should have been in line for inheriting the empire. Caligula is the youngest son who survives. And he goes by Gaius. He never went by Caligula during his lifetime. He didn't dare call him that. So he's the youngest one who survives. And he's raised by Livia. And this is one reason why he's criticized by Suetonius, because being raised by women, they let him read whatever he wanted. The ultimate crime. And then there's the three sisters that survive. So it's Drusilla, Lovilla, and Agrippina who survive.

And quickly, before we just go on to when she returns from exile you mentioned livia just there is she a role model for agrippina about how she can survive in this new regime i honestly couldn't answer that because i don't think there's enough in the sources to indicate where agrippina and livia are placed in connection to each other it's a fascinating question because they are frequently compared not only in pop culture, but you see it in a lot of more general histories that it's always Livia and Agrippina simply because we have the most scholarship about them. I think what's indicative about how much power and influence they have, you've got Augustus who absolutely promotes Livia as his better half and his distal half.

When Nero becomes emperor, he's only 16, and when he becomes emperor and he gives this freshman speech, which probably one of his tutors wrote for him, he very clearly says in the speech, mine will not be a petticoat government. So in other words, there's not going to be any women influencing me. And if you know anything about Nero you know how that went so it's a tempting comparison but it's hard to make a one-to-one comparison if that makes any sense absolutely quite understand so let's go back to the exile then this exile under caligula it doesn't last very long no it doesn't um she she's in exile um untilius becomes emperor. So when does he send her off? Actually, it looks like it's quite a while. Sorry, I've got my cheat sheet in front of me.

Claudius is going to become emperor in 41, and she's exiled in 40. So it's about a year, roughly, that she spends time. It must have been a very hard life, though. And when you don't know, is your brother going to send the assassins for you at any time? Living under a cloud like that must have been very, very difficult for her. Plus she's separated from her son. So Nero would have been just a little boy at this point in time. And so how does she return to the imperial fold under the next Emperor Claudius? Well, Claudius is her uncle and his brother, of course, is Germanicus, Agrippina's father. When he becomes emperor under extraordinary circumstances, which is probably

very familiar to most people, he is a Claudian. He's not directly related to Augustus. So he needs to shore up that connection. And one of the ways that he does that is, again, through the women in his family. So at the time he becomes emperor, he's married to Messalina, who's a distant cousin, much younger than he is, very beautiful. She is descended from one of Augustus's sisters. So of course, Claudius gloms onto that. So he's got that tenuous connection back to Augustus, where he can say, at least in my son Britannicus, there's some Augustan blood. As I mentioned a few minutes ago, someone such as Agrippina, someone who's a direct descendant of Augustus, has a very powerful blood, DNA,

flowing through her veins. And any man who marries her, any man associated with her, can have some great importance here. Obviously, Claudius is still married to Messalina, but he brings Agrippina, the younger, back from exile because she is the daughter of his brother. And so he's releasing a lot of exiles. He's showing it's a new golden age after Caligula, and that he's restoring his family to its former glory. So that's how she gets a foothold back in the imperial palace. And you mentioned Messalina just then. Do you think Messalina perceives the return of Agrippina and her son as a direct threat to her and her own son Britannicus? I would have to say absolutely. There's no love lost between these women at all. The family that Messalina comes from, those are the Domitia, and Agrippina is going to

have great rivalry with this particular family. Britannicus is Claudius's heir, but he's a sickly little boy. There's some historians who think that he may have epilepsy. He may have had epilepsy. Messalina, again, she's only tenuously associated with Augustus. It's not particularly unusual amongst Roman aristocrats, and especially in the Julio-Claudian family, to divorce for political expediency. So she might see, oh my God, this beautiful woman who's come back, who's a Julio-Claudian, she's going to be a threat to me.

Maybe not so much with marriage, because again, Claudius' uncle, it's a niece. So cousins, that's one thing, but she may be thinking, there's no way he's going to marry his brother's daughter. But she could have this tremendous influence being in the palace. Agrippina is very, very popular when she comes back. And yes, she's got this strapping son who is two years older than Britannicus. So now you've got these two direct descendants of Augustus back in favor. So it is very much a threat. And this idea of a threat, do you think these two women, it's more an idea of survival? It's all about being able to survive in this new regime? Not just the new regime, I think any of them, because for all of these women, it's all about being able to survive in this new regime not just the new regime i think

any of them because for all of these women it's really who they're married to and who they stay married to is going to provide their safety and security when agrippina comes back she has a she has a number of suitors for her hand and of course she can she can choose whoever she wants rather famously she approached a man who was going to become an emperor he's already married and she's already looking for people who can i marry who's going to be husband number three and she approached um galba he's going to become emperor during that civil war she approached him and basically propositioned him in front of his then wife who who punched her. So there's this big slap fight. But this is what women had to do. Agrippina is just a bit more outspoken, at least according to the sources. But again, it's a matter of political survival,

personal survival. What do you do? So she's important and dangerous at the same time. It's fascinating how Tacitus and the later writers might try to depict this more boldness, as it were, from a woman and try to deride it when actually it's just them trying to survive. It's complicated baggage. It has to do with how the Romans would have defined what is masculinity and what is femininity, which is something that if any of my students are listening, you know that we go into in some depth because the Romans look at masculine and feminine traits as being attributes that can be embodied by both a man and a woman. And what happens with a woman who becomes too outspoken, too educated, too pushy, or how the Romans would define pushy, aggressive, I think, or assertive. She's considered too masculine, and she's not behaving as a proper

woman. She's not being submissive. She's not being the passive partner. And some masculine traits in women are very much admired. So if you're familiar with the Grochi brothers, the Republican Gracchi brothers, their mother's Cornelia. When the Gracchis were killed, someone commits suicide, when they die, their mother remains very, these things happen. And she's admired for this restraint. And so Roman women are admired for this particular restraint. Roman women are admired for raising their sons well and giving them good advice, finding them good tutors, giving them good advice, but then stepping back. Someone such as Agrippina or any of these women in the Julio-Claudian family, they break the norm of what

was considered the ideal Republican woman, so they're not acting like Cornelia. They're being very assertive. They're reaffirming their sons' positions, even their own positions. One of the things about the Julio-Claudian period is it's completely new. People are more or less making up the game book as it goes along. When we study Augustus in my classes, my students will say, wow, is he playing like four-dimensional chess? I say, no, he's making it up as he goes along. You have to kind of imagine he goes home every night going, oh God, got away with it again. It's all new.

They're completely tearing up the playbook. So if imperial women in the Julio-Claudian period seem different or more aggressive, well, for one thing, Augustus promotes the women in his family. He makes sure that they're educated. He engages them in conversation. There's evidence in the resources and the histories from this period that he writes letters to them. He asks them for advice. He says, you are role models. So, these women are products of Augustus, and they're products of that particular time. It's our guys like Tacitus and Suetonius who are looking back at the Republic saying,

oh no, honey, no, no. You're supposed to be this model woman. You know, you're supposed to be quiet like Antonia was. You're supposed to be like Octavia who had to put up with Mark Antony. You know, look at the face, public face that she put on. She didn't handbag slap Cleopatra. She just stood there and said, oh yes, I've just been insulted and waited for men to do something about it. So instead of just acting as the catalyst, they went out and did something. But they are products of their time. Men have no one to blame but themselves. So this rivalry then between Messalina and Agrippina, when does it reach its height and why? Well, between the two of them, it's a bit of a tricky question to answer,

because what's going to happen to Messalina? She's going to be executed. So Agrippina, the real rivalry isn't between Messalina and Agrippina. It has to do with a relative of Messalina's, a woman called Domidia, who's Messalina's aunt. But Messalina ends up being executed. She gets herself into a bit of trouble. She, according again to the sources, Messalina, she's another figure that's very difficult to study because we've only got the written sources. She gets tangled up with another Roman aristocrat. She has an affair with him. Supposedly, they have a common law marriage. And this guy declares himself the new emperor because Messalina is

indirectly descended from Augustus. So he's able to say, oh, no, she's my wife now. I can be the emperor. This is very charming, the way it's portrayed in I, Claudius, with Clus saying, but am I still the emperor? What's happening? Yes, of course you are. Do something. Do something. So she ends up being executed because, of course, it's high treason. Adultery amongst the aristocracy, as far as women are concerned, is this very serious crime because of their role of being childbearers when you're the wife of the emperor. And, of course, Messalina gets this reputation of being the imperial whore,

that's her nickname, that she gets into a competition with the head of the prostitutes' guild and wins. There's doubts raised that the children, including Britannicus that she has with Claudius, are they really his? It's a huge scandal. So supposedly his freedmen convinced him to sign this death warrant.

So she's executed. So that rivalry between Messalina and Agrippina ends basically because Messalina sets herself on fire. That's an absolute train wreck there. So Agrippina comes basically because Messalina sets herself on fire. That's an absolute train wreck there. So Agrippina comes out of that one fairly well. I know that sounds really strange, but she almost doesn't have to do anything as far as that's concerned. So now we've got this eligible bachelor in Claudius once Messalina's out of the picture with children who might not be his. What's a girl to do? Well, so does it sound like agrippina well would

you say does she not have to do that much then to navigate nero into the line of succession yes and no yes and no because well once once claudius's freedmen convince him to marry agrippina they they tell him she's she's dangerous she's single. You're single. You have very tenuous claim to the throne. Anybody who marries her, she is the daughter, indirectly, of emperor. So she's got that direct descendant. She's the sister of an emperor. You've got to do something. you've got to do something. When he marries her, he has to have laws passed because she is his niece. So it kind of becomes uncle-daddy there. But it's not a marriage out of love. These two do not love each other. It's power. He needs her. He needs that pedigree. She needs his protection. So obviously there's no children there. She's still a young woman when she marries him. She's 15 when Nero's born, and Nero's 15 or so, 14 or 15, when she marries Claudius. So she's still quite young as far as women go, but there's no children.

If you look at the sources such as Tacitus and Suetonius, it makes it sound as if she's a human bulldozer. She comes to this weak Claudius and, now you're going to make my son error and change his name because he's actually called Lucius before he's adopted by Claudius. So she browbeats Claudius into adopting him and all this. When you stand back from those sources and look at the material sources, you see that there's a lot of mutual reciprocity here when it comes to mutual reciprocity here when it comes to adopting Lucius and making him Claudius's heir. On the one hand, it tightens the relationship between the two families, so it secures Claudius's position. It makes him look good because he's supporting this woman. Nero is older than Britannicus. He's stronger than Britannicus. So in a way, now you've got an heir

and a spare. There is material imagery of Britannicus and Nero together as heirs. So there's coins that are issued with the pair of them on it. There is a temple in Aphrodisias called the Sebastian. Sebastos is just Greek for augustus it's a temple dedicated to the julio claudians and there's a number of statues there of botanicus and nero together so it was only recently discovered in the 1970s but all the famous statues of nero being crowned by his mother and all that it all comes from there there's much support for nero now becoming becoming this heir for Nero now becoming this heir. He is very young.

He is just a teenager. He's slowly introduced to public life. He does the equivalent of opening supermarkets, if that makes any sense. So he's present at affairs where a young boy, just starting to get his feet wet in public life, would be introduced. It would have been foolish for Claudius not to adopt him and not to adopt him and not

to name him his heir in the classical world illness was seen as a as a weakness of character so if botanicus was weak if botanicus had this illness having a strapping young lad like nero as your heir would have just made sense so it's actually very much a sensible sensible play i think it is i I really do. I mean, I'm not, again, saying that Agrippina was sort of sitting back like the happy mum, seeing this happen. There are other things attributed to her in terms of securing, of how aggressive she was in securing Nero's adoption

and basically double-bracing this adoption by getting Nero married into that family so Nero of course is going to end up marrying his stepsister as well. Before we get to the death of Claudius and the accession of Nero is there anything in the sources that points to anything positive about Agrippina during the years of Claudius's reign? Oh I think so again read the sources critically um if you read um anthony barrett's got a wonderful biography of her and i know there's a there's a recent one that's coming out or it's just come out about her which i need to need to check out she's very well educated she um she wasn't really a patron of the arts but she does secure for nero really good tutors so she makes sure everybody knows Seneca and Burrus as as his tutors but there are there are a couple of named tutors prior to them when

he's just a little boy she's very helpful to Claudius in the sense that she hears ambassadors who come to speak to him there's some indication that she's got a bit more political savvy than Claudius does. So you almost get the impression that once she becomes his helpmate, his own capabilities, his own abilities as a speechmaker, as somebody who's meeting with government officials improves. And this is where, remember I mentioned earlier, when she's married to her second husband, that he was a jurist. And wives are frequently educated by their husbands, or they learn from their husbands. But she's also been at the imperial court. Claudius was never expected to become emperor. She probably has more experience than he does.

So I think when you want to look for positive aspects about her, she's got this political savvy. She is very well educated. She's not a soft, loving person, but there's a few indications here and there that what we know about her mother may come from a memoir that Agrippina, the younger, wrote. So if she's writing a memoir, she is talking about family. So she might be orientated in that way. So there are positive aspects out there about her, but don't expect to hear that she ran a home for kittens or anything like that. That's not happening. That's remarkable.

Let's have a talk about it now. What do the sources tell us about the death of Claudius? The sources make it sound as if Agrippina was suspect number one. So very famously, was suspect number one. So very famously, everybody knows that Agrippina served Claudius a dish of poisoned mushrooms because that was his favorite meal. And you've got this image of her with the paperwork making Nero air and saying, sign this now, sign this now.

Ooh, here's dessert. And the minute he signs off all the paperwork, she has him slip on a banana peel. There has actually been, there's an article, I can dig it up for you later, where somebody very, very carefully demonstrated that she may not have been the person behind the poisoning. And of course, it probably wasn't, I mean, horrible histories corrects everybody on this. It wasn't the mushrooms themselves. It's a poisoned feather that he used afterwards to make himself vomit.

themselves. It's a poisoned feather that he used afterwards to make himself foment. Whether she was directly responsible or not, the sources do make it sound as if she's going to capitalize on it. Shortly before he died, she issued a proclamation, a public proclamation, that if anything were to happen to Claudius, Nero would be more than capable of taking over. And you think, oh, that's sinister. and you imagine her going off laughing like a James Bond villain after that. But again, if you step back from that, Claudius was not in good health anyway. This is reassurances that this teenage boy, who again doesn't have any military experience, hasn't shown himself to be interested in any sort of political history. But saying, oh yes, if anything happens, look, we've got this heir. And this does go back to a tradition amongst the Julio-Claudians

of always saying there's continuity, this person is always there. After Claudius died, she immediately has the Praetorian guard named Nero, the new emperor. Again, that looks very sinister. But again, if you step back from that, well, that makes sense. Because I mean, look at the jamboree that followed Caligula's assassination with the guard running crazy through the house. And how do you know all these people aren't just going to rush forward and say, oh, I'm an heir, I'm an heir, I can take over. I'll marry you, you know,

the merry widow and that. So she has the Praetorian Guard issue this proclamation immediately. She also keeps Britannicus and his sisters locked away so the public can't see them. That also looks sinister. Why can't the public see them? I don't know. If you look at it and you think this is somebody who has to do a lot of damage control, this is somebody trying to keep calm after Claudius dies, what's going to look like suspicious circumstances. You might have people who are still supporting Messalina and her child. You don't want to have this factional split. She saw that with her mother between Tiberius and his family, Gamalus, his grandson, and her own brothers. I mean, it's speculation, but it can be seen as very sensible. The sources, of course immediately

rush in and say oh just look at her you know she she seized her moment and she she hid the other children but Britannicus is in the public eye after Nero becomes emperor he's not hidden it's just at that particular moment it's a crisis moment the succession is always a crisis period so she's running around doing what she can she doesn't want to repeat of what happened to her mother i suppose you could say of course because you see that past experience as it were as you've seen from her mother what could happen as if she's trying to make sure the same doesn't happen for her son i can see that happening a little bit later in nero's reign during one of the quarrels Agrippina

has with Nero, she tells him, you know, I made you emperor. I helped to make you emperor. There's a lot of baggage behind that statement. I'm not going to support you anymore. And she starts to support Britannicus. So she might have been a difficult stepmother, and she gets this reputation of the wicked stepmother, which is a cliche. Judith Ginsberg wrote about the stereotypes of women in the Julio-Claudian family. But Botanicus is still right there, and she's willing to shift all of her support towards him at a time that she feels that Nero's being ungrateful. Yes, and do we start seeing this wicked stepmother motif really starting to emerge in the sources during the early years of Nero's reign?

I'm not sure if it's really during the early years of his reign. I think the wicked stepmother image with Agrippina begins when she marries Claudius himself. So while Claudius is still emperor, because this whole idea that Britannicus gets pushed to one side, the person who's the worst to Britannicus is actually Nero, because of course he's going to have him assassinated. Britannicus is actually Nero, because of course he's going to have him assassinated. It's interesting too that in terms of championing or being a champion of Britannicus, it's going to be the later emperor Titus, the Flavian emperor, who issues coins and other imagery with Britannicus's image on it, because they've been playmates. And he does this not because Britannicus had been treated badly by Agrippina, but because he'd been murdered by Nero. So he's trying to say, you know, sort of making it up to him, if that makes any

sense. Fascinating. So in that regard, when Nero comes to the throne, he is in these late teenage years. How does Agrippina cope during these first five years or so of Nero's reign? Because it looks very good when he starts off. Well, that's because he wasn't actually ruling. It's a golden age during those first five years, which I can't pronounce and I'm not going to try to do right now. But that first five years is considered this golden age because Nero's not really ruling. It is, to all intents and purposes, a regency with Agrippina and two of Nero's tutors who are doing all the heavy lifting. So it's Agrippina on the one hand, his tutor Seneca the younger, who of course was a teacher and philosopher, very well educated, and Burrus who is the captain of the Praetorian Guard who

becomes Nero's tutor. And Burrus was a client of Agrippina, so he owed her for his position. These are the people actually running the empire, and they do a crackerjack job of it. Agrippina is hobbled a bit because, of course, she can't take a public role. There's a dodgy moment when Nero has to meet with his first group of ambassadors. He doesn't know what to do.

He doesn't have any experience, any background. He sat there while these clients, while these emissaries want to come forward and speak to him. He just kind of sits there. What would you do? You're 16 years old. You've never done anything like this before. And these ambassadors are coming towards you. You have to imagine him just sort of looking around like, what do I do? Agrippina is off to one side or behind. she eventually is going to attend meetings behind a curtain you have to imagine her going oh for goodness sake she strides forward to meet with these ambassadors and it's only very quick action from seneca and burris who leap into action grab nero push her out of the way to stop a regency government from forming on the

spot so they have to get her out of the way and push him forward and activate him it makes me think in the united states we've got we've got these little kids who play um uh it's it's called t-ball which is like baseball except you don't actually pitch to them they hit a ball off of a little mounted peg little kids don't know what to do they hit the ball and they just stand there so the parents come and they run them down to first base this is kind of what's happening to nero at the beginning, is he has to be activated. So his tutors are writing his speeches, and Agrippina is acting behind the scenes. She has more experience than he does.

She'd been Claudius's helpmate in that respect. But it's remarkable how it's still very much, it is influence behind the throne, as it were, from that, especially from that scenario that you were describing just then. It has to be. Women cannot legally hold a political office. They are not meant to be in the Senate House. If they're in a courtroom, it's because they're a plaintiff or a defendant. They're not meant to be running the show. She was eventually allowed to attend Senate meetings,

but she had to stand behind a curtain so she couldn't be seen. And the sources, I think it's Dio Cassius who says that she would frequently be shouting, and you just see the curtain sort of billowing as she would be punching the air, getting in her tuppence. So she does have to stay behind the scenes, but Nero acknowledges his debt to her. He puts her on his coinage, for example. And you can tell that this relationship is accepted throughout the Roman world because again, this temple in Aphrodisias, these are the Greeks, these are outsiders who depict her with him in very prominent positions.

So she features on his coinage, the inscriptions on the coinage are very significant because you know, often it's Agrippina, mother of Nero, or Nero, son of Agrippina. So her name is very prominent on his coinage as well as her image. So in the East, where the ruler cult is very prevalent, especially when the rulers are still living, do we see Agrippina featuring in this ruler cult for a period of time? The evidence that I'm most familiar with, again, I have to keep going back to my beloved Aphrodisias. She's depicted on a very famous statue. So if everybody could quickly go out and Google.

There's a famous statue where Nero's just become emperor. So he's a young boy stood there. And she's dressed in the guise of the goddess Ops, O-P-S, which is the goddess of plenty. She appears to be putting a crown on his head, and that's been interpreted by many people, many of my students, as, oh my God, she's making him emperor, because that's what she says. She's not, actually. She's being shown as giving him to the Roman people, because that's how she makes him emperor. She gives birth to him. Her blood becomes his blood. And in this statue, as this

goddess, and it's not unusual for these empresses to be depicted as goddesses of plenty. Livia was frequently depicted as Ceres, for example. Opsis is another goddess of plenty. So in this particular statue, she's putting this flower crown on his head, but she's also holding a cornucopia, which is spilling out with all kinds of fruit and flowers and things like that. He's meant to be part of that. So as far as that goes with the imperial call in the East, I think as a woman, she's being perceived as giving this to the Roman Empire, giving this boy to the Roman Empire, this new Augustus. So when did the coinage of Agrippina start? When does it start to fade? When did the statue start to fade? When does this relationship between Agrippina and Nero start to fade?

We hear a lot about Agrippina in the sources up to in the reign of Claudius and then in the first year or so of Nero's reign. That's when she's very active. So this is 54 when he becomes emperor. That's when she's very active, so this is 54, when he becomes emperor. She more or less disappears from the sources until about 58 or 59. So that five years when we know all this good stuff is going on, it's not really remarked upon by Tacitus and Suetonius, probably because it is good times and the good stuff's happening. They like to point out the bad times.

By the time you get down to 59, which of course is the year that Agrippina dies, Nero's about 20, 21 years old. And he starts to rankle a bit under the fact that mom is controlling everything and that his tutors are controlling everything. One has to be very careful here because you don't want to start looking into, oh, it's very Freudian that he's having mother-son issues. Marian Griffith, who also has written an excellent biography of Nero, stresses this, that it's so tempting to go Dr. Freud on the pair of them. But then as now, if you're 21 years old and you've been helped through your teenage years, you're an adult now. And for the Romans, he would have been well into adulthood for a man at 21. That may be one of the issues that he chafes.

He also, for want of a better term, discovers girls. And he doesn't want to be under the grip of his mother in that sense. And again, this is where Tacitus and Suetonius are going to play this up, that it's going to be more women manipulating him and saying, well, you know, if you were a real man, you know, I'll be your mistress or I'll be your wife, but you've got to get rid of mom. You've got your mom hanging over you.

And so there's some fudging with the dates and the sources about the actual timeline when this sort of happens but yeah in 59 he's getting tired of her so the the bloom's off the rose she she's not in his coinage anymore at that point um she had had splendid digs up on the palatine hill because that's where all the imperial palaces are and she ends up oh golly she ends up going back to her own estates there is a point i'm leaving out a lot of stuff but there is a point where he sends he he takes away her body guard he takes away um and blocks her from being with a lot of her supporters because she's got

this whole posse around her and he's got he's got this gang of his buddies who just harass her they go to her house and they stand outside her gates and they shout things at her and just harass her and annoy her. It's very childish, but that seems to be how he rolls. So she is falling out of favor. She herself, again, we have to use the written sources for this, isn't helping matters because she is constantly reminding him that he is not showing her the gratitude that he should. She made him emperor. And again, this is where people run with it saying, oh yeah, that's right, she killed all those people. She's arguing that as his patron, as his mother, she made him emperor because of who she is. Because she's this descendant of Augustus.

And if it wasn't for that, he'd be a nobody. So there's tension on both sides. That's remarkable. So how does it transform from Nero being, well, as it were, I'm fed up with you, mum, to I'm going to assassinate you? It's a complicated timeline. We'd have to do like a six-part special on this, I think. It's very complicated. And our three main sources, again, Tacitus, Suetonius, and Dio Cassius, they have all kinds of crazy stories about what he wants to do. It may start, indeed, where Agrippina is, again, berating Nero for not showing him the gratitude that he should. And as I said earlier, she tells him, I'm not going to support you anymore. I'm not going to support you as emperor anymore.

I've written a tell-all book, which I'm going to publish, and people are going to know all about you. She did write a memoir. She's the only imperial woman that we know that wrote a memoir, and little bits and pieces of it are quoted by Tacitus and Pliny the Elder. She probably didn't write about where all the skeletons were buried, but she threatens him with it. She says, I'm going to publish this, which resonates now, doesn't it, with some of the things going on in

the world about leaders. So she threatens him for that. And then that's when she says, I'm going to support Britannicus. Nero immediately freaks out. What am I going to do? What am I going to do? I got to kill her. I got to kill her. And he's talked down by his tutors, especially Burrus, because of course Burrus owes his position to Agrippina, saying, don't kill the old lady, just get rid of your rival. So, this is when Britannicus is murdered, and it's done in such a blasé way, but it's done right in front of Agrippina, who has to sit there and just act like nothing's happening while this boy dies in front of her, because it happens at a dinner party while he dies in front of her and nero just blithely goes on eating saying oh he has he has epilepsy he does that while this while

this poor boy is is fitting on the floor and dying in agony from poison so that's one rival out of the way now agrippina does rummage around in the nursery to try to find somebody else to support over nero when she when she's so angry with him. And the guy that she chooses just heads for the hills. Once he finds out that Agrippina wants to support him, he's like, oh, hell no. And he gets out of here. He sees a distant cousin and he leaves town. Again, when Nero learns about this,

he wants to have her killed. He's desperate to have her killed. For a while, he's been having a relationship with a freed woman, a former slave from his own household, a woman called Actae. He's been tormenting Agrippina that he's going to marry this girl. This would put, of course, the marriage that's been arranged with his stepsister into a mockery, and it would put everything he did with Claudius into a mockery. Nero starts putting away all the statues he has of Claudius and commissioned statues of his bio-dad. You know, this absolute ne'er-do-well. So he's trying to undermine Agrippina's authority that way. Agrippina tries

to strike back. Again, like I said, she's rummaging around. Nero finally reaches a point where he says, I've got to get rid of her. And according to the sources, he comes out with all these crazy schemes that he sends her a collapsible bed. So he sends her a bed that's like a canopy bed, but it's got a lead canopy instead of a cloth canopy, as you might expect. And of course it collapses and she escapes from that under various scenarios. There's another story that, as you know, Nero's very fond of the theater. He loves theater and he loves all the craziness that you see in the theater. And that he had seen a production, one of these productions where they dam up the theater and they flood it and they've got ships and they do sea battles and he saw this one production where they had these ships where the fronts came open kind of like the d-day ships

where they could roll the tanks out he thought that was really cool and he thought what if i gave my mother a ship that fell apart like that so he gives her this wonderful ship one of the stories the stories, the stories that I tell, I try to combine them a little bit because it's great drama, that she's invited to this dinner party. Now, he's been mean to her for so long that when he invites her to this dinner party, she's, oh, thank you. It's about time that you show some respect for me. Wonderful dinner party. He's praising her. He's giving her presents. He's opening up the vaults and giving her jewelry and clothing that belonged to previous empresses. You'd think after all this time she'd be suspicious

because anyone in the Julia-O'Claudian family who acts nice to anybody else, I mean, I'd be instantly suspicious of that. And he says, well, why don't you take your new boat home? He's deliberately made sure, because she's had to sail across the bay from her estate, he's deliberately made sure that her boat's been crippled. As she was sailing over, he had his buddies go out and ram her boat. He said, well, your boat's had a commission. Why don't you take the new one home, which is this collapsible boat? Okay, fine, great.

So as she's sailing back that night, the boat falls apart around her, just to make sure Nero sends some of his cronies out to kill any of the survivors in the water. So of course these guys are sailing around and they're calling to survivors. Agrippina's maid starts calling, I'm over here. I'm Agrippina. Come and save me. I'm the emperor's mother. Not realizing they're assassins. So they row their boat over and they beat her to death with oars.

Remember I said earlier, hold that thought. Agrippina is an excellent swimmer. She's able to swim to shore it's about this time when she starts to twig that maybe her relationship between herself and nero's gone south she manages to make it home nero's partying because he thinks he's got agrippina out of the way she sends him a letter saying dear son if you were worried about me, I'm fine. How are you? So this is when he absolutely freaks out, sends assassins. The poor guy that she sends with the message, Nero has killed. You know, like in really terrible films where cops will plant things. There's this episode, The Young Ones, where the cop just literally throws a bag of marijuana.

One of the students says, oh, oh, oh, planted drugs. Agrippina's messenger is standing there giving this message, and Nero has one of his soldiers throw a sword on the floor and says, is that a sword? Are you trying to kill me? So he has her messenger killed. It's absolutely nutty what's going on here towards the end. These assassins are sent to Agrippina's palace. I can't imagine she's surprised.

And according to the story, they knock her to the floor. And as she manages to gain her feet, she tells them, she points to her womb and she says, if you're going to kill me, strike here, because this is the source of all of Rome's troubles. So she gets that last word in as well. But it's completely over the swings towards the end. There's a movie out there. It sounds like she has this last noble death speech, as it were, given in the sources. Oh, they do give this to her. And what's really interesting is long before Tacitus and Suetonius and definite long before Darchastus, are writing all of this. In Nero's lifetime, there's a tragedy that's written and performed called the Octavia, which is about his wife,

his first wife, whom he also has executed. And in the Octavia, which you may well have seen, Agrippina plays a ghost, and she actually has a lot of noble speeches that she gives. So this is one of the few sources, excuse me, it's not a historical source, but it'd be pop culture and how she's being depicted in current popular culture. And she's being depicted as this vindictive ghost and actually a supportive mother-in-law of Octavia. So she sometimes has this reputation of being very mean to Octavia. to Octavia. But yet in the Octavia tragedy, she's being shown as being very supportive to this poor girl who is being portrayed as a victim of Nero's incompetency and evil. It's interesting. What you've just said, though, especially the last 10 minutes, is that she's trying desperately to survive under Nero, especially when she starts losing favor.

But at the end, when she feels that there's no more hope, as it were, she has this very, as someone like Tacitus might portray itius are criticizing Nero. So they're portraying her as being someone who's manipulating him, as wearing the trousers in the family as it is, and yet she gets this last word to show even more so how weak he is as a character. And then you also get in the sources that it's Tacitus who emphasizes once Agrippina is gone, a lot of the restraints against Nero are gone. So even when she was out of favor, she still had this influence over him and that he completely gets out of control once she's gone. Yes, does this definitely appear a clear turning point in Nero's rule? I think so. There's a turning point period between 59 and 62, because he's also going to have a big purge, and there's a rebellion in 62 where he clears out a lot of his cronies and

buddies who hang around him. But I think her death is usually marked as a turning point if you're reading books about her, if you're seeing films. I mean, I'm just as guilty of it, because when I do my lectures on Nero, the first lecture ends in 59. And then we pick up again with the purge of Seneca and Burrus and his other little buddies in 62. Absolutely. Kerry, that was absolutely fantastic. Agrippina, she sounds like one of the most remarkable but misconstructed figures of antiquity. I think so. She's a very complex woman. And fortunately, the last 15 or 20 years or so,

just on scholarship of Roman women themselves, there's been a lot of re-evaluation and a lot of reconstruction of how we can interpret their lives and their reigns, I suppose you could even say. Brilliant. Kerry, thanks so much for coming on the show. It's been fun. Thank you.