Agrippina the Younger: Rome's Most Notorious Empress

Summary

Podcast Summary: Dan Snow's History Hit – Agrippina the Younger

Guest: Dr. Emma Southon (historian and author of "Agrippina: The Most Extraordinary Woman of the Roman World")
Date: June 29, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Dan Snow and Dr. Emma Southon dive into the dramatic and tumultuous life of Agrippina the Younger. Often vilified by ancient sources, Agrippina emerges here as a formidable political operator at the heart of the Julio-Claudian dynasty—the only Roman colony named after a woman bears her name, the modern city of Cologne. Together, they explore Agrippina’s rise to power, her influence on imperial politics, her complex familial relationships, and her ultimate demise at the hands of her own son, Emperor Nero.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Agrippina's Dynastic Heritage and Early Life

• Birth and Family Context
  • Born in 15 CE in Cologne (then Ara Ubiorum), Agrippina was the daughter of Germanicus (a popular Roman general) and Agrippina the Elder, a direct descendant of Augustus. ([03:36])
  • She grew up entrenched in an atmosphere of privilege, expectation, and vendetta, with her mother instilling in her a belief that the throne had been stolen from their family by Tiberius.
    • "She is the first person who never knows a republic...her whole life she is part of a family that is worshipped as being more special than everybody else, as being royal, blessed by the gods." (Emma, [05:54])
• Legacy and Psychological Makeup
  • Agrippina was raised with both entitlement and long-standing anger, driving a “single-mindedness” to restore her family's claim.
    • "She is very angry for her whole life. I think the one thread that runs through is this sense that her family and her descendants deserve the throne more than anybody else." (Emma, [07:37])

2. Navigating Power as a Woman in Imperial Rome

• Barriers and Tools
  • Although exposed to politics and influential people, Agrippina was barred from direct power through the Senate or military, so she wielded more subtle tools: diplomacy, persuasion, fearlessness, and strategic marriages. ([08:54])
    • "She is like the most ambitious person in that family. But she has none of the tools...all she has is what seems to be an unbelievable diplomatic power, just a real ability to persuade people and a total fearlessness." (Emma, [08:54])

3. Strategic Marriages and Maternal Ambition

• First Marriage and Motherhood
  • Married as a teenager to her cousin Domitius Ahenobarbus, a notorious figure. She delayed having children until after Tiberius’s death, suggesting agency over her reproductive choices. ([10:19])
    • "She cannot choose her husband or the father of her child, but she can choose whether she has children." (Emma, [11:47])
  • Her only child, a son later known as Nero, gave her a crucial stake in dynastic politics. ([11:51])
• Role in Conspiracies
  • Shortly into Caligula’s reign, Agrippina joined a conspiracy to replace him, leading to her exile. Her proximity to power fueled both her ambition and danger. ([13:21])

4. Exile, Return, and Rise to Empress

• After Caligula’s Assassination
  • With Claudius's rise to emperor, Agrippina and her sister were recalled from exile, symbolizing a reset of the regime.
    • "He undoes all of the unjust laws and brings back Agrippina...She is not going to be easily managed by the new regime." (Emma, [19:34])
• Second and Third Marriages
  • Married the wealthy Passienus Crispus (possibly orchestrating his death to gain his fortune). ([21:29])
  • Eventually, dramatic court intrigue favored Agrippina as a suitable wife for her uncle, Emperor Claudius—a convenient way to concentrate imperial power within the Julio-Claudian family. ([24:50])
    • "She's basically the only woman left standing who is a member of the Julio Claudians." (Emma, [24:59])

5. Co-Ruler and Architect of Succession

• Innovations as Empress
  • She became Augusta—an unprecedented title for a woman not yet elderly—and was seen publicly as the emperor's equal. She also founded a colony in her birthplace, asserting her legacy. ([28:34], [30:36])
    • "We have images of her sitting next to Claudius as his equal...She appears in public wearing a military cloak and military clothing. She is very involved in making decisions about the empire." (Emma, [28:34])
• Maneuvering for Nero
  • Manipulated legal and familial lines to get Nero adopted as heir over Claudius's biological son, Britannicus—outflanking rivals with a mix of public symbolism and pragmatic ruthlessness. ([30:43])
  • Publicly elevated Nero, orchestrating ceremonies and imagery that reinforced his primacy. ([31:31])

6. Downfall: Murder, Succession, and Bitter Legacy

• Did Agrippina Kill Claudius?
  • Most ancient sources and Emma Southon herself believe Agrippina poisoned Claudius, smoothing Nero’s succession at a critical moment. ([35:41])
    • "I think that she probably did." (Emma, [35:41])
• Nero’s Ascension and the End of Britannicus
  • Agrippina orchestrated a rapid and controlled transfer of power to Nero, rewarding the Praetorian Guard and sidelining the Senate. ([37:58])
  • Britannicus, seen as a growing threat, was quickly poisoned in full view at a banquet, signaling Nero’s (and Agrippina’s) ruthlessness. ([39:36])
    • "He tells everybody, oh, did you not know he was epileptic?...forces everybody to continue with the feast." (Emma, [39:36])
• Mother and Son at Odds
  • Agrippina, expecting to act as regent, was quickly marginalized by Nero. Their public falling-out led her to threaten shifting her support to rivals—Nero responded by eliminating real or perceived threats. ([41:46])
• Assassination Attempts and Final Death
  • After failed poisonings and even a failed boat-collapse, Nero finally had Agrippina stabbed in her villa. Her reputedly defiant final words—“stab me here, for this is where my son was born”—became legendary. ([47:33])
    • "She says her final act is to say, if you have come from my son, I don't believe that he would try to kill me...then stab me here, because this is where my death has come from." (Emma, [47:41])
• Aftermath and Reputation
  • Her murder horrified Roman society and haunted Nero. He tried to erase her memory, but her death marked the start of his notorious decline. ([49:30])
    • "It's at that point that his reign really goes off the rails. Anything that he was doing that was halfway decent in running the empire, she was clearly doing a lot of the admin work, because the admin work stops being done." (Emma, [49:30])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Agrippina’s Ambition:

  • “All she has is what seems to be an unbelievable diplomatic power, just a real ability to persuade people and a total fearlessness...” (Emma, [08:54])

• On her Relationship with Nero:

  • “She very much thinks that he is going to be a devoted son and let her do what she wants.” (Emma, [41:37])

• On Ancient Villainization:

  • “She appears as the great villain of Tacitus’ histories…she is the real big bad of his histories at this point.” (Emma, [33:11])

• On her End:

  • “She points to her womb and says, then stab me here, because this is where my death has come from.” (Emma, [47:41])

• On Nero after Agrippina:

  • “It’s at that point that his reign really goes off the rails…she was clearly doing a lot of the admin work, because the admin work stops being done.” (Emma, [49:30])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:00–03:30: Introduction, Agrippina’s unique status in Roman history.
• 03:33–07:37: Agrippina’s family background, early trauma, and entitlement.
• 07:37–10:19: Her anger and ambition; barriers as a woman; political skills.
• 10:19–14:20: First marriage, motherhood, delaying childbearing, the birth of Nero.
• 14:31–18:03: Conspiracy against Caligula, exile, political agency.
• 18:03–21:32: Caligula's assassination, Agrippina's return, and court politics.
• 21:32–26:22: Path to marrying Claudius, widowhood, and wealth.
• 28:34–32:22: Role as Empress, adoption of Nero, master of optics.
• 34:11–35:41: The question of Claudius’s death.
• 39:00–41:46: Nero’s rapid rise, elimination of Britannicus, Agrippina sidelined.
• 43:16–47:33: The mother-son power struggle, truce, the sequence leading to Agrippina’s murder.
• 47:35–49:30: Her death’s impact on Nero's reign, historical legacy.
• 50:55–end: Dr. Emma Southon’s books and closing.

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Summary Tone and Approach

The conversation is lively, frequently laced with dry British humor and self-aware asides. Dan Snow and Dr. Southon demystify Agrippina by humanizing her, recognizing both her ruthless effectiveness and the complexities of surviving—and thriving—in an environment poisoned by intrigue and misogyny. They challenge ancient stereotypes, highlighting the intelligence and boldness that allowed Agrippina to shape the empire, even as those qualities eventually sealed her fate.

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For listeners new to Agrippina or the history of Roman women, this episode offers both a gripping narrative and a critical re-examination of one of history’s most fascinating and maligned power players.

Transcript

[A]

Have you been enjoying my podcast and now want even more history? Sign up to History and watch the world's best history documentaries on subjects like how William conquered England, what it was like to live in the Georgian era, and you can even hear the voice of Richard iii. We've got hundreds of hours of original documentaries plus new releases every week, and there's always something more to discover. Sign up to join us in historic locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyit.com subscribe. The only Roman colony named after a woman is the Colonia Claudia Aura Agripenesium, and it's a colony that survived. Today it is Cologne in modern Germany. It was named after a woman who sat at the very heart of the Julio Claudian dynasty, that first family that forged the Roman principate, the Rome of the emperors. She was the great granddaughter, the sister, the niece, the wife, the mother of emperors. She took the title Augusta Empress and she meant to rule as one. You listen to Dan Snow's History in this episode we are talking about Agrippina, the woman who fused through her mother and father the blood of Augustus and Mark Antony, the two successors of Julius Caesar, the woman who may well have killed not just one but two husbands, the one who plotted against her brother and who eventually came to realize the evil that lay in her son. Agrippina was a formidable politician, power player in her own right. Her influence, her actions, shaped the empire. Her fingerprints can be found all over Rome's history of this period. After she married the emperor Claudius, who was her uncle, she brought her stability and sanity to his reign. She broke alliances. She patronized Seneca to tutor her son Nero. She was a key part in public theater. She was present, for example, at the submission of Caraticus, the defeated British tribal chief. She was always projecting co rulership with her husband. Through ceremony, through imagery, through coinage and carvings, she normalized her presence in power. She was utterly ruthless. She manipulated the line of succession. She made her son Nero over the head of a more deserving candidate. She organized that succession which went like clockwork, unusual in Roman history in this period. And she then hoped that she would serve as a sort of regent for Nero. But when that relationship soured, he had her murdered. In a dramatic plot with plenty of twists, Agrippina's life is a story of intrigue and drama and sensation of a formidable stateswoman who understood how to play the game, but who's long been demonized by in the sources. Surprise, surprise. Unlike her male counterparts. Well, to put that right, tell the story of her Life and the extraordinary, the dramatic twists and turns. I've got the brilliant ancient historian, the wonderful Dr. Emma Southern, author of a book on Agrippina, author on all sorts of other books as well, that you'll hear us talk about at the end. And she's going to give us an insight into this extraordinary period of Roman history and one of the most remarkable Romans that played their part in it. Enjoy. Emma, great to have you on the podcast.

[B]

Hello, Dan, it's lovely to be here.

[A]

It's good to see you. Now, tell me, when was this remarkable woman born?

[B]

Agrippina the Younger was born in 15 CE in Cologne, in what is now Cologne, but at the time was called Ara Ubiorum, which was outside of the Roman Empire at the time.

[A]

Well, I was going to say. Hang on a minute, this is all getting a bit tense because 9 is the famous year when Roman power in much of Germany absolutely collapses or is annihilated. So what's going on with her? Why is she born there and who is she? Why is she not a captive?

[B]

So she is born as the daughter of the guy who is charged with basically leading revenge against the Germanic peoples who had come together to try and push the Romans out of Germany. And the revenge tour is being at this time led by a guy called Germanicus.

[A]

He's the blue eyed boy of the Julia Claudian family. Everyone loved Germanicus.

[B]

Everyone loved Germanicus except his adoptive father, Tiberius.

[A]

Yes, true. And the Germans, ironically.

[B]

Yes, the Germans hated him very badly because he spent a lot of time setting fire to their villagers and enslaving them. So he is her father and her mother is Agrippina the Elder, who is a direct descendant of Augustus, the now divine Augustus.

[A]

Listeners should not be worried. We are not going to really try and take them on a journey through the Julia Claudian family tree because it is just too terrifying and bewildering. But her dad, he's very important because he is genuinely, we think, really popular. And his sort of afterglow, you could still feel it a generation or two later, right?

[B]

Oh, yeah, you could still feel it like well into her adulthood, right up until Agrippina's death when she's in her 40s. And then long after that because he dies young and never gets to be the emperor that he is supposed to be. And because he does things like he acts as a public defender for people for free and he is very charitable and he's very handsome and he's charming. He's kind of the Princess Diana of the early Roman Empire.

[A]

And he kicks ass as well.

[B]

Yeah. And he's great at war. The only thing that anyone can ever say about him is that he is bandy legged. That's like the worst thing that anyone can ever pull out. And it's, you know, not really his fault.

[A]

So she's really, she's like a princess in a way, born into this sort of, what is effectively a royal family. But it's quite a new thing, this royal family. So what does it mean? What does that mean for her growing up? Would she have had a sense of entitlement?

[B]

She would have a very strong sense of entitlement, partly because she is the first generation who are born into royalty properly. So everyone before her, her parents were born into the Roman Republic before Augustus consolidated power around himself, before Augustus created this idea that what we call the Emperor and what they called the Principate was something that could be inherited. They were creating that. Her parents were part of the generation that created that. And so she is the first person who never knows a republic. She is of the first generation that just has no idea that there is anything other than family is very special. Augustus, her grandfather is made divine at the same time that she is born. Basically her whole life she is part of a family that is worshipped as being more special than everybody else, as being royal is being blessed by the gods in a way that others aren't. And then her father is the great emperor that never was.

[A]

One of the great what ifs. Yeah.

[B]

Yes, the very great what if he dies when she's kind of five or six years old. And her mother Agrippina believes very strongly that he was murdered by Tiberius, who is the emperor at the time, out of jealousy and raises her children to believe that Tiberius has killed their family basically, and that Tiberius hates them, Tiberius wants them all dead and that Tiberius has stolen their throne. It should be their throne of their family.

[A]

Interesting. Is the Julia Claudians, famously a family who make the Medicis and the Plantagenets and the Mughals of India look like a sort of really cohesive family unit. Yes. So she's part of this family, but she's very entitled. But she is also angry. Is that an important combination?

[B]

She is very angry for her whole life. I think the one thread that runs through is this sense that her family and her descendants deserve the throne more than anybody else and that everybody else is basically either an obstacle to be overcome or an enemy. And that she has a single mindedness from quite a young age, that her family will rule Rome and nobody else will Be allowed to have that chance. That is kind of terrifying in a way. And when you look at the decisions that she made to get there, to make that reality come true, it's impressive, but it is scary.

[A]

It is impressive and it's also scary, but presumably it's also quite difficult because she's from this family, she is educated, she's exposed to the politicking and the brilliant minds, men and women around her. She's given this sort of apprenticeship, she's raised in this crucible. But then suddenly, presumably, she denied some of the tools that men use for their own self advancement because she's a woman, right, so she can't take part in the formal politics like the Senate. She cannot go and defeat a German army and win renowned. That doesn't stop her. Is she as ambitious as male members of the family, but just has to deploy a different set of tools?

[B]

Basically, yeah. Although there are not that many members of the family that I think of the Julia Claudian family who are as ambitious as she is, all of the men around her. So she's the sister of the emperor Caligula, who becomes emperor because he is the last of his generation standing, the last boy standing. Tiberius kills both of her brothers, her other brothers, and Caligula becomes emperor pretty much by default. He doesn't have to do any scheming or anything to be there. He's just the only person who's not 12. And then Claudius becomes emperor, not again through any particular scheming of his own, but because he's sort of thrust into the position as the last adult man standing. Nero is the only person who is schemed to the throne, but that's his mother's scheming, not his. He doesn't seem to particularly want it and probably would have been happier without it. So if anything, she is like the most ambitious person in that family. But she has none of the tools of being able to create a political party or being able to be magnificent in war. All she has is what seems to be an unbelievable diplomatic power, just a real ability to persuade people and a total fearlessness that she is able to use. That means that she will do literally anything, up to and including marrying her own uncle and getting the law changed so that she can access power that is denied to her because of her sex.

[A]

Let's talk about her first marriage. Reasonably typical, is it, that you would marry someone within your wider family network? And how old would she have been? Quite young, presumably.

[B]

She's quite young. She is a teenager, maybe 16 or 17 years old when she marries him. It's right at the very end of Tiberius reign and she is married off to a cousin called Domitius Ahena Barbas who is like a too close for comfort cousin.

[A]

Would she have had any agency there?

[B]

No, she would have no power over that whatsoever. Also that happens after Tiberius has tried, exiled and then murdered her mother and two brothers. So I think that any attempt to exercise agency would have ended up with her brutally dead in a cellar somewhere. So she has no agency over who she's going to marry. And Ahina Barbas is notoriously a horrible, horrible person. But one thing that she does have agency over and which I think is that she does very clearly use is she has agency over whether she has children or not in Tiberius's reign. And I think it's very notable that she is married for a few years under Tiberius. He dies in 14 and she has her one and only child about 10 months after Tiberius dies. And I think it's very clear that she chooses not to have children while Tiberius is alive. So she cannot choose her husband or the father of her child, but she can choose whether she has children. And I think that it is a very interesting coincidence that that happens.

[A]

Okay, so she's had a child. What type of child is it?

[B]

It is a boy flavoured child.

[A]

Okay, so is that useful for her?

[B]

It's incredibly useful because we're in dynastic politics here. This is a royal family. Girls are useful for marrying off but boys can actually do things. And so she has one boy and stops, which I also think is pretty interesting because she has two further husbands and the boy is christened, is born as Lucius Ahena Barbas and we now know him as Nero, known a little

[A]

more famously by his later name.

[B]

Nero. Yeah, by his adoptive name. Yeah.

[A]

So she's got this child who's got useful blood in his veins and the succession has already been messy. Right. It went from Augustus to Tiberius, who is not his blood relative. As a stepchild it went from Tiberius to Caligula. So it'll be clear to her that really all bets are on. If you're within this sort of dynastic setup, it is possible that her son could end up being emperor.

[B]

Yes, it's very reasonable because Caligula is pretty young and he's also quite messy and there is at the time that he is born there are no other children in the family. So he is the first of his generation and so there is a very real possibility that he will be the most prominent member of his generation. And that is what she is probably hoping for, because what she does about two years into Caligula's reign, so really quite early into Caligula's reign is she is embroiled in a conspiracy to overthrow him with another of her sisters and her sister's husband.

[A]

So these are two sisters and a brother in law conspiring to overthrow their brother.

[B]

Yes, because for whatever reason, they don't think that Caligula is up to it. The plan seems to be that they're going to put the brother in law in charge and they're going to make him the emperor because obviously he's another cousin and that they're going to try to remove Caligula from the throne. And she is caught. And there's a great scene in Suetonius where there's a kind of big showdown at a holiday house that they have and letters between the three of them are read aloud and they're apparently quite erotic. And she is sent off into exile to an island in the Tyrian Sea.

[A]

So the suggestion, sorry about the eroticism. Is that they're all incestuous together or something.

[B]

Well, that she was also sleeping with her brother in law. Yes.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

I mean, they're cousins, so it is still kind of incestuous, but.

[A]

Yeah, but you know what, in that family, that's not really even. I don't think the ref even bothered getting his notebook out for that one.

[B]

No, that's basically normal. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. Okay. So naughty. And she's exiled.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay. Again, how much are we able to detect agency here? So she did. Yes, she was playing a part in this conspiracy. She's been exiled. Does she get herself back in the game? Like, how much can we perceive through the texts?

[B]

Well, we can see very little of what she's actually doing because all of the texts really are about either her brother or her uncle. They're never about her specifically. She is always a player in their game rather than the game master. So it is always presented as though she is not that agentic at this time, but the fact that she is exiled. And interestingly enough, her sister is also exiled and the brother in law is executed. But it is Agrippina who is sent with his ashes, which leads me to suspect that she was more involved in the conspiracy and that the affair might have been a bit more problematic than people would like you to believe, because he's not sent with his wife, he's sent with Agrippina. Basically, there are not that many people punished for this and they are by far the Most high profile people punished for this. And I think that they are the leaders of an attempted rebellion against Caligula.

[A]

Did they think he's not a very good ruler, do this for the good of Rome, or did they just think he's weak, no one likes him, let's get rid.

[B]

I think they think he doesn't get what being an emperor is, which he doesn't. He doesn't understand what being an emperor is and he does not at all understand the balance of power in Rome, which is, especially at this time. The balance of power is that you're supposed to pretend that you're not the emperor, you are merely the first citizen, you are the first among equals. And it just so happens that everybody agrees that you have the best opinions and you have a collection of powers which have been given to you because of your fine moral standing.

[A]

So we're saying, oh no, women can be just as ambitious as men. But actually, I'm not crediting her with actually political views like, I mean, why is she not allowed to also, whilst being very ambitious, not have big interesting strategic thoughts and political thoughts about how the empire ought to be constructed?

[B]

And later on you can see that she does, because when she does eventually get to a position where she can make strategic decisions for the empire, she makes pretty good ones and is very invested in the placement of who is going to be the governor of this place and what are they going to do there. Much like Livia before her, in fact, who is also very invested in making political decisions.

[A]

And we'll maybe come on to that, but just because you've mentioned it while we're there, are they just self interested? Are they just sort of political allies? Or is she trying to put people that she perceives as being good and effective into those positions?

[B]

Bit of both, to be honest. Partly because of the way the Roman system and way the whole of Roman culture operates. It operates on the basis of reciprocity and obligation to one another. So if somebody does something for you, you have to do something for them. And so if she didn't give positions to people who were in her inner circle, then she would be massively betraying everything that is Roman culture. So in part, people get jobs under her because they're her friends and that's the way that Rome works. It would be massively scandalous not to do it that way. But in part it is. She is choosing people and the people that she places generally do a pretty good job. You see the person that she makes, the governor of Egypt, for example, the PRAETORIAN of Egypt becomes massively important in Egyptian history. His name is Felix. He ends up marrying three queens. He rules there for quite a long time. He becomes quite controversial, but he does a reasonably good job.

[A]

So she's got decent judgment, we think as well.

[B]

She has pretty good judgment, yeah.

[A]

She doesn't have to wait very long in exile, does she? Because after two years is it in 41, her brother is in fact assassinated.

[B]

Yeah. It turns out she was right about Caligula.

[A]

She was definitely right about Caligula. He was assassinated. Was there a big political machine behind that assassination sort of plan for what followed? Or was it just a particular bodyguard who just got absolutely bloody sick of him?

[B]

So there is a big plan and then the plan goes wrong. It's actually quite fun. There's a three day kind of nightmare in Rome because the people who assassinate him, which is led by the head of the Praetorian Guard called Cassius Cherea, their plan is that they're going to basically try to reinstate senatorial rule and that they're going to bring back the Republic properly. Unfortunately, the Praetorian Guard and large other groups in the Senate in fact, don't really want that. And several people put themselves forward as an emperor. And the Praetorian Guard glom onto Claudius, who is the last adult Julio Claudian man starting. And they say, no, this is a hereditary thing now he's going to be the emperor. And there's kind of three days of going backwards and forwards between the Senate going, okay, well what if we had this guy as emperor and the Praetorian Guard saying, no, Claudius has now agreed to give us loads of money. And so how much money are you gonna give us? And they're like, no money. And well, we like this Claudius guy who's gonna give us lots of money. And it kind of goes backwards and forwards. And eventually the Senate and the assassins back down or are defeated and Claudius is made the emperor and the system continues.

[A]

And any Agrippina involvement in that plot?

[B]

No, she is on a tiny little island called Ponza.

[A]

But she's recalled.

[B]

She is recalled. So Claudius has like no family. And so he recalls her and he recalls her sister Livilla as well and brings them back to Rome in these kind of grand, you know, I'm undoing everything that the wicked previous emperor did situation. So he undoes all of the unjust laws and brings back Agrippina. The first thing that she does, interestingly, is puts on a big, grand, kind of very public funeral for Caligula he has not been buried. And so she does have a big funeral for her brother, which is an interesting thing to do. And it's kind of a statement that she is not going to be easily managed by the new regime because presiding

[A]

over a funeral was an opportunity for political advancement, wasn't it?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Right. So what happens the next few years? Because she suddenly emerges as the wife of. She managed to marry her uncle, marry the Emperor Claudius. So what she spending those next few years doing?

[B]

So the next few years she is basically just the niece of the emperor. So she's still sort of a princess. She is married off to a guy called Pasianus who is a long term courtier. He is made governor of Asia. So she goes and lives in Asia for a while. She lives in Turkey. He becomes consul. So she's the wife of a consul. So she's just a kind of very high profile woman. But she is raising Nero, who is now 10, 11 years old, is growing up and she is raising him in public and doing everything that she can to increase his visibility. Really. Messalina is the empress at this time. And the early years of Claudius's reign are quite chaotic. There are a good couple of attempts to kill him. There's a rebellion in Pannonia, there's quite a few people really hate him. He has loads of people executed. And Messalina is quite messy in her way. And so Agrippina kind of keeps her head down and is very well behaved apart from possib killing her husband.

[A]

Right, well that's, you know, again, that's right.

[B]

But that's fine in Roman times.

[A]

Can't blame a girl for doing that.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Does she kill her husband to create a vacancy then, or because he's annoying?

[B]

The theory is that she kills her husband because he's very, very rich and she does not have very much money of her own because all of it was confiscated by Kliga and pretty much all of her wealth is tied up in Nero. It's really Nero's wealth. So she can't control anything herself. But if her husband dies and he happens to have changed his will quite recently to make her his sole heir, which he did then she then has all of his money and he has something like 200 million sesterces. So he's extremely rich and when he dies, all of that money becomes hers.

[A]

Okay, well that makes sense. So she's now got a sort of independent war chest as well, which is important.

[B]

Yeah. And that is something that people say about her a lot, is that being Independently wealthy and her having money, she doesn't really spend it on the things that they expected women to spend it on. Like she is notoriously never wears huge jewels or like fancy houses or anything. She's not a luxurious woman. She just wants the security of money that she can use for either political purposes or that she just has. She just loves to have that security of knowing she has it.

[A]

Is she anything to do with the rupture that occurs in Claudius's marriage, the Messalina situation?

[B]

No, Messalina does that to herself. Messalina's utterly bizarre decision to marry somebody else while her husband is on a day trip to Ostia, which is about half an hour away, and have a big public wedding and then start moving stuff into somebody else's house is a genuinely cracker's decision that she makes all by herself for her own. We have theories on this. I think it's because she's stupid and Ona Cargill Martin thinks it's because she's evil.

[A]

So they're not mutually exclusive.

[B]

Sadly, they're not mutually exclusive. They might be both.

[A]

So that marriage comes to a very, very dramatic end.

[B]

It comes to a very bloody end. So for that she is executed in a garden. So one of Claudius freedmen, so one of the members of his household basically orders her to be executed because Claudius is having a panic attack and can't really bring himself to make any decisions. And it's clear that she just needs to be got out of the way. So she has her head cut off in a garden, kind of extrajudicially leaving Claudius without a wife and leaving her two children. She has a daughter and a son without a mother in the palace and leaving a big vacancy at the top, because Claudius is quite a weak willed man and is very easily led largely by the last person that talked to him.

[A]

And an emperor needs a wife.

[B]

An emperor does need a wife. They think that Claudius particularly needs a wife because he just needs something to focus on. He's had four already and it's believed for whatever personal reasons, that he just can't really be trusted without a wife, that he just needs that kind of stabilizing emotional influence. He has a whole bunch of concubines, but they believe for some reason that he requires a woman next to him just to complete him.

[A]

I mean, he's very eligible. So presumably lots of people had their eye on this. This is obviously one of the key moments. Why does Agrippina manage to get that prize, such as it is?

[B]

So it immediately breaks down into factions within the palace or within the imperial court, which is dramatized really pleasingly by Tacitus as this kind of roundtable discussion between three Freedme. And there are various arguments for various eligible women, one of whom is a woman that Claudius has already been married to, one of whom is this woman who just keeps being married off to people called Lolia Paulina, who's very beautiful, and one of whom is Agrippina, who is put forward because basically the argument is made that he needs to marry somebody within the best family. It has to be somebody from the Julia Claudian family. Basically, if he marries somebody from outside of the family, then he will be giving power to another faction. There will be a whole other family that is raised up to imperial levels, and it will cause chaos. But if they marry him off to somebody who's within the Julio Claudian family, then it keeps everything nice and neat, like the Habsburgs. And she's basically the only woman left standing who is a member of the Julio Claudians. The argument is made that she has already proved that she's fertile so she can have more children, that she is of the best family, and that the Egyptians did it, so it's probably fine for semi divine people to do it. Which Claudius obviously now is.

[A]

You're listening to Dan Snow's history. More on Agrippina later. Do we know if Claudius liked Darius, even loved his niece?

[B]

Well, there are stories of her using her privileged access because she is a member of the family. She is one of the few people who can touch him, one of the few people who can hang out with him on a one on one basis of her using that access to basically seduce him, to kind of sit on his lap, to give him kisses, to stroke his hair and tell him he's handsome, which he is definitely involved in the processes that have to take place to allow him to marry her. So he must have been, if not persuaded that it was a good political idea, then definitely wanted to marry her. He has to have been on board because they literally have to change the law in order to allow it, and he has to be involved in ratifying that, in starting the processes. Whether he fancied her, I think is just gross.

[A]

Hey, this is politics. That's not an issue.

[B]

Yeah, it's not an issue. It might well be that he did fancy her. Grosser things have happened in history. Whether she fancied him is fancying.

[A]

And sexual attraction is for us normies. Yeah, the great lords, they've got politics to do. That's what the bedroom's for exactly.

[B]

The story goes that she used sexual attraction in order to persuade him that it was a good idea.

[A]

It's so hard to know, isn't it? Because that's possible. But it's also such a trope about women and powerful men.

[B]

So you're like, okay, that's all they've got. Because the other story, the kind of parallel story, is that this is all the work of Agrippina and a freedman called Pallas, who is the finance secretary. He's in charge of all of the finances of the emperor, so he's incredibly powerful. And that the two of them are having an affair and that she used her sexual powers, which are apparently immense, to persuade him, to persuade Claudius to change the law and have her married so that they could be the power couple who were really running the Emperor.

[A]

Okay, now, speaking of power couples, so what does she do as empress? Is she different to other empresses? And how is that expressed?

[B]

So the that she does is she is named Augusta almost immediately, which hasn't really happened before. All of the previous women who have been named Augusta have either been retired or deliberately sidelined. So you have Livia is the main one. She's named Augusta when Augustus dies. Augusta at this time is really a very powerful title that becomes diluted over the Roman period. But to name a woman Augusta is to basically name them as being outside of the realm of normal womanhood, outside of the realm of normal people. And she is the first woman who is under the age of 70, really, to get that name and then be able to use it. We have images of her sitting next to Claudius as his equal. On the days when they are receiving delegations. She appears in public wearing like a military cloak and military clothing. She is very, very involved in a very public with making decisions about the empire. So it's very clear that people are coming to her. So as a comparison, for example, when Tiberius became emperor and Livia was named Augusta, Tiberius banned senators from going to her house. So she was not allowed to meet with senators one on one. The only person that she could talk to about politics was him. She could try to persuade him of stuff and he could reject it. Whereas Agrippina is clearly engaging with the Senate, engaging with the wider structures. She is making decisions for the empire effectively on her own, or at least as an equal with Claudius as the two of them, to the extent that she has. By this time, the wars in Germany have mostly concluded. And so she founds a city, a colony where she was born, which is called Colonia Agropinensis which we now call Cologne. Huh.

[A]

There we go. She also locks in her children into that imperial infrastructure, doesn't she?

[B]

She does. She manages to persuade Claudius to undergo a series of fairly complicated legal maneuvers to have his daughter adopted by another family so that she can marry Nero, who becomes Nero because he is adopted by Claudius, thus disinheriting his own biological son, Britannicus. So Octavia is adopted out, Nero is adopted in and Britannicus is kind of shoved off to the sidelines. And this makes Nero, he becomes Nero at this point, Tiberius Claudius Nero and he is both his son and his son in law.

[A]

Yeah. And how much older is he than Britannicus approximately?

[B]

He's about five years older than Britannicus.

[A]

And so now there's a sort of unpleasant ambiguity between them.

[B]

Okay, yes. And they're very good at optics. Agrippina is particularly very good at optics. And there's a lot of whenever they appear in public they will always make sure that Nero, who is kind of 15 years old, ish, is dressed as a full soldier or in military garb or as a grown man. And that Britannicus is always presented in the garb of childhood. So he's always wearing a short tunic and they have this thing called the bullock, this protective necklace that only children wear that you give up when you become a man. So he's always presented as a very much kind of a pathetic child compared to this wonderful, magnificent 15 year old boy.

[A]

So she is very prominent, she's taking part, she's making big decisions. She's a sort of co ruler with Claudius at this point?

[B]

Pretty much, yeah. For the kind of the second half of his reign from about 50 onwards. They get married in 50 to the end of his reign. She is the prominent power.

[A]

And is there pushback? Is that regarded as transgressive?

[B]

It is by the conservatives. It's an interesting thing that later on when people are writing about it. So all of the sources that we have are pretty much written under Trajan and later than that. So when the idea of what the emperor is has shifted quite a lot. They find it disgusting, absolutely disgusting that this has happened. Which is why Agrippina appears as the great villain of Taff Tacitus histories. He's writing under Trajan and Nerva. And so she is the real big bad of his histories at this point.

[A]

Trajan and Hadrian is successor. I mean they were men's men in more ways than one.

[B]

They're very much men's men. But they also have perfected more than any other emperor. The image of the princeps who listens to advisors and is a military hero and is not tyrannical in any possible way. And they really manage to get down this idea that they are the first man rather than the kind of divine tyrant or a semi king. And they are beloved by the people who are writing about them, or at least they say they love them while they're writing about them, while they're alive. But at the same time, when people are alive during Claudius's reign, like the senatorial decrees and the things that survive from that period, which is not a huge amount, all talk about them in the most glowing terms. Oh my God, we love Agrippina so much and we think that Claudius is so amazing and wonderful in every way and we're so grateful that Pallas exists

[A]

and these are the best years of Claudius rule, such as they are. I mean, it's sort of reasonably stable and well managed.

[B]

It is quite impressive how executions drop off a cliff as soon as Agrippino becomes empress, that he executes something like 30 odd people in the first five years of his reign and almost nobody afterwards. Because she, I think, is very clear that it's not a very helpful way to deal with things. And interestingly, even when you have crises in the reign, so there's a whole crisis about centurions who they think are forming a conspiracy around Britannicus. They are not executed. She makes sure, and this is presented as kind of very scandalous by Tacitus, but she puts them in different positions. She basically removes them from the Praetorian guard and puts them into far away legions where they can't really do any damage. But she doesn't demote them, she doesn't do anything that will cause them to want to get revenge. If she executes them, then you've got families of people who hate you, but if you just shuffle them sideways, then you've kind of neutralized the threat without causing any new ones.

[A]

Yeah, you're in Britain. I mean, it's bad, but it's not cause for a blood feud.

[B]

Exactly. And no one is going to join your rebellion because you're like, oh, she sent me to Britain.

[A]

Yeah, lucky them. Now listen, we gotta come to the great question of Agrippina's life, indeed, of whole of Roman history. Did she kill the Emperor, her husband, Claudius?

[B]

I think that she probably did.

[A]

Oh my God. That's exciting news. That's brilliant. I love it. Okay. Yeah, well, she had previous, I suppose.

[B]

Yeah. And mostly because we do have contemporaneous ish sources that talk about it and only one of them is even vaguely skeptical. But people like Pliny the Elder, who is around at the time, and possibly Seneca, they all think that she did it. And Seneca's like one of her best friends for a while. Anyway, they are all pretty sure that she probably did kill him at the same time.

[A]

I mean, how anyone knows? Because everyone's dropping dead all over the bloody place at this point.

[B]

Everyone is dropping dead. And one of the things about Claudius is that he is a notorious glutton. Like once he starts eating, he won't stop.

[A]

And he was getting on a little bit.

[B]

Yeah, he's well into his 50s.

[A]

Yeah, well into his 50s, having spent his life eating loads of dodgy Roman food. So.

[B]

Yeah. So at the very least I think people pretty strongly believed that she did.

[A]

Yeah. And the timing, we should say to people, the timing was extremely convenient because it was just at the point that this Britannicus, Claudius, other actual son, the sort of ability to portray him as a guileless child, was running out. I mean, he was going to start to look like a. A proper prince, a proper heir quite soon.

[B]

Yeah. Basically he hits puberty and gets his toga of manhood. And then Claudius starts apparently mooning around the palace talking about how much he loves Britannicus and how he hopes that he's going to be able to give Britannicus lots of good honours. And maybe we could make Britannicus the, you know, put him in charge of this legion over there or make him the urban praetor or whatever, which is all stuff that Nero has been doing up to now. And at the very least it is definitely going to cause factions.

[A]

Agropina's got a problem.

[B]

There is no situation where this doesn't cause fighting in the palace.

[A]

Hereditary systems, there are either too few sons or too many. There's no ideal number of sons. There's such a stupid system.

[B]

Yeah. Trajan really did get it right with the picking.

[A]

Yeah, Pick em. Pick a good guy in the next generation and then kill everyone else.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Anyway, let's get Claudius killed. So it's what it was always said to be mushrooms. But after a feast he gets ill. Basically, yes.

[B]

So he gets very ill. There's a lot of detailed information about it because the palace is leaky as a sieve, but basically he eats mushrooms. They don't kill him immediately, they take some time. And so one of the stories is that she recruits the doctor who comes to treat him, who puts poison on the end of A feather and puts it down his stripes. But either way he has some feasting, he reacts badly, he dies quite uncomfortably overnight. And Agrippina locks the palace down and gets the Praetorian Guard on board with Nero. She has donatives and promises of financial Reward distributed. And 19 year old Nero is hailed as emperor the next morning.

[A]

So again, she gets the job done.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely.

[A]

She's very efficient because succession has been messy as hell in the Roman world so far and it's not gonna get a lot better for much of the Roman period. But this is smooth, it's peaceful, no one's dead yet.

[B]

No one's dead yet other than the Emperor. And she also recognizes, I think quite cleverly, that the real power here is the army is the Praetorian Guard, several thousand heavily armed men in Rome, and that the Senate will follow what the Praetorian Guard does. Like, if she'd learn anything from Claudius succession, it's that the Senate has no real power here. They exist to ratify decisions made by other people. Really?

[A]

Then let's just quickly deal with Paul Britannicus, because as a Brit, I'm very fond of Britannicus and I would think it would have been fun to have an emperor called Britannicus. Some of the stories are a bit grim, aren't they?

[B]

They are. He is poisoned very quickly into the rain because he is almost as old now, five years. Looks like a lot less of a problem when it's 19 and 14, 15, and it's certainly going to become less of a problem when they're 20 and 25. So he's poisoned very quickly. He's poisoned allegedly at a feast where in full view of everybody, apparently the poison is put into water that is used to cool down wine. So they taste the wine, the wine is fine, they pour the water in, it changes the temperature and that's where the poison is. He has a kind of terrible fit and Nero tells everybody, oh, did you not know he was epileptic? He's having an epileptic fit and has him removed and then forces everybody to continue with the feast.

[A]

More Agrippina coming up after this, folks. And that is the end of Britannicus. It's the end of what is it the end of the line of Claudius? We'll find out. Because Nero's married to Claudius daughter.

[B]

He is who he also has killed later on, several years later. But basically he does end Claudius's line by killing both of his children. For Agrippina, this is a real moment of crisis because she thinks that by having her quite young son on the throne, by having put into place his advisors, who are Seneca and Burrus, that she will be able to maintain her position as the partner in the empire. He has made it very clear. There is a very humiliating moment where she attempts to sit next to him while he is receiving a delegation from Armenia and he stands up and escorts her out of the room and basically says, you are not going to be this person.

[A]

So she spent all her life trying to put her son on the throne and it turns out that it was actually the worst thing she could have done in a way.

[B]

Yeah. On the one hand she totally achieves what it is, which is that she gets Augustus's direct biological line back on the throne, but she very much thinks that he is going to be a devoted son and let her do what she wants.

[A]

Care for what you wish for, folks.

[B]

Yeah. But it turns out that he actually thinks that she's quite overbearing and wants to do what he wants.

[A]

Is that almost straight away?

[B]

Yeah, immediately. The first speech that he gives in the Senate. So like on day two of his reign, he goes to the Senate and gives a speech allegedly written by Seneca, where he says the palace is not going to be involved in politics anymore. Basically, there's not going to be any more of this kind of family involvement. This is going to be a proper political situation. Yeah.

[A]

Wow. Ungrateful.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. That's true ingratitude. And then she keeps trying to actor. She always had been acting, or as actor, she had been acting for the past five years and he keeps putting her away. And so basically she is making noises that maybe she'll put her efforts into Britannicus instead, maybe she'll join the Britannicus faction. And so Nero kills Britannicus and he does it in front of her. It is clear apparently from her facial expression that she did not know and that she knows that this is a message to her that like it's Nero or nothing. And also she needs to behave herself. She needs to get back into this female space that Livia had carved out that would be considered an appropriate female space. And she really doesn't want to. And so he just kind of keeps killing people until she has to and

[A]

then he starts trying to kill her.

[B]

Yeah, we do have this five year period where she completely disappears. The first kind of year and a half ish of Nero's reign are really defined by him feuding with his mother and him trying to take away powers from her, of him removing her from the palace and making her live in her different house so that she's not near the Senate of preventing people from seeing her. And eventually they come to a truce kind of situation. There's this brilliant scene where seeing that she is not very popular anymore, her sister in law, so it's from her first marriage, her name is Domicia, who has always hated her, apparently tries to have her killed and says that she is plotting against Nero and thinks that they can get Nero while he's drunk and get him to just execute her. But she gives this massive speech about how Domicia Leffeder is a rubbish woman because she's not a mother, and then talks her way into seeing Nero. And they're alone in a room with nobody there and nobody knows what they said. But when they come out, she has been completely forgiven. They've met a truce situation, and inexplicably, several members of her faction have now got really good jobs. So she's persuaded him to give, like, various people in her faction great jobs. They've kind of come to a truce, and then she disappears for like five years, at which point she reappears because Nero decides that he doesn't want to be married to Octavia anymore. He wants to be married to this woman called Poppaea. Agrippina won't let him divorce Octavia, so he decides he needs to kill Agrippina.

[A]

Ah, okay, interesting. She comes out of retirement to just kind of insist on that because she realizes that is a stupid dynastic thing to do.

[B]

Okay, yes. Also, I think that she is probably still pretty vocal. She's just not doing stuff that gets you in the sources anymore.

[A]

But it's curious that, as you've pointed out through this podcast, it's the thing that she's quite attached to is this idea of this family remaining on the throne. So she thinks that is a suicidally stupid thing to do.

[B]

Yes. And that they should be having children that will continue their line, which they're not doing. They've been married for ages and they're not because they hate each other quite a lot.

[A]

Idiots. What's that got to do with anything?

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

Right. So just quickly run us through the absurd sequence that leads up to her death.

[B]

So first he tries to poison her. That's his classic. He's poisoned loads of people at this point. But it turns out that she is taking antidotes. She is habitually taking antidotes against poison, which is very smart of her. Then he apparently tries to rig up her house to collapse on her while she is sleeping. So he tries to, like, make it so that the bedroom ceiling will fall in on her and crush her while she is sleeping. But she is tipped off by a member of her household that this is going to happen. And so she just doesn't sleep there that night. And he tries various other things. He tries to get the Praetorian Guard to just stab her, which would be the easiest thing. But they say they will not stab the daughter of Germanicus. Like, they won't turn against the daughter of Germanicus. They love the daughter of Germanicus, and they won't kill her. So they just straight up say no. Eventually, he comes up with this kind of ludicrous plan, which is that he is going to trick her to get on a boat in the bay down in Naples. He's going to trick her to get on it, but it is a trick boat from the stadiums. It is a boat that collapses somehow. And half of the boat will tip over or collapse and knock everybody that is on the boat into the water, which he does. He manages to get her onto this boat. They're sailing across the bay. It collapses. She's tossed into the water. What he does not know, because he does not know his mother is she's a very strong swimmer, and so she just swims to shore. Another woman who is in the water with her says, help me, help me, I'm Agrippina. And gets beaten to death with an oar. But she manages to make it to shore and sends him a letter that says, just so you know, I had an accident in the bay, but I made it home okay. And he is like, oh, my God, why won't you just die? And so he eventually just sends a friend of his with a sword. He pretends that his mother has sent someone to kill him and sends her with a sword and just has her stabbed in her bedroom. They just march into her house, tear away all of her enslaved staff, and stab her to death in her bedroom.

[A]

And is that murder known about?

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

Is her final political act the way in which she was killed?

[B]

Kind of, because she is very brave about it. She does not kind of hide or cower. She says her final act is to say, if you have come from my son, I don't believe that he would try to kill me. And they say, well, he has. And so she says, apparently she points to her womb and says, then stab me here, because this is where my death has come from. Which is kind of cool. And then she is genuinely quite loved. And people are horrified by the fact that he has done this, and he is horrified by the fact that he's done this. He never goes back to that area because he thinks that she haunts it. He forces everybody to pretend that she had tried to kill him and does a kind of damnatio memoriae and forces them to take down her statues and da, da, da. But eventually, 10 years later, when he is overthrown, the person who leads the rebellion against him says that one of the reasons that he murdered his mother and that matricide is the first thing that made him decide that he could not stand to have this man as emperor and that he had started kind of rebelling at that point. And it is a stain on his reputation that even if he hadn't done anything else, he probably would have struggled to recover from this one. Among the Romans, to kill a parent is such a violation of everything that they hold sacred, both religiously and morally, that it is really profoundly shocking. And then that he makes everybody celebrate. It really offends people as well.

[A]

So she did have her revenge in the end.

[B]

She does have her revenge. He is eventually killed, which helps, but she does.

[A]

His reputation, his legitimacy, a terror. Well, her murder really reduces him in the eyes of the Romans.

[B]

It does. It's at that point that his reign really goes off the rails. Anything that he was doing that was halfway decent in running the empire, she was clearly doing a lot of the admin work, because the admin work stops really being done. He focuses almost entirely on his music career, on his new wife, on his

[A]

pivots to his music career.

[B]

Yeah, that she would never have let him go on the stage and going on the stage is what really destroys his reign. But he's let loose to do whatever he wants and he completely runs his entire rain into the ground and makes himself the person that, when you say bad Roman emperor, he's usually the first person that people talk about.

[A]

Yeah. Gosh, I don't know if she'd be happy about that in the end.

[B]

I think she'd be furious about it.

[A]

She gave him the world and he just completely screwed the whole thing up.

[B]

He did. Admittedly, she never asked him if he wanted it, but his job was to want it, and his job was to have children and to continue and to keep the family on the throne. And he didn't do any of it.

[A]

There are no competitors to the Roman power. You're married to someone, you could have kids and you go, he just went and set fire to the entire empire

[B]

and possibly the city of Rome.

[A]

And indeed, that's another podcast which we have talked about in fact with the very brilliant Shushma. Thank you so much Colin, on telling us about this very remarkable Roman. You have just written a brilliant book. What's it called?

[B]

So I have just written a book called How Slavery Changed the Roman Empire which is out next year year. My previous book is Agrippina, the Most Extraordinary Woman of the Roman World.

[A]

Thank you so much for coming on.

[B]

Thank you so much for having me.

[A]

Thank you so much to you for listening to this episode of Dan Snow's History It. We could not make this podcast without you. That's actually true. So make sure if you want to keep it going, that is to hit follow in your podcast player right now. You'll get new episodes dropped into your podcast library. Autumn by the power of tech, you can listen anywhere you get your pods, Apple, Spotify, even BBC Sounds. Imagine a world. Just imagine you never miss an episode of this podcast. I mean it's there. The technology makes that possible. That could be your reality right now if you hit follow. See you next time. Have you been enjoying my podcast and now want even more history? Sign up to History and watch the world's best history documentary on subjects like how William conquered England, what it was like to live in the Georgian era, and you can even hear the voice of Richard iii. We've got hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, and there's always something more to discover. Sign up to join us in historic locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyit.com subscribe.