Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was one of the most powerful women in ancient Rome. She was the wife of the emperor Claudius and mother of the emperor Nero. While Nero was a teenager, she effectively ruled Rome in his name.
Julia Agrippina was born in 15 CE. Her mother, Agrippina the Elder, was the granddaughter of Rome’s first emperor, Augustus. Julia Agrippina’s brother, Caligula, was emperor before Claudius. While Caligula was emperor, Agrippina led a very privileged life. Unlike most other women, she and her sisters were allowed to sit in special seats at the amphitheater; they also could own land and draw up legal documents and, in general, had much more freedom than ordinary women.
From Exile to Empress
In late 39 CE Agrippina was accused of plotting against her brother, Caligula, who by now was exhibiting signs of madness. She was exiled from Rome to a small island until Caligula’s death, after which she was pardoned by her uncle Claudius, the next emperor. When she returned to Rome, she was determined to achieve power and schemed to marry Claudius. He had a special law passed allowing him to marry his niece, and in 49 Agrippina became empress. She then persuaded her husband to adopt Nero, her son by an earlier marriage.
Claudius died in 54 CE, probably as a result of being poisoned by Agrippina. Britannicus, his son by an earlier marriage and a possible rival to Nero, soon died, too, also poisoned. When he became emperor in 54, Nero was only sixteen years old, and so Agrippina effectively ruled in his place with the assistance of the great writer Seneca and the leader of the Praetorian Guard, Africanus Burrus.
Agrippina’s Death
As Nero grew older, he began to resent his mother’s control over him. Finally, when she opposed his relationship with a woman of whom she disapproved, he had her sent away from Rome so that she could no longer interfere in his affairs. There followed several attempts by Nero to murder his mother – three times by poison, once by having the ceiling over her bed fixed to collapse on her, and once by trying to drown her in a collapsible boat. Finally he sent a murderer to Agrippina’s house. In 59 Anicetus, a freed slave, went to her home and strangled and stabbed her to death.
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Under a pretense of a reconciliation he [Nero] sent the most friendly note inviting her to celebrate the feast of Minerva with him at Baiae [a resort city sixteen miles west of Naples], and on her arrival made one of his captains stage an accidental collision with the galley in which she had sailed. Then he protracted the feast until a late hour, and when at last she said "I really must get back to Baiae," offered her his collapsible boat instead of the damaged galley. Nero was in a very happy mood as he led Agrippina down to the quay, and even kissed her breasts before she stepped aboard. He sat up all night anxiously waiting for news of her death. At dawn Lucius Agermus, her freedman, entered joyfully to report that although the ship had foundered, his mother had swum to safety, and he need have no fears on her account. SUETONIUS, THE TWELVE CAESARS
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