III

ENEMIES WITHIN

INTRODUCTION

Apart from the rebellions in AD 68 that brought him down, Nero faced at least two external conspiracies during his reign, those of Piso and Vinicianus (Chapter VIII). But, throughout his reign, he also had to deal with threats, or perceived threats, from within the imperial family.

PART ONE: MALE RELATIVES

In a monarchical system that does not have deep historical roots, and especially one where there is no clear and generally recognized successor, usually in the form of the oldest natural son, a ruler will face not only the usual challenges from rival families seeking to wrest power from him but also challenges from claimants within his own family. Hence, it was not gratuitous cruelty that drove the Mughal emperors or the Parthian Arsacids, upon their succession, to murder their own brothers. Nero might be said to have adopted a delayed version of the Mughal method. His position as emperor was not based on any clear-cut dictate of the line of succession. He was technically the previous emperor’s eldest son, but that was through adoption rather than blood, and adoption by a predecessor who in any case had seized power from his nephew in what amounted to a military putsch.

In this period, all emperors had a healthy suspicion of members of the old aristocratic families, such as the Junii Silani, who might pose a threat to their position. Apart from this broad concern, Nero identified three individuals from within his own family network as especially dangerous. Since our sources are generally determined to represent Nero as an arbitrary tyrant, we have to be cautious about the portraits they present of his potential opponents, but there is no evidence that any of his three putative rivals had any ambitions to replace him.

The most prominent of these, Britannicus, could hardly have avoided being drawn into dynastic politics. The son of Claudius and Messalina, he most probably was born on February 12, 41 (see Chapter I appendix), and received the cognomen (title) of Britannicus after Claudius’s victories in Britain. Little is known of his childhood, except that he was tutored by Sosibius and brought up along with Titus, the future emperor (Suet. Tit. 2; Tac. Ann. 11.1.1; Dio 60.32.5). When Claudius married Agrippina, Britannicus found himself in an awkward situation. Nero was adopted by the emperor, and Britannicus thus became the younger son, his junior status emphasized when Nero received the toga virilis in 51 (Tac. Ann. 12.41.1). At the games held in that year, Britannicus wore only a toga praetexta, while Nero was allowed the accoutrements of a triumphator. Agrippina aggravated the situation, reputedly removing loyal freedmen from Britannicus’s staff and replacing them with her own appointees (Tac. Ann. 12.26.2). Shortly before his death, Claudius supposedly relented and made the decision to give Britannicus priority, which provoked Agrippina to murder her husband. Following his father’s death, Britannicus was passed over for the succession, and even his right to half of his father’s property was disallowed.

Tacitus claims (Ann. 12.69.1) that when Nero was hailed as emperor by the praetorians after Claudius’s death, a few of the troops were puzzled by the absence of Britannicus. It seems unlikely that any of them would have been inclined to inquire about the two other supposed rivals. Faustus Cornelius Sulla was Nero’s cousin, the son of Domitia Lepida, Nero’s paternal aunt. His father was Domitia Lepida’s second husband, Faustus Cornelius Sulla, a descendant of the great dictator and himself consul in AD 31. The younger Faustus was half-brother of Messalina, daughter of Domitia Lepida and her first husband, and he thus became brother-in-law of Claudius (his mother was also the emperor’s cousin). Claudius arranged the marriage of his daughter Antonia to Faustus, who in recognition of his new status received a consulship in AD 52. Antonia bore him a son (Dio 60.30.6^a).

Gaius Rubellius Plautus’s family came from Tibur and was originally equestrian. His father, Gaius Rubellius Blandus, suffect consul in AD 18, was an ambitious man who made a highly advantageous marriage with Julia, the daughter of Drusus, son of Tiberius and Livilla, the sister of Claudius (Julia had previously been married to her cousin Nero Drusus, the brother of Caligula); Tacitus (Ann. 6.27.1) sarcastically comments that the marriage to Rubellius added to the city’s mourning because Julia had made such a disadvantageous match. Julia died the victim of Messalina’s intrigues. Her son lived a life of relative obscurity.

Of the three potential rivals, Britannicus would clearly have been seen to represent the greatest danger, and Nero acted against him first. In the general euphoria of the beginning of the reign, it may have been felt that Britannicus was not in any danger. Certainly, at the end of 54, an attempt to charge a Roman knight, Julius Densus, because of his loyalty to Britannicus, failed (Tac. Ann. 13.10). This situation seems to have changed when Agrippina began to fall out with Nero and made a show of transferring her loyalty to Britannicus, which supposedly provoked Nero to murder him early in AD 55. This was the year when Britannicus might have been expected to assume the toga virilis.

Once he had decided on murder, Nero reportedly had a stroke of luck in that the poisoner Locusta was available. She had supposedly performed sterling service in the demise of Claudius, and was fortuitously in detention (perhaps for Claudius’s murder) with the praetorian guard. She was drawn into Nero’s service and experimented with poisons on various animals, finally obtaining success with a pig. At a dinner attended by various grandees, which included Agrippina and Titus, Britannicus was offered a very hot drink and asked for it to be cooled, whereupon cold water laced with the poison was added. He perhaps should have known better, since the same technique is cited in the supposed poisoning of Alexander the Great (Justin 12.14.9). The effect was immediate, and Britannicus began to gasp for breath. He was removed on a litter and died soon after. The funeral was arranged very quickly, that night (according to Tacitus) or the next day (according to Dio and Suetonius), and Nero made a public statement, probably written by Seneca, expressing conventional platitudes and lamenting the loss of a brother. Nothing more was said, and no report was made to the Senate. In De Clementia, published shortly afterward, Seneca asserts that Nero is unstained by the spilling of blood, which certainly vindicates Nero’s official version, although the exoneration suffers a blow from Seneca’s deathbed pronouncement, when he lists Britannicus among Nero’s murder victims (Tac. Ann. 15.62.2). It should also be noted that so high was Nero’s stock that, according to Tacitus, people generally condoned Britannicus’s murder as an example of a Realpolitik, in which the state must be protected from the danger of destructive rivalries (Ann. 13.17.2).

The ancient sources are unanimous that Britannicus was murdered, the earliest claim being the brief and assertive statement of Josephus, and the most detailed indictment being the narrative of Tacitus, whose sympathies are readily apparent and who cites the view expressed by Agrippina that Britannicus was the “rightful and worthy heir” (Ann. 13.14.2) and by contemporary authors that he was the sole survivor of the Claudian family (Ann. 13.17.2). That said, the unanimity of the ancient sources on both the broad charge and many of the details is not of great significance, given the enormous difficulty of either proving or refuting a charge of murder by poisoning. Scholars have questioned their version of events since the mid-nineteenth century (Stahr [1867], 257). Britannicus was epileptic and may well have suffered a severe epileptic fit; the darkening of the body in fact suggests tetanoid epilepsy. No known poison except strychnine, identified only some two hundred years ago, will darken the face. The resemblance between the accounts of the last night of Britannicus and that of Claudius, including the detail of an unsuccessful first dose of poison, suggests that both drew from a common stock of stories of poisonous deaths. The truth about culpability is in fact less important than the perception. The very belief that Nero was responsible would suffice to create an atmosphere of fear. Agrippina may well have become increasingly on her guard. According to Dio (61.7.5), even Seneca and Burrus were alarmed by Nero’s action and from this point on lost their serious interest in public business, choosing to concentrate on their own survival. The one person supposedly happy about it all was Locusta, who got a free pardon for all her past misdemeanors as well as a country estate as a bonus. Nero supposedly sent pupils to her. But her past was bound to catch up with her eventually, and she would die shortly after Nero, when Galba eliminated many of his predecessor’s favorites.

Faustus Cornelius Sulla and Rubellius Plautus did not represent immediate threats, although they were constantly under a cloud of suspicion. Eventually, they would both be exiled and afterward put to death.

SOURCES

Tensions between Nero and Agrippina escalate, and she hints that she will champion Britannicus.

Tac. Ann. 13.14.2. After this, Agrippina charged headlong into fearful threats, not stopping short of declaring in the emperor’s hearing that Britannicus was now grown, the rightful and worthy heir to his father’s power, which was currently wielded by an adopted interloper as a result of wrongs done by his mother. 2. She had no objection, she said, to the exposure of all the ills of that unhappy house, her own marriage first of all, and her use of poison.1 The one precaution taken by heaven and by herself was leaving her stepson alive! She would go to the camp with him, she said.² The daughter of Germanicus should be heard on one side, the cripple Burrus and the exile Seneca on the other,3 men laying claim to the governance of the human race—with a mutilated hand, of course, and a professorial tongue! At the same time, she threw up her hands, showered abuse on him, and called on the hallowed Claudius, the shades of the Silani below, and all the crimes she had committed for nothing.⁴

Nero decides to murder Britannicus.

Tac. Ann. 13.15.1. Nero was worried by this, and the day was also approaching on which Britannicus was to complete his fourteenth year.⁵ He pondered at one moment on his mother’s impetuosity, at the next on the strength of character of the boy himself,⁶ which had lately been put to the test and demonstrated in a trifling incident but one that had gained Britannicus widespread approval. 2. During the festal days of Saturn, one of the games that Nero’s companions played was drawing lots for the “kingship,” and the lot had fallen to Nero.⁷ He therefore gave the others various commands that would not cause embarrassment, but he ordered Britannicus to get to his feet, go to the middle of the group, and begin a song. He was expecting to provoke laughter at the expense of a boy who had no experience even of sober gatherings, much less drunken ones.⁸ Britannicus, however, confidently launched into some verse in which there were allusions to his own removal from his father’s home and from supreme power. The result was an awakening of sympathy for him that was the more obvious since the gaiety of the night had banished all insincerity.

Suet. Ner. 33.2. He tried to murder Britannicus with poison, as much from envy of his voice, which was more pleasant than his, as from fear that he might at some point enjoy greater popularity with the people because of the memory of his father.9

Nero acquires poison and administers it during a banquet.

Tac. Ann. 13.15.3. Awareness of the ill will he himself had incurred increased Nero’s hatred, and he was now also under pressure from Agrippina’s threats. But there was no viable charge, and he did not dare give an order openly for his brother’s death. He therefore set to work in secret and ordered a poison to be prepared. He used the services of Julius Pollio,¹⁰ tribune of a praetorian cohort, in whose care the condemned poisoner called Locusta—a woman with a great reputation for her criminal acts—was being detained,¹¹ for arrangements had been made long before for all closely associated with Britannicus to have no scruples or loyalty.

4. Britannicus was given his first dose of poison by his very own tutors, but because of a bowel movement he excreted it—it was too weak, or perhaps had been diluted so its effect would not be immediately lethal. 5. But the time the crime was taking taxed Nero’s patience. He threatened the tribune and ordered the poisoner’s execution; while they were keeping an eye on public opinion, he claimed, and preparing to defend themselves, they were putting his security on hold. At this, they promised a death as swift as from a sword thrust, and a poison was brewed close to the emperor’s bedroom, its virulence guaranteed by the previously tested toxins it contained.

Suet. Ner. 33.2. He acquired the poison from one Locusta, who had been an informer against some poisoners, but when its efficacy proved slower than he had expected, producing only diarrhea in Britannicus, he had the woman summoned and beat her with his own hand, claiming she had given the boy a counteragent, not poison. Locusta’s excuse was that she had given a smaller dose to cover up the crime and avert animosity against Nero. “Of course,” he replied, “I’m afraid of the Julian law!” and he made her prepare, before his eyes in his bedroom, a concoction as prompt and fast-working as she could.12 3. He then tried it out on a goat, and after the animal lasted five hours he had it remixed time and again and put it before a pig. The pig died instantly, and Nero then ordered the mixture to be taken into the dining room and given to Britannicus, who was dining with him.

Tac. Ann. 13.16.1. It was the custom for emperors’ children to take their meals sitting with the other young nobles at their own, less copiously provided table, in sight of their relatives.¹³ There Britannicus was dining and, since a chosen member of his staff would taste what he ate and drank, the following ruse was found so that the protocol would not be broken or the crime betrayed by the deaths of both individuals.

2. Britannicus was handed a drink that was innocuous, and also very hot, and that had gone through the tasting process. Then, when it was refused because of its heat, poison was added in some cold water, and that spread so effectively throughout the boy’s body that the powers to speak and to breathe were both taken from him. 3. There was alarm among those sitting around him, and the less discerning scattered, but those with a keener understanding remained fast in their seats, staring at Nero. He, reclining and seemingly unaware of the situation, remarked that this was a regular occurrence connected with the epilepsy with which Britannicus had been afflicted since early infancy, and that his sight and senses would gradually return. 4. But from Agrippina, for all her efforts to control her expression, came a fleeting glance of such panic and confusion that it was clear that she knew just as little as Britannicus’s sister Octavia. She was beginning to realize, in fact, that her last support had been removed, and a precedent had been set for murdering a family member. Octavia, too, despite her tender years, had learned to hide grief, affection, and all the emotions. And so, after a brief silence, the revelry of the banquet recommenced.

Britannicus is given a hasty funeral.

Tac. Ann. 17.1. The one night saw Britannicus’s killing and his funerary pyre in tandem, for preparations (which were modest enough) for his funeral had already been put in place.14

He was, however, interred in the Campus Martius,¹⁵ during a downpour so violent that the masses took it as a sign of the gods’ anger over a crime that even many men could forgive, when they considered the ancient animosities between brothers, and the indivisibility of regal power.¹⁶ 2. Many authors of the period record that, on numerous days prior to the death, Nero took advantage sexually of the young Britannicus—and his end might therefore be seen as neither too early nor cruel. And that was despite its being hurriedly brought on the last of the Claudian bloodline¹⁷ (amid the sacred observances of the table,¹⁸ without his being given even the time to embrace his sisters,¹⁹ and before the eyes of his enemy), who was defiled by sexual misconduct before he was by poison.

3. Nero defended the hurried obsequies in an edict, declaring that it was the established practice of their ancestors to remove from the gaze of the people bitterly untimely funerals, and not hold them back with encomia and ceremony.20 But with his brother’s aid now lost to him, he added, all his remaining hopes rested in the state, and the senators and people should give all the more support to their emperor as the lone survivor of a family born to the supreme power.

Suet. Ner. 33.3. When Britannicus fell dead at the first taste, Nero lied to his guests, saying that he had been seized by one of his habitual bouts of epilepsy, and the next day, in pouring rain, he hurriedly gave him a commonplace funeral.²¹ As for Locusta, he rewarded her for the service she had done him with a pardon and large country estates, and he even sent students to her.²²

Dio 61.7.4. After treacherously murdering Britannicus with poison, Nero smeared the boy’s body with gypsum when it became livid from the effects of the poison. But there was a heavy rainfall as it was being taken through the Forum and, as the gypsum was still wet, the rain washed it all away so that the monstrous deed was not only heard about but actually seen.²³

5. After Britannicus’s death, Seneca and Burrus no longer paid any serious attention to affairs of state but were content with looking after things passably well and holding onto their lives. As a result, Nero openly began to do anything he wanted without any fear.

Joseph. Ant. 20.135. Agrippina feared that, when he reached manhood, Britannicus would take over the reins of power from his father and so, wishing to seize the supreme command for her own son, she took measures, it was said, to bring about Claudius’s death. She immediately sent Burrus, the commander of the soldiery, and along with him the military tribunes and those freedmen with the greatest power, to take Nero away to the camp and hail him as emperor. Having gained the imperial command in this way, Nero eliminated Britannicus with poison, in a manner unperceived by most, but not much later he quite openly murdered his own mother, repaying her like that not only for bearing him but also for enabling him to gain supreme authority over the Romans through her machinations.24 He also killed Octavia, to whom he was married, and many distinguished men, on the grounds that they were plotting against him.

Gaius Rubellius Plautus’s connection with the Julio-Claudian family gave him a high profile, whether he sought it or not. In 55, Junia Silana, the enemy of Agrippina, accused her of urging Rubellius to foment rebellion with the intention of marrying him if the rebellion proved successful. The accusation got nowhere, but Nero felt insecure enough to banish him to Asia in 60.

Tac. Ann. 14.22.1. It was during this period that a blazing comet appeared, which, in the view of the common people, presages a change of ruler.²⁵ Thus, as though Nero had already been deposed, people began to ask who might be selected. And the man frequently on the lips of all was Rubellius Plautus, whose noble blood came, on his mother’s side, from the Julian family. Plautus held to the ideas of his ancestors,²⁶ being austere in appearance, and moral and reclusive in his private life, but the more cloistered he became through fear, the greater the reputation he acquired. 2. The prevailing rumor was intensified by an interpretation (just as unwarranted) put on a lightning bolt. Nero was dining in his villa, called the Sublaqueum,²⁷ near the Simbruine lakes, when the meal was struck and the table shattered, and because this had happened in the territory of Tibur, homeland of Plautus’s family on his father’s side, people believed that Plautus was being designated as the successor by divine will. He also had widespread support from the sort of men who have a voracious (and often misguided) ambition to be ahead of others in espousing new and risky causes. 3. Worried by this, Nero drafted a letter to Plautus, telling him to consider the peace of the city and distance himself from those who were spreading malicious gossip. Plautus had ancestral lands throughout Asia, Nero said, and there he could enjoy his youth in safety and without trouble. And so Plautus retired there with his wife, Antistia, and a few close friends.28

In 55, Faustus Cornelius was cleared of conspiring to become emperor but continued to fall under suspicion. In 58, he was accused of plotting against Nero and this time was obliged to go into exile in Massilia.

Tac. Ann. 13.23.1. After that, Pallas and Burrus were accused of conspiring to have Cornelius Sulla summoned to imperial power because of his distinguished lineage and family connection with Claudius, whose son-in-law he was through his marriage to Antonia.²⁹ The man responsible for the charge was a certain Paetus, who was notorious for his dealings with the treasury in confiscated goods, and at that time he was clearly caught in a lie.³⁰ 2. However, Pallas’s proven innocence brought people less pleasure than his arrogance brought indignation, for when the names of the freedmen who were his alleged accomplices were given, Pallas replied that, at home, he never communicated anything except by a nod or a wave of the hand, and if further explanation were necessary, he used writing so as to avoid conversing with them. Although he was also in the dock, Burrus joined the judges in expressing his opinion.31 A sentence of exile was imposed on the accuser, and the records he used to retrieve the forgotten claims of the treasury were incinerated.

13.47.1. Such was the extent to which Nero sought to cloak his shameful and criminal acts.³² He was especially suspicious of Cornelius Sulla, whose slow-wittedness he took as being its opposite, regarding him as a clever man putting on an act.³³ Graptus, one of the imperial freedmen who—because of his experience and old age—was an expert in the house of the emperors from Tiberius’s time, intensified Nero’s fears with the following lie.

2. The Mulvian Bridge was, in that period, famous for its nightlife, and Nero used to frequent the place so he would have greater leeway for his lechery outside the city.³⁴ Now Graptus fabricated the story that a trap had been set for him on his return journey along the Flaminian Way, that Nero had a fortuitous escape because he came back by another route to the Gardens of Sallust, and that the man responsible for the plot was Sulla.³⁵ (Graptus hit on this story because it so happened that the uproarious behavior of some young people—a widespread phenomenon at the time—had earlier struck groundless panic into a number of the emperor’s servants on their way home.) 3. No slave or client of Sulla’s had actually been identified, and the man’s nature, which was universally despised and incapable of any enterprising act, was at odds with the accusation. Even so, Sulla received orders to quit the country, just as if he had been found guilty, and to remain within the confines of the walls of Massilia.³⁶

In 62, Rubellius and Faustus are put to death.

Tac. Ann. 14.57.1. After Seneca’s downfall, undermining Faenius Rufus’s position with a charge of friendship with Agrippina was easy.37 Tigellinus’s power, moreover, was growing daily, and he now felt that his evil qualities, on which his power entirely depended, would be more appealing to Nero if he could put the emperor under obligation by association in crime. He therefore proceeded to pry into his fears. Discovering that his anxieties were focused mostly on Plautus and Sulla—both recently removed from Italy, Plautus to Asia and Sulla to Narbonese Gaul—he began commenting on their noble birth and the fact that both had armies close to them (Plautus in the East and Sulla in Germany). 2. He had not the conflict of interest that Burrus had, said Tigellinus—Nero’s safety was his only concern! And for that, all possible precautions were being taken against treachery in Rome by his action on the spot. But how could distant insurrections be quelled? The Gallic provinces were all agog at the name of the dictator,³⁸ and the peoples of Asia were no less excited by the fame conferred by having Drusus as a grandfather.³⁹ 3. Sulla was poor, hence his excessive recklessness, and he was faking apathy until he found an opportunity for some bold stroke. As for Plautus, with his great wealth, he did not even feign a desire for tranquility. Instead, he ostentatiously aped the Romans of old, even adopting the arrogant teachings of the Stoics, which made men mutinous and ambitious.⁴⁰

4. There was no further delay. Five days later, before any rumor arrived to cause alarm, Sulla was killed as he was reclining for dinner, after assassins had sailed to Massilia. His head was brought back to Nero, who poked fun at the premature greyness that disfigured it.

58.1. That Plautus’s assassination was being planned was less of a secret: more people were concerned for his safety, and the length of the land and sea journey and the time interval involved had given rise to rumor. 2. The lie being put about was that Plautus had headed for Corbulo, who was then in charge of mighty armies, and who would himself be in a particularly parlous situation if the famous and blameless were targeted for murder.41 Furthermore, it was said that Asia had taken up arms in support of the young man, and that soldiers sent to do the deed, being neither strong in numbers nor inwardly committed, had been incapable of carrying out their orders and had joined the revolt.

3. These idle speculations were enhanced, as happens with rumor, by credulous people with time on their hands, but, thanks to some swift winds, a freedman of Plautus arrived ahead of the centurion and delivered to Plautus instructions from his father-in-law, Lucius Antistius.⁴² 4. Antistius told him to avoid a cowardly death while there was still a way out. He would, through the sympathy generated by his great name, find good men to help, and would enlist brave allies. Meanwhile, no assistance should be rejected. He needed to drive off sixty soldiers, the number then en route, and while the news was being carried back to Nero and while a second force was on its way, much could transpire that could develop into war. In short, said Antistius, either Plautus’s salvation would be gained by such a plan or he would have to suffer nothing worse for showing spirit than playing the coward.

59.1. This, however, made no impression on Plautus. Either he could see no future for himself as an unarmed exile or he was tired of his fluctuating hopes. Or possibly it was because of his love for his wife and children, thinking the emperor would be more lenient to them if he had no worries to bother him. There are some who record that a second message arrived from his father-in-law reporting that he was facing no terrible danger, and also that his philosophy teachers, Coeranus and Musonius—the former of Greek, the latter Tuscan, stock—urged him to await death with resolution rather than live in incertitude and fear.⁴³

2. At all events, he was found in the middle of the day stripped for physical exercise. Such was his condition when he was cut down by the centurion, before the eyes of the eunuch Pelago, whom Nero had set over the centurion and his unit like a royal minister over retainers. 3. The head of the murdered man was brought back, and at the sight of it Nero said (I shall quote the emperor’s actual words): “Why, Nero < … >.”44

Dio 62.14.1. Nero used his relatives’ sufferings as a basis for mirth and joking. Thus, when he had put Plautus to death and looked at his head when it was brought to him, he said: “I didn’t realize he had such a big nose”—as though he would have spared him had he had prior knowledge of this.

PART TWO: MOTHER

The abrupt announcement that Tacitus makes at the beginning of Annals 14 that Nero has now decided to murder Agrippina comes as a great surprise. She has been absent from the Annals since 13.21 (AD 55) and is barely mentioned in the other literary sources during the intervening period. In the meantime, she seems to have had relatively little contact with Nero and to have played no part in the political life of Rome. Suetonius says that Nero felt intimidated by “her threats and violent behavior,” but he provides no examples, and it is possible that he is referring to the recollection of her behavior during her earlier ascendancy. Tacitus provides the implausible explanation that Nero was nagged into the deed by Poppaea (see Chapter VII), who saw Agrippina as a block to her marriage to the emperor. But Agrippina’s death did not have any immediate impact on Poppaea’s situation; she still had to wait another three years to marry Nero. Poppaea’s supposed role in early 59 seems to have been to provide a plausible explanation for Nero’s conduct, for which no explanation is otherwise forthcoming, as well as the attractive opportunity to demonstrate that Nero had become, like Claudius before him, the dupe of the women in the court. Dio’s explanation, that Poppaea was indeed behind Agrippina’s murder and acted because she had discovered that Nero had acquired a new mistress who was his mother’s double, is even more outlandish. In late 55, Agrippina was only forty-three years old (or thereabouts), having lived her adult life at the center of political intrigue and power. It seems unlikely that she would simply have retired. The intrigue and plotting may well have continued—there is no way of knowing—and Nero will later portray her as plotting against him. But if it did continue, it went underground, hidden from the public and from historical sources. Of course, the explanation may not be political at all but hidden deep in Nero’s psyche and known only to himself.

Once Nero had decided in early 59 that he would eliminate his mother, he had to find the means. Especially after the suspicious death of Britannicus, she would have been on her guard against poisons. A direct physical attack would have been difficult, since she enjoyed the loyalty of the praetorian guard. Tacitus reports that Nero found a willing helper in Anicetus, his former tutor and now prefect of the fleet based at Misenum. Anicetus’s plan to build a collapsing ceiling in Agrippina’s bedroom (Suet. Ner. 34.2) was apparently leaked and had to be abandoned. He was subsequently inspired by a theatrical performance in which a mechanical ship opened up to disembark animals, and he set about constructing a collapsible seagoing vessel.

The murder was scheduled for the festival of Minerva (March 19–23, 59), which Nero customarily spent at Baiae on the Bay of Naples. Agrippina was invited to join her son and was treated hospitably. She was given an affectionate farewell as she boarded the sinister vessel for the return journey. Tacitus’s narrative of the murder (Ann. 14.3–13) is generally similar to that provided by Suetonius (Ner. 34). The two also share much in common with Dio (61.12–14) and are not inconsistent with the Octavia (125, 310–57, 955). The description of the disaster at sea is dramatic and entertaining but must be viewed with considerable skepticism. Apart from the general implausibility of such an excessively ingenious vessel, there are a number of troubling details. The account seems to merge the two notions of the collapsing bedroom and the collapsing ship. Creperius Gallus is described as being near the helm, but he is all the same crushed by the canopy that collapsed onto the sofa. Agrippina and Acerronia are supposedly saved by the sides of the sofa, which would have required them to be lying in curious positions. The reported conduct of the crew raises serious questions. Those in the know supposedly stood at one side to tip the boat over, clearly a suicidal gesture. They also displayed an amazing indifference to secrecy, as when they clubbed Acerronia to death in the belief that she was Agrippina: they could have avoided detection better by simply throwing Agrippina overboard. It is possible that a clue to the true sequence of events is provided in a passing comment of Suetonius (Ner. 34.2) but recorded nowhere else, namely that, in order to persuade Agrippina to return by the mechanical ship, Nero had her own vessel deliberately rammed on the inbound journey to Baiae. After Agrippina’s death, Nero maintained tight control over the news of the event, which would have led to considerable speculation. Had there been a collision at sea, whether accidental or deliberate, this could have become confused and distorted into the subsequent story of the collapsing boat. According to Tacitus, Agrippina herself was afterward in no doubt that the ship had collapsed. But these doubts are expressed in her private thoughts, to which Tacitus could hardly have had access.

Whether or not Nero, Seneca, and Burrus did in fact hold an emergency meeting after Agrippina’s initial escape, their reported reactions seem plausible. Seneca characteristically took the cowardly way out, leaving it to Burrus to find a solution. Burrus’s observation that the praetorians were devoted to the whole of the imperial house testifies to the enduring popularity of Agrippina’s father, Germanicus, and also to the effectiveness of Agrippina’s earlier maneuverings to replace officers of the guard with her own followers (Tac. Ann.12.41.2–3).

SOURCES

Agrippina resorts to incest to maintain control over Nero.

Tac. Ann. 14.2.1. According to Cluvius’s account,45 Agrippina was so far driven by her desire to hold onto power that at the midpoint of the day, when Nero—even at that hour—was flushed with wine and feasting, she quite often appeared before her inebriated son all dressed up and ready for incestuous relations.⁴⁶ People close to them began noticing the salacious kisses and the sweet talk that is usually the precursor to sexual relations, and to counter female charms Seneca sought to enlist a woman’s aid. He brought in the freedwoman Acte, who was worried about both her own parlous situation and the disgrace facing Nero.⁴⁷ Acte was to report to the emperor that the incest was common knowledge, since his mother boasted of it, and that his soldiers would not accept the sovereignty of a depraved emperor. 2. Fabius Rusticus claims that the desire for such relations was not Agrippina’s but Nero’s, and it was then frustrated by the freedwoman’s ploy.⁴⁸ But the other sources give the same version as Cluvius, and popular opinion leans that way, too. Possibly, Agrippina really did envision such a ghastly act, or perhaps contemplating this sexual deviation seemed more plausible in her case. After all, she had had illicit intercourse with Marcus Lepidus as a girl because of her lust for power;49 with that same craving, she had abandoned herself to the appetites of Pallas;⁵⁰ and she had been trained in all manner of immorality through marriage to her uncle.

Dio 61.11.3. Now Agrippina was afraid that the woman [Poppaea] might become Nero’s wife (for he had begun to develop an overwhelming passion for her), and she had the brazenness for a truly diabolical course of action.⁵¹ As if it were not enough for her monstrous record that she had seduced her uncle Claudius with the licentious charms of her glances and kisses, she tried also to make Nero her slave in the same manner.

4. However, whether this did actually take place or whether it was made up as suiting their characters I do not know, but I do record what is acknowledged by everybody, namely that Nero was truly devoted to a certain courtesan for the very reason that she resembled Agrippina, and that, when teasing the girl herself and showing her off to others, he would say that he was having sex with his mother.⁵²

Suet. Ner. 28.1. Apart from his “pedagogy” with freeborn boys and his illicit sex with married women, he also raped the vestal virgin Rubria.⁵³ With the freedwoman Acte, he almost entered into a state of legal marriage, after bribing some men of consular rank to commit perjury by saying that she was born of royal stock.54 Castrating the boy Sporus, he attempted to make a woman of him, and after a formal wedding ceremony with dowry and veil, the boy was escorted in a crowded procession to the palace, where Nero kept him as his wife.⁵⁵ A rather witty joke made by someone is still current, to the effect that things could have gone well for humankind if Nero’s father, Domitius, had had a wife like that.

2. This Sporus, adorned with the attire of the imperial ladies and carried in a litter, Nero took as his companion around the courts and markets of Greece and subsequently, at Rome, around the Sigillaria,⁵⁶ time and again showering him with fond kisses. No one doubted that he wanted sexual relations with his mother but was discouraged by her critics, who feared that a strong-willed and headstrong woman might gain undue influence from this sort of activity—and it was all the more credible after he enlisted among his sleeping partners a prostitute who was said to look very much like Agrippina. One time, too, when he was riding in a litter with his mother, they say that he committed incest with her and was found out by the stains on his clothing.⁵⁷

Nero decides to murder Agrippina and opts for a collapsing boat.

MAP 2. Bay of Naples

Dio 61.12. When Sabina found out about this, she persuaded Nero to do away with his mother, saying that she was plotting against him.58 According to many credible witnesses, Seneca also egged him on, either wishing to cover up that charge that was being made against himself or else from a desire to lead Nero into impious blood guilt so that he would quickly be destroyed by both gods and men.59

Tac. Ann. 14.3.1. Nero accordingly avoided private meetings with her and applauded her for taking a break whenever she left for her gardens or her estate at Tusculum or Antium.⁶⁰ Concluding finally that she was a real problem wherever she was kept, he decided to kill her off, considering only the question of whether to use poison, the sword, or some other violent means.⁶¹ 2. At first, he favored poison. If, however, it were administered at the imperial dinner, the incident could not be ascribed to chance, since Britannicus had already met a similar end, and it was evidently difficult to suborn servants of a woman whose own criminal experiences made her wary of treachery. Besides, she had already built up her body’s immunity by the prior taking of counteragents. As for death by the sword, no one could find a method of concealment, and he [Nero] was afraid that someone chosen for such a heinous crime might disregard his orders.

3. It was the freedman Anicetus who came up with the brilliant idea. He was prefect of the fleet at Misenum, had been the young Nero’s tutor, and was hated by Agrippina with a loathing that was mutual.⁶² Anicetus explained that a vessel could be constructed with a section designed to fall apart on the open sea, pitching the unsuspecting woman overboard. Nothing offered such latitude for accident as did the sea, he said, and, if Agrippina were overtaken by shipwreck, who would be so unreasonable as to attribute to crime the mischief done by wind and waves? The emperor would then also grant the deceased a temple, altars, and everything else for demonstrating filial devotion.

Suet. Ner. 34.1. Nero was annoyed at seeing his mother examining too critically what he said and trying to reform him, but initially he went only so far as to make repeated attempts to rouse resentment against her by pretending that he was going to renounce his imperial position and retire to Rhodes.63 Soon afterward, he stripped her of all her honors and power, took away her personal guard of Roman and German soldiers, and sent her packing from the Palatium, where she lived with him. After that, he had no scruples about harassing her, secretly sending men to annoy her with lawsuits while she was staying in Rome and to make her the butt of abuse and ridicule as they passed by her on land or sea when she was resting in her country retreat. 2. Frightened, however, by her threats and violent behavior, he decided to do away with her.⁶⁴ After three attempts with poison, and realizing that she had already immunized herself with antidotes, he tampered with the panels in her bedroom ceiling so that they would be loosened by a special device and come crashing down on her at night as she slept.⁶⁵

Dio 61.12.2. But they shrank from acting openly, and they could not get rid of her covertly with poisons, since she took excessive precautions against all of them. But when they saw in the theater a ship that came apart automatically and let out some wild animals, and then reassembled itself again into good shape, they quickly saw to the construction of another such vessel. 3. When the ship was built and Agrippina subjected to Nero’s cajoling (he did everything to flatter her so that she would not suspect anything and take measures against him), he did not dare take any steps in Rome in case the unholy crime attracted public attention. He went deep into Campania, taking his mother with him, and made a trip on that same ship, which he had decked out with great finery in order to fill her with enthusiasm for constantly using it.

Nero sets the murder plot into motion.

Tac. Ann. 14.4.1. The plan’s ingenuity won approval, and the timing helped, too, as Nero used to celebrate the festival of the Quinquatrus66 at Baiae.⁶⁷ To this spot he enticed his mother, frequently remarking that one should tolerate the outbursts of parents and try to soothe their anger—all of this to generate a rumor of their reconciliation, which Agrippina would swallow with the gullibility of a woman receiving good news. 2. When she arrived, Nero went to the shore to meet her (she was coming from Antium). He welcomed her with outstretched hands and an embrace, and took her to Bauli. (This was the name of a villa lapped by the waters of an inlet between the promontory of Misenum and the lake of Baiae.) 3. At anchor among the others was one particularly fine vessel—apparently a further mark of respect for his mother, for she had been used to sailing in a trireme with a crew of marines. She was also now invited to dinner, so that there should be darkness, too, to hide the crime.⁶⁸

4. It is well established that there was an informer, and that when Agrippina heard of the plot she could not decide whether to believe it and used a litter as her transport to Baiae. There some sweet talk alleviated her concerns, and she was warmly welcomed and seated above Nero himself. As conversation flowed freely, Nero alternating a juvenile chattiness with an earnest expression as he apparently communicated some serious points, the dinner party became a protracted affair. Nero then escorted Agrippina as she departed, hanging on her gaze and clinging closely to her. Either he was putting the finishing touch to his charade or the last sight of his mother going to her end made even his heart falter, inhuman though it was.

5.1. As if to furnish proof of the crime, heaven provided a night bright with stars and peaceful, with a tranquil sea. The ship had not gone far. Two of Agrippina’s companions were with her: Crepereius Gallus stood near the helm,69 and Acerronia was leaning over the feet of her mistress (who was lying down),⁷⁰ cheerfully talking about the son’s change of heart and the mother’s reinstatement in his good graces. Then a signal was given, the ceiling covering the spot collapsed, weighted as it was with a large quantity of lead, and Crepereius was immediately crushed to death. Agrippina and Acerronia were protected by the sides of the bed that jutted up above them and that happened to be too strong to crumple under the weight. 2. The disintegration of the vessel did not follow, either; there was general confusion, and most of the sailors, unaware of the plot, kept obstructing the conspirators.⁷¹ The oarsmen then thought it best to throw their weight on one side and capsize the ship like that, but they could not reach a quick consensus about dealing with the emergency, and others countered their efforts, making it possible for the victims to slip gently into the sea. 3. Acerronia, misreading the situation, cried out that she was Agrippina and that the emperor’s mother should be helped, whereupon she was battered to death with poles, oars, and any marine implements that came to hand. Remaining silent, Agrippina decreased the chance of recognition (though she did receive one wound to the shoulder). Then, swimming off, she met some skiffs that took her to the Lucrine Lake, and from there was transported to her own villa.⁷²

Suet. Ner. 34.2. The plan was poorly kept secret by those a party to it, and he [Nero] then conjured up the idea of a collapsible boat to bring about her death either through a wreck or by its superstructure falling on her.73 Then, feigning reconciliation, he invited her to Baiae, with a most affectionate letter, to celebrate the festival of the Quinquatrus with him. He next charged his trierarchs to damage, with an apparently accidental collision, the galley on which she had come, and he spun out their dinner together. When she was ready to return to Bauli, Nero offered her the vessel fitted with the device as a replacement for the damaged one and cheerfully accompanied her, even kissing her breasts at their parting. 3. He spent the time that followed awake in great anxiety, waiting for the outcome of his enterprise.

Dio 62.13.1. Upon arriving at Bauli, he put on dinners on a very lavish scale for many days, and at them entertained his mother very indulgently. If she were absent, he would pretend to miss her greatly, and when she was there, he made a great fuss over her, telling her to ask him for anything she wanted and freely making her many gifts without her asking. 2. Matters were at that stage when he embraced her one night after dinner, at about midnight, drawing her close to his chest, kissing her eyes and hands, and saying, “Mother, may you have strength and health. My life and my rule depend on you.” He then put her in the hands of a freedman, Anicetus, ostensibly to escort her home on the vessel that he had prepared. 3. But the sea would not countenance the tragedy that was to be acted out on it, nor would it accept to take on itself the spurious charge of the unholy crime: the ship came apart and Agrippina fell into the water, but she did not die.⁷⁴

Octavia 310–30. This age, too, has seen the horrific evildoing of a son, when the emperor sent his mother to sea, a victim of deception, on a deadly bark. Given their orders, the sailors hasten to leave the peaceful port, and the sea resounds, beaten by their oars. The bark is carried forward into the deep, and as it glides along, its timbers shiver and, sinking, it splits open and sucks in the sea. A deafening cry mingled with female lamentations rises to the stars. Grim death wanders before their eyes; everyone seeks for himself escape from destruction. Some, naked, cling to planks from the shattered craft, and with them cut a way through the waves, while others head for shore by swimming, and fate sinks many in the deep. The Augusta rends her clothes and tears her hair, and waters her cheeks with tears of sadness.75

Agrippina survives the attempt and reaches her coastal villa, where she is finally murdered.

Tac. Ann. 14.6.1. There Agrippina reflected on the motive for the duplicitous letter of invitation, and for her particularly respectful treatment. Also, she noted, the ship had been close to shore, had not been driven by the winds, and had not struck any rocks, and yet it had collapsed from the top like some apparatus on land. She also thought about Acerronia’s murder and at the same time looked at her own wound, and she realized that the only way of dealing with the plot was by seeming not to recognize its existence. 2. She sent her freedman Agermus to report to Nero that, because of the benevolence of the gods and Nero’s own good fortune, she had escaped a serious accident. Despite his alarm over the danger his mother had faced, she added, she begged him to postpone the visit he was anxious to make—she had need of rest for the moment. 3. Meanwhile, feigning nonchalance, she applied medication to her wound and lotions to her body. She ordered a search for Acerronia’s will and had her belongings sealed up—her one act that was not a pretense.⁷⁶

7.1. Nero was waiting for news that the deed was done when word came that Agrippina had escaped with a slight wound and had been close enough to danger for no doubt to be left about who was responsible. 2. He was petrified, declaring that she would be there at any moment, intent on swift revenge. She would arm her slaves or incite the soldiery; she would get to the Senate and the people, laying at his door the shipwreck, her wound, and the killing of her friends. And what help was there for him? Unless Burrus and Seneca could come up with something. … He had had them summoned immediately, though whether they had no prior knowledge of the plot is unclear.77

3. Both were silent for a long while. Either they feared that trying to hold him back would fail, or else they believed that things had gone so far that Nero was done for unless Agrippina were stopped. Then Seneca took the lead to the extent of looking at Burrus and asking whether soldiers should be ordered to kill her. Burrus replied that the praetorian guards had sworn loyalty to the entire house of the Caesars, and that, remembering Germanicus, they would take no violent action against his progeny.⁷⁸ Anicetus should live up to his promise, he added.

5. With no hesitation, Anicetus asked to be put in charge of the crime. Responding to his request, Nero declared that this was the day on which he was given an empire, and the giver of such a great gift was his freedman. Anicetus should go swiftly, he said, and take with him the men most ready to follow orders. On being told that Agermus had arrived with a message from Agrippina, Nero took the initiative and provided the scenario for an accusation of his own. He threw a sword at Agermus’s feet as the freedman delivered the message entrusted to him, then ordered him clapped in irons as though caught in a treasonous act. He would fabricate a story of his mother plotting the emperor’s assassination and then committing suicide from shame when the crime was detected.

8.1. Meanwhile, news had spread of Agrippina’s perilous episode, which was represented as an accident, and as people learned of it, they all rushed to the shore. Some clambered up the embankments, some boarded the closest skiffs, others waded into the sea as far as was physically possible, and some stood with arms outstretched.⁷⁹ The whole shoreline was filled with the noise of moaning, prayers, and cries as people asked various questions or gave vague replies. A huge crowd surged to the spot with torches, and when it was known that Agrippina was safe, they prepared to offer their felicitations, until they were scattered by the sight of a column of men, armed and menacing.

2. Anicetus cordoned off the villa and broke down the door. He threw aside any slaves in his way until he reached the bedroom door. Before it stood only a few attendants; the rest had been frightened off, terrified by the break-in. 3. In the bedroom, there was a dim light and one of the maids, and Agrippina, who was growing more and more worried that nobody had come from her son, not even Agermus. Things would look different had her plan gone well, she thought; as it was, there was only solitude broken by sudden uproar, and indications that it had gone very badly.

4. Her maid then began to leave. “Are you deserting me, too?” asked Agrippina, and, looking around, she saw Anicetus, who was accompanied by the trierarch Herculeius and by Obaritus, a centurion of the marines.80 If Anicetus had come to visit the patient, she said, he could report that she was recovered. If he had come to commit a crime, she did not believe her son was involved—he had not given the order for parricide. 5. The assassins stood around the bed, and the trierarch took the lead, striking her on the head with a club. The centurion then drew his sword to deliver the deathblow. “Strike me in the belly,” she cried, thrusting out to them her womb, and was finished off by a welter of stab wounds.⁸¹

Suet. Ner. 34.3. But upon learning that the whole thing had gone awry and that she had escaped death by swimming, he [Nero] was at a loss what to do next. When Agrippina’s slave Lucius Agermus joyfully reported that she was safe and sound, Nero unobtrusively threw a dagger down beside him and ordered him seized and tied up on a charge of having been bribed to kill him, and then ordered his mother killed, the story being that she had committed suicide to avoid punishment for the crime that had been brought to light.

Dio 62.13.3. Though she was in the dark and was full of drink, and despite the fact that the sailors using their oars on her had actually killed her traveling companion Acerronia Polla, Agrippina still survived. 4. Reaching her home, she feigned ignorance of the plot and did not talk of it. Instead, she quickly sent a message to her son and declared that what had happened to her was accidental and that she was sending to him what was, of course, the good news of her safety. Hearing this, Nero could not contain himself; he punished the man who had been sent to him as if he had come to murder him, and he immediately sent off Anicetus with the sailors to deal with his mother. 5. (He would not entrust her killing to the praetorians.) When Agrippina saw them, she knew why they had come. She jumped from her bed, tore open her clothes, and laying bare her stomach said: “Strike this, Anicetus, because this was what bore Nero.”

Octavia 361–77. Impious man that he is, he is furious and aggrieved that his mother was snatched from the sea and is still alive, and then he doubles his monstrous crime. He rushes to commit his pitiful mother’s murder and allows the atrocity no delay. The henchman who is sent executes his orders: he opens up his mistress’s breast with his sword. As she dies, the unhappy lady asks the agent of her murder to bury his frightful sword within her womb, and says: “It is this, this that you must strike with the sword—this that bore such a monster.” After these words that mingled with her final groan, she finally gave up her unhappy soul amid the cruel wounds.

Nero reacts to his mother’s death.

Tac. Ann. 14.9.1. On these events, there is agreement. As for whether Nero looked at his dead mother and praised the beauty of her corpse, there are some who have recorded it and some who deny it.82 She was cremated that same night on a dining couch in a paltry funeral, and during the whole of Nero’s reign, the burial ground was not heaped in a mound or granted an enclosure.⁸³ (Later on, through the devotion of her servants, she was given a modest tomb alongside the road to Misenum and close to the villa of Caesar the dictator, which, from its lofty elevation, looks out over the bays be-low.)⁸⁴ 2. When Agrippina’s pyre was set alight, her freedman, a man named Mnester, ran himself through with a sword, though whether it was from affection for his patroness or from fear of execution is moot.

3. That such would be her end Agrippina had believed many years earlier and had made light of it. When she consulted the Chaldaeans about Nero, they replied that he would be emperor and kill his mother.85 “Let him kill me,” she replied, “as long as he comes to power.”

10.1. As for Nero, it was only after the crime had been committed that its enormity came home to him. He spent the rest of the night petrified and silent at one moment, but more often rising to his feet in panic and dementedly awaiting the dawn that he thought would bring his undoing.⁸⁶

Suet. Ner. 34.4. Things more horrific than this are added in not untrustworthy authors: that he rushed off to inspect the murdered woman’s corpse, fondled her limbs, criticizing some and praising others, and, meanwhile, becoming thirsty, took a drink. However, although encouraged by the felicitations offered him by the soldiers, the Senate, and the people, he was never able to bear, either then or thereafter, the consciousness of his guilt, and he often admitted that he was pursued by his mother’s ghost and the Furies’ whips and blazing torches. In fact, he tried, with a sacrifice performed by Magi, to call up her shade and placate it, and furthermore, in his journey through Greece, he did not dare attend the Eleusinian Mysteries, at the beginning of which a call is made by the herald for the removal of all the impious and wicked.⁸⁷

Dio 62.14.1. So it was that Agrippina, daughter of Germanicus, granddaughter of Agrippa, and a descendant of Augustus, was murdered by her own son, on whom she had conferred the supreme power and for whom she had killed other men, and in particular her uncle. 2. When told that she was dead, Nero did not believe it; because of the enormity of the crime, he was overcome with disbelief. He therefore wanted to see for himself what she had suffered. He stripped her entire body naked and examined her wounds, and finally made a comment more execrable than the murder itself. “I did not know I had such a beautiful mother,” he said.

3. And then he gave money to the praetorians, clearly so they would wish for many such acts to occur in the future, and he wrote to the Senate listing other things of which he knew she was guilty. In particular, he said that she had plotted against him and committed suicide when she was found out.88 4. Although he sent such information to the Senate, he was still deeply agitated at night, to the point of suddenly jumping out of bed, and in the daytime he became fearful just at the sound, coming from the area where his mother’s bones lay, of trumpets ringing out some noisy military music. He accordingly moved elsewhere, and when the same thing happened to him there, he would again, in a frenzy, go somewhere else.

Nero is encouraged by the official reaction to Agrippina’s death.

Tac. Ann. 14.10.2. It was the obsequiousness of the centurions and tribunes, orchestrated by Burrus, that first encouraged him to hope; they grasped his hand and congratulated him on evading the unforeseeable danger of his mother’s criminal act.

His friends then visited the temples and, the example set, the adjacent towns of Campania bore witness to their joy with sacrifices and ambassadorial missions;⁸⁹ and Nero, with a contrary pretense, was dejected, apparently displeased with his own deliverance and in tears over his mother’s death. 3. However, unlike men’s expressions, the appearance of landscapes does not change, and the grim sight of that sea and shoreline was continually before his eyes (and there were those who believed that the sound of a trumpet could be heard in the surrounding hills, and lamentations coming from his mother’s tomb). Nero therefore withdrew to Neapolis and sent a letter to the Senate. The gist of it was that Agermus, one of Agrippina’s closest freedmen and his would-be assassin, had been caught with a sword and that Agrippina, conscience-stricken over the crime she had engineered, had paid the penalty.

11.1. Nero added “crimes” from earlier times. She had entertained hopes of joint rule, he declared, and of having the praetorian guard swear allegiance to a woman, with the Senate and people subjected to the same humiliation.⁹⁰ When she was disappointed in this, her resentment against the military, the senators, and the plebs had led her to oppose the cash distributions for the soldiers and the people,91 and to hatch plots against illustrious men. What an effort it had been, he said, for him to stop her bursting into the Curia and giving replies to deputations from foreign peoples!⁹²

2. He followed this with a sidelong attack on the Claudian period, attributing to his mother all the enormities of that regime and claiming that her extermination was for the public good. He even discussed the shipwreck, though there was no one to be found who was stupid enough to think it accidental—or to believe that a lone man had been sent with a weapon by a shipwrecked woman to smash his way through the emperor’s bodyguard and navy! 3. As a result, it was no longer Nero (whose villainy surpassed all criticism) but Seneca who was the subject of nasty rumors—with a declaration like that he had signed his confession!⁹³

12.1. But it was with an amazing spirit of rivalry among the notables that public prayers were officially authorized at all the couches, and the Quinquatrus—the period when the “plot” was brought to light—was to be celebrated with annual games.⁹⁴ A gold figure of Minerva was also to be set up in the Curia with a statue of the emperor next to her, and Agrippina’s birthday was to be placed among the days unfit for public business.⁹⁵ It had been Thrasea Paetus’s practice to let earlier instances of sycophancy pass by remaining silent, or with a brief indication of assent, but on this occasion he walked out of the Senate, thus exposing himself to danger, but without providing the others with an impulse to assert their independence.96

2. There were also, at the time, frequent but meaningless prodigies. A woman gave birth to a serpent, and another was killed by a lightning bolt while making love with her husband. The sun was suddenly darkened, and the fourteen districts of the city were struck by lightning.⁹⁷ But all of this was far from being the result of divine intervention—Nero extended his reign and crimes for many years thereafter!

3. To deepen resentment against his mother, and to make it clear that his own clemency was increased by her removal, he reinstated in their ancestral homes two illustrious ladies, Junia and Calpurnia,⁹⁸ as well as the ex-praetors Valerius Capito and Licinius Gabolus. These had earlier been banished by Agrippina. He even allowed the ashes of Lollia Paulina to be brought back and a tomb erected for her,⁹⁹ and Iturius and Calvisius, men whom he had himself recently relegated, he relieved of their punishment. In the case of Silana, she had passed away on her return to Tarentum from her distant exile, at a time when Agrippina, whose hostility was the cause of her downfall, was already losing influence or had relented.¹⁰⁰

13.1. Nero nevertheless hung back in the towns of Campania, nervously wondering how he should enter the city and whether he would find the Senate fawning and the plebs supportive. He did, however, have all the worst characters—and no palace ever had a richer crop—telling him that the name of Agrippina was detested and that his popularity with the people had been boosted by her death. Proceed with confidence, they told him, and feel their veneration in person. At the same time, they begged permission to go ahead of him. 2. And, in fact, they found a warmer welcome than they had promised, with the people coming to meet him in tribes,101 the Senate in festive garb, wives and children marshaled by sex and age, and spectators’ seats erected along the route he would be taking, just as triumphs are viewed. So now he approached the Capitol with pride,¹⁰² as victor over a servile people, and gave his thanks—and then let himself loose on all the forms of depravity that, though repressed with difficulty, respect for his mother (such as it was) had managed to check.

The private, unofficial reaction was not so supportive.

Suet. Ner. 39.1. Nero was tolerant of nothing more than he was of people’s curses and insults, and he showed himself especially forgiving in the case of those attacking him verbally or in verse. 2. Many of these compositions, in Greek and Latin, were posted in public or circulated, such as the following:

“Nero, Orestes, Alcmeon, mother-killers all.”¹⁰³

“A new enumeration: Nero killed his own mother.”¹⁰⁴

“Who says Nero is not of the great line of Aeneas?

One carried off his father; the other his mother.”¹⁰⁵

“While our man tunes his lyre-string,
and while the Parthian strings his bow,

Ours will be Paean, the other the Far-shooter.”¹⁰⁶

“Rome will become one house. Move to Veii, Citizens of Rome, unless that house seizes Veii, too!”

However, he did not seek out the authors, and when a number of them were reported to the Senate by an informer, he would not allow them to be given a particularly harsh punishment. 3. The Cynic philosopher Isidorus loudly criticized him, as he passed in the street, for doing a good job of singing the misfortunes of Nauplius but putting his own advantages to poor use. And Datus, an actor in Atellan farces, in a certain song “Farewell, father; farewell, mother” aped a person drinking and another swimming, an obvious allusion to the deaths of Claudius and Agrippina, and in the last line (“Orcus guides your feet”) he showed by a gesture that he was referring to the Senate.107 Nero did no more than banish the actor and the philosopher from Rome, either pooh-poohing all insults or trying to avoid provoking people’s ingenuity by showing resentment.¹⁰⁸

FIGURE 7. RIC² Nero 399, Brass Dupondius. Obverse: NERO CLAVD(ius) CAESAR AVG(ustus) GERM(anicus) P(ontifex) M(aximus) TR(ibunicia) P(otestate) IMP(erator) P(ater patriae), “Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, Chief Priest, with Tribunician Authority, Imperator, Father of the Country.” Reverse: MAC(ellum) AVG(usti). S(enato) C(onsulto), “Market of Augustus. By a decree of the Senate.” From the collection of Andreas Pangerl ∕ romancoins.info.

Dio (61.18.3) records that among the measures that followed Agrippina’s death in 59 Nero dedicated a food market. It may well have been part of his program of winning popular support. The edifice, located on the Caelian Hill, was on a monumental scale and is illustrated on his coins (see Figure 7), which depict an elaborate two-story building, with a central domed section flanked by colonnades at the bottom and housing a loggia on the upper section.

The legend SC refers to a possible role of the Senate in issuing the coin, not in the construction of the market.

Dio 61.16.1 (Loeb 8.70). When Nero entered Rome following the killing of his mother, people treated him with respect in public, but privately, when they could safely speak freely, they would be tearing him to pieces. For instance, they hung a leather bag at night from a statue of his, thereby suggesting that he should be stuffed into it; and, again, they threw into the Forum a baby and tied on it a little tablet that read: “I am not going to rear you in case you murder your mother.”

2a. When Nero came into Rome, they pulled down the statues of Agrippina. But failing to cut through one in time, they threw a rag over it so it would appear to be veiled, after which somebody immediately composed the following inscription and fixed it on the statue: “I am ashamed, and you have no shame.”

2.2. And in many places it was possible to read the same inscription:

“Nero, Orestes, Alcmeon, mother-killers all.”¹⁰⁹

It was also possible to hear people saying this very thing: that Nero did away with his mother. 3. For there were many who denounced certain people for gossiping to that effect, and their aim was not so much to destroy them as to attack Nero. As a result, Nero would not entertain any charge of this sort; either he did not want the rumor to gain greater circulation or by now he did not care about what people said. 4. However, in the middle of the sacrifices for Agrippina that took place following a decree, there was a total eclipse of the sun, during which the stars appeared.¹¹⁰

Furthermore, the elephants that pulled the chariot of Augustus entered the Circus, reached the seats of the senators, stopped there, and went no further.¹¹¹ 5. And then in addition to all that there was something that one would have most certainly judged as a sign from heaven: a thunderbolt once entirely burned up his dinner as it was being brought to him, taking away his food like some harpy.

1 The notion that Agrippina would be willing to have her supposed role in the murder of Claudius made public, and that this information would somehow ingratiate her with his son, is highly implausible.

2 The “camp” refers to the Castra Praetoria, the barracks of the praetorian guard, the key group in determining any dynastic change in Rome. Sejanus was responsible for organizing the guard into one single camp, just outside the Viminal Gate. The praetorians were loyal to the house of Germanicus, as Burrus will later intimate to Nero when he tries to recruit them to help in the murder of his mother (see Tac. Ann. 14.7.4).

3 Nothing more is known about Burrus’s handicap. Seneca had been exiled because of his affair with Julia Livilla, Agrippina’s sister (Tac. Ann. 13.42.2; Dio 61.10.1). He was recalled, shortly after Agrippina’s marriage to Claudius, to be Nero’s tutor (Tac. Ann. 12.8.2).

4 The reference is to Lucius and Marcus Junius Silanus. Lucius had been betrothed to Claudius’s daughter Octavia and was disgraced through Agrippina’s machinations in order to make way for Nero, which led to his suicide (Tac. Ann. 12.8.1; see Chapter I). Marcus, consul in AD 46, was identified by Tacitus as the first victim of Agrippina after the accession of Nero (Tac. Ann. 13.1.1).

5 Britannicus was probably born on February 12, 41 (see Chapter I appendix). His fourteenth birthday, in AD 55, would be important, since fourteen was the common age for the toga virilis to be assumed, either at the time of the birthday or in the following March. This would make Britannicus a far more viable alternative to Nero.

6 Tacitus earlier damned Britannicus with faint praise, claiming “they do say that he was not slow-witted by nature” (Ann. 12.26.2).

7 The Saturnalia began on December 17 and lasted until December 23, involving much boisterous fun. Considerable license was permitted, and many of the traditional Roman conventions were turned on their heads. In some respects, such as the giving of gifts, the festival anticipated the celebration of Christmas. Lucian, in Saturnalia, lays out the rules for celebrations, including the appointment of the “king.” The reference here must be to the festivities in December 54.

8 Tacitus either dismisses or is unaware of the tradition recounted by Suetonius that Nero was jealous of Britannicus’s singing voice.

9 This section appears in the part of Suetonius’s Vita that puts its focus on the cruelty of Nero and presents a series of deaths where the total focus is on the supposed role of the emperor. Given Nero’s pretensions to artistry, it is perhaps inevitable that hostile sources would suggest artistic jealousy as a contributory cause for his hostility toward some of his victims. Tacitus (Ann. 15.49.3) claims that he was similarly jealous of Lucan. In Nero’s case, the supposed jealousy may arise from the story of Britannicus’s better-than-expected performance at the Saturnalia celebrations, as described by Tacitus (Ann. 13.15.2). The second, political motivation suggested by Suetonius can be no more than supposition on the biographer’s part, but it does convey a very good insight into the political tensions within the court. Britannicus would be seen as an obvious focus for any discontent with Nero.

10 An inscription reveals a Titus Julius Pollio as procurator of Sardinia (CIL X 7952), and it is possible that this is the same Pollio rewarded for his services in the following year, when he presumably succeeded Vipsanius Laenas, who was convicted of extortion at that time (Tac. Ann. 13.30.1).

11 Locusta is introduced in Tac. Ann. 12.66.2 as the person who provided the poison that was used against Claudius. Townend (1960), 110–11, argues that Locusta’s role in the Britannicus episode was a doublet inadvertently introduced from her role in the murder of Claudius. But it is not unreasonable that a successful poisoner might find her services needed on subsequent occasions.

12 There was no Lex Julia that covered poisoning; either Suetonius or Nero has it wrong, unless the reference was to the general Lex Julia de Vi. The legislation covering poisoning was the Lex Cornelia de Sicariis et Veneficiis.

13 Suetonius mentions that Claudius followed the custom of having the imperial children to dinner, along with the children of distinguished men. The children sat, rather than reclined, in keeping with tradition (Suet. Aug. 64.3; Claud. 32). Valerius Maximus (2.1.2) mentions that this used to be the practice for women also. Suetonius (Tit. 2) states that the future emperor Titus was among the participants when Britannicus died, and became ill himself through eating the poison.

14 Suetonius explicitly and Dio by implication suggest that the funeral took place the next day, although Tacitus is supported by the claims that Nero made in his edict.

15 Britannicus was interred in the Tomb of Augustus in the Campus Martius. Tacitus perhaps refers to the tomb obliquely to avoid the impression that Britannicus was honored.

16 Fraternal strife was a common theme of ancient legend. The most familiar in the Roman tradition was, of course, that of Romulus and Remus. Philo (Leg. 68) indicates that a similar justification was made for Caligula’s execution of Tiberius Gemellus.

17 Britannicus was the last male born into the great Claudian family (his sisters Octavia and Antonia were still alive). Nero did have a degree of Claudian blood but could claim full Claudian kinship only by adoption. Similarly, upon Nero’s death, the Julian line died out.

18 By “sacred observances,” Tacitus is referring to the custom at a meal of making ritual libations to the Lares and Penates.

19 In the previous section (16.4), Tacitus implies that of the two sisters only Octavia was present at the banquet.

20 Servius (Aeneid, xi. 143) and Seneca (Brev. Vit. 20.5) observe that the funerals of those who died prematurely took place at night. Before receiving the toga virilis, Britannicus would have counted as a child.

21 Suetonius and Dio seem to have used a common source in that both refer to the funeral taking place in heavy rain.

22 Suetonius is the only source to suggest that Locusta was rewarded with estates.

23 Dio may here be referring to the practice of smearing the face of the departed with powder. Servius (Aen. 9.485) fancifully traces the etymology of a class of undertakers, pollinctores, as derived from the powder (Latin pollen) that they applied to dead bodies to conceal the pallor.

24 Josephus’s comment is of special interest because of his own friendship with the future emperor Titus, who was raised with Britannicus and was present at the banquet, where he, too, fell ill. Josephus reflects the version of events that was clearly current in court circles when he published his narrative in the early 90s. His account adds strength to the claim (Chapter I) that Agrippina had removed the freedmen who were sympathetic toward Britannicus and had also, apart from maneuvering the appointment of Burrus as commander of the praetorians (Josephus’s “soldiery”), filled the lower ranks of the guard with her own appointees (Tac. Ann. 12.26.2, 41.2).

25 The period is AD 60. Seneca (QNat. 7.17.2, 21.3, 29.3) mentions this comet and reports that it took away the bad reputation of comets, since it was not accompanied by any evil. Comets presaged the deaths of Augustus (Dio 56.29.3) and Claudius (Plin. HN 2.92; Suet. Claud. 46; Dio 61.35.1).

26 Rubellius was associated with Stoicism (Chapter VIII), and Tacitus here seems to suggest that his ancestors were similarly inclined.

27 There is no town of Sublaqueum known from ancient sources, and Tacitus introduces the villa in terms that suggest it was not well known. Frontinus refers to a villa Sublacensis of Nero (Aq. 93). It seems that it takes its name (literally, “located under the lake,”) from its proximity to the three lakes formed by the Anio (Plin. HN 3.109).

28 Rubellius was married to Antistia Pollitta, daughter of Lucius Antistius Vetus, consul in 55. She and her father died by suicide some four years after Rubellius’s death (Tac. Ann. 16.10–11; see Chapter VIII).

29 In the heated political atmosphere that prevailed after the death of Britannicus and during the worsening situation of Agrippina, there were many ready and willing to denounce their opponents. Burrus, the commander of the praetorian guard, and Pallas the freedman were close allies of Agrippina. The charge made against them that they conspired with Faustus is on the surface absurd.

30 The accuser is otherwise unknown. It seems that he was trafficking in confiscated property, perhaps buying it in bulk and selling it at a profit, or buying up the debt and recovering the funds plus a premium from the debtor.

31 The role of Burrus is strangely anomalous. He was not a senator, and he must be assumed to be sitting as an assessor in a case that the princeps is holding in private.

32 “Such was the extent”: Tacitus’s account of the exile of Faustus follows the description of Nero and Otho’s rivalry for Poppaea in AD 58.

33 For all that Faustus Cornelius Sulla was a victim of Nero, Tacitus cannot refrain from commenting on his observed weakness of character.

34 The Mulvian (or Milvian) Bridge stood on the Via Flaminia at a crossing over the Tiber, about two miles from the city. It has given its name to the nearby battle in which the emperor Constantine I defeated his opponent Maxentius in AD 312. He granted toleration to Christianity throughout the empire in the following year.

35 The Horti Sallustiani, north of the Quirinal Hill, were laid out by the historian Sallust and became an imperial possession under Tiberius.

36 Massilia (modern Marseille) was founded by Greeks (from Phocaea in Asia Minor) in what later became Gallia Narbonensis and was a comfortable place of exile during the Roman period.

37 On Faenius Rufus, see Chapter VIII. Rufus is not referred to again until AD 65 (see Tac. Ann.15.50.3).

38 It seems unlikely that the name of Faustus’s ancestor, the dictator Sulla, who held office in 82/81 BC, carried much weight a century and a half later.

39 Rubellius Plautus was the son of Julia, daughter of Drusus, the son of Tiberius. It is not clear why Asia should have been excited by the name, since his grandfather Drusus had achieved only modest distinction outside Italy, and that was in Illyricum. Nor did he achieve enough to be generally admired in all the provinces of the empire.

40 This is the first reference by Tacitus to the notion that Stoicism could be a source of opposition to the emperor; see Chapter VIII.

41 There is an element of deliberate irony in Tacitus’s words, since Corbulo would later be summoned to Greece while Nero was on his grand tour there, and be ordered to commit suicide.

42 The reference is cryptic, but it is shown in the next section that a centurion had been sent to execute Plautus. Consul in AD 55, Lucius Antistius committed suicide in 65, along with his daughter Politta, Plautus’s widow.

43 Coeranus is identified as a philosopher in the Index to Book 2 of Pliny’s Natural History. He was clearly Greek, but is otherwise unknown. Musonius was a distinguished Stoic, exiled following the Pisonian conspiracy (see Chapter VIII).

44 Some of the text is missing, but the joke can be recovered from an anecdote in Dio 62.14.1, where Nero comments that he had not realized that Plautus had such a big nose.

45 On Cluvius, see the Introduction.

46 Tacitus here introduces a discussion that is unusual in that he cites the sources for the competing interpretations. At its heart is the claim that Nero had an incestuous relationship with his mother.

47 Acte was an imperial slave from Asia (Dio 61.17.1); she represented a major relationship in Nero’s life. Suetonius (Ner. 28.1) claims that Nero was prepared to marry her and that he bribed some ex-consuls to testify that she was of royal blood. Agrippina saw the affair as a threat to her own influence over her son. Acte remained loyal to Nero to the end and interred his remains. She outlived him and became prosperous, owning many slaves and property at Puteoli and Velitrae.

48 Suetonius (Ner. 28.2) recounts the incest claims and aligns himself with the minority interpretation of Fabius.

49 Marcus Aemilius Lepidus had been the husband of Drusilla, sister of Caligula, and was a favorite and possibly designated successor of that same emperor. His affair with Agrippina, the sister of his late wife, in her early twenties at the time, was viewed as incestuous. He was executed by Caligula in 39, probably for involvement in the conspiracy of Gnaeus Lentulus Gaetulicus, and Agrippina was reputedly forced to carry his ashes back to Rome (Dio 59.22.7–8).

50 On Pallas, see Chapter I. Agrippina supposedly had an affair with him.

51 Dio agrees with Tacitus that Agrippina opposed Poppaea’s marriage and also sees this as the motive for Agrippina’s murder.

52 Dio’s account of the reputed incest differs from that of Tacitus in that he adopts the Cluvian version of events and assigns the responsibility to Agrippina, although he does express some general skepticism about whether it happened at all. Dio sees the incest purely in terms of sexual rivalry. He seems to use the same source as Suetonius in suggesting that Nero had a mistress who resembled his mother. The story looks suspiciously like a doublet of the claim that Nero had girlfriends and boyfriends who resembled the late Poppaea (see Chapter VII).

53 The rape of a vestal constituted a very serious crime, with serious punishment for the perpetrator. Suetonius (Dom. 8.4) reports that the consensual lovers of vestals were banished and those of the chief vestal were beaten to death, except for an ex-praetor who owned up before conviction and was allowed exile. Nero’s crime is not recorded elsewhere (but see Aur. Vict. Caes. 5.11.5).

54 It would be impossible for Nero to marry Acte, a freedwoman, and the slur here seems to be that in his relationship he treated a social inferior in such a way that it was tantamount to marriage. A similar relationship existed between Vespasian and Caenis (Suet. Vesp. 3).

55 Sporus is famous as Nero’s lover, and Suetonius suggests that the affair began when Sporus was very young. He remained with Nero until the emperor’s death. His association with Otho caused the latter some unpopularity (Dio 64.8.3), and he was also involved with Nymphidius Sabinus (Plut. Galb. 9.3). He did have self-respect, committing suicide rather than obeying Vitellius’s orders to perform in a rape scene onstage (Dio 65.10.1).

56 During the Saturnalia, clay dolls (sigilla) were familiar presents (Macrob. Sat. 1.11.46–50) and gave their name to a market, Sigillaria, where eventually general Saturnalia gifts could be purchased.

57 In the story of the incest, Suetonius seems to follow essentially the version of Fabius, reported by Tacitus (discussed earlier). Dio also recounts the story of the Agrippina look-alike.

58 Dio’s logic here is not clear. He reports that Nero reputedly committed incest with his mother from sexual jealousy. Poppaea as a consequence sought to eliminate Agrippina. This makes sense only if we add the motivation reflected by Tacitus, that the incest was part of a power play. Clearly, Dio, like Tacitus, can see no valid reason why Nero should have decided on the murder of his mother in 59 and, also like Tacitus, ascribes it to the plotting of Poppaea.

59 Dio is alone in assigning guilt in this matter to Seneca, ascribing this claim to a number of “credible” sources. No other extant authority mentions such a claim, which on the surface seems absurd, and Tacitus by implication rejects it, either because of its absurdity or possibly because it was rejected by one of the sources he is known to have used for this episode, the pro-Senecan Fabius Rusticus.

60 Tusculum was located on the Alban Mount in Latium; it was a summer resort much favored by Rome’s wealthy classes and housed a number of fine villas. Antium (see Chapter I) was much favored by the imperial family and was the birthplace of Caligula and Nero.

61 Suetonius (Ner. 34.2) says specifically that there were three attempts to poison her.

62 Anicetus had probably been “tutor” in the sense of accompanying Nero to his classes. He had clearly prospered in the emperor’s service; the prefect of the fleet was usually an equestrian, but there are instances of freedmen holding the position under Claudius (Plin. HN 9.62) and later after Nero’s death (Tac. Hist. 1.87.2). Tacitus (Ann. 4.5.1) reveals that there were two fleets off Italy, at Ravenna and Misenum, and one off Gaul at Forum Iulii (Fréjus).

63 There is no other evidence for Nero’s supposed intention to abdicate. He had shown favor for Rhodes while still just a youth, when he spoke in favor of the restoration of its freedom (Suet. Ner. 7.2), which was in fact granted by Claudius (Tac. Ann. 12.58.2; Suet. Claud. 25.3); see also Smallwood 412a,b.

64 Agrippina had threatened to make Britannicus emperor and had sought an alliance with Octavia. She was also accused of plotting to have Rubellius Plautus replace Nero. These actions belong to 55, and we do not have any evidence that they continued up to 59.

65 Tacitus (Ann. 14.3.2) and Dio (61.12.2) speak generally of an intention to poison Agrippina but do not provide the specific details of Suetonius. The collapsing bedroom ceiling device is not mentioned by Tacitus or Dio; Suetonius separates it from the collapsing boat, yet Tacitus’s account of the caving-in of the lead-weighted canopy that initiated the planned disintegration of the boat seems to draw from it.

66 The Quinquatrus, the fifth day after the Ides (reckoned inclusively), began the festival of Minerva, celebrated on March 19–23. The Arval brethren held sacrifices on March 28, 59 (Smallwood 5–9); the occasion is not specified, but the rites may well have been intended to celebrate Nero’s safe delivery from the plot on his life.

67 Baiae in Campania, with its thermal bathing facilities and favored location, was a popular resort of the Roman upper classes, associated with luxury and louche living; Martial (Ep. 1.62.6) speaks of one lady who “arrived there a Penelope and left a Helen.” It was in this area that Caligula staged one of his most famous spectacles, his bridge over the Bay of Naples.

68 According to Suetonius (Otho 3.1), Otho was the host at this dinner (discussed earlier).

69 Crepereius Gallus was a member of an influential provincial family from the colony of Pisidian Antioch. An equestrian, he had risen in the service open to that order, presumably in part through the patronage of Agrippina (Levick and Jameson [1964]).

70 Acerronia was possibly the daughter of Proculus, consul of AD 37 and thus sister of Gnaeus Acerronius Proculus, who was appointed to the governorship of Achaea sometime after AD 44, also possibly with Agrippina’s support (PIR² A32–34).

71 Dio (61.13.3) asserts that the ship did collapse as intended and deposited Agrippina in the sea, at which point she swam to shore unaided. He also says that Anicetus was onboard to ensure a smooth operation.

72 There has been much inconclusive debate about the location of the villa where Agrippina died. While visiting Nero at Baiae, she stayed at her villa located at Bauli, traditionally (but not conclusively) identified with the village of Bacoli, south of Baiae (Barr. 44 F4). Because Agrippina landed after the accident at the Lucrine Lake, north of Baiae, some have speculated that she had a villa there also, since the Lucrine Lake would be an odd choice of destination if she then had to travel past Baiae, where Nero was staying, to go to her villa at Bauli. But we do not know if the fishermen who rescued her were familiar enough with the coast around Bauli to risk a night landing. The Lucrine Lake was famous for its fine oysters, and Strabo (5.4.6) notes that it provided excellent moorage. The rescuers may have been oystermen from the Lucrine area. Moreover, the fact that Agrippina was buried by the road to Misenum, south of Baiae, suggests that she did travel south, past Baiae, from her initial landing place.

73 Tacitus (Ann. 14.3.3) attributes its invention directly to Anicetus, prefect of the fleet based at Misenum.

74 Here Dio’s version differs from Tacitus’s in that Dio claims that the mechanical ship did actually collapse. They both relate the story about the death of Acerronia Polla.

75 The “Augusta” is, of course, Agrippina. She received the name and title during the reign of Claudius.

76 Agrippina placed Acerronia’s possessions and papers under seal to prevent anything from being removed before her will was executed. No doubt, Agrippina had been named as a beneficiary. It is not clear why Acerronia’s possessions and will were stored in Agrippina’s Campanian villa or why the will should have been difficult to locate.

77 Dio (61.12.1) claims that Seneca had previously advocated murdering Agrippina, which seems unlikely. Dio was presumably using a source hostile to Seneca.

78 Agrippina had, of course, replaced officers of the guard with her own supporters (Tac. Ann. 12.41.2). Philo (Leg. 30) says that Caligula ordered Gemellus to commit suicide to keep praetorians from being involved in the execution of a member of the imperial family.

79 If these events took place at the Lucrine Lake, the reference might be to the sandbar reinforced by masonry and topped by a road that ran between the lake and the Bay of Baiae and was the line of communication between Puteoli and Baiae (Strabo 5.4.6). But embankments were commonly erected in the locality in connection with land reclamation (Hor. Od. 2.18.20). The reaction of the local populace is an indication that, outside Rome at least, Agrippina commanded much popularity.

80 A trierarchus was the commander of a ship in the Roman fleet. The centurion Classicus would have commanded the marine soldiers onboard. Tacitus uses the term classiarii to distinguish them from the praetorians, who were thought to be too loyal to Agrippina.

81 The Octavia (369–72) and Dio (61.13.5) add the dramatic detail that she nominated her womb as the place that had borne Nero. It has been argued that the scene is inspired by Aeschylus, Choephoroi 896, where Clytemnestra bares her breast and invites Orestes to strike it.

82 There is an interesting contrast in the presentations of Tacitus and Suetonius. Tacitus stresses the disagreement of the sources over this incident. Suetonius (Ner. 34.4) attributes the account to “not untrustworthy” authorities. Dio 61.14.1–4 recounts the incident as factual.

83 The memory of Agrippina’s burial is preserved in the remains of a theater building near Bacoli known as the Sepolcro di Agrippina. To add insult to injury, she was cremated on a dining room couch instead of the traditional funeral bier.

84 Seneca (Ep. 51.11) observes that Marius, Pompey, and Caesar all had villas in the Baiae area.

85 The term “Chaldeaeans,” an ancient people of Babylonia, was frequently used as a synonym for astrologers. Dio (61.2.2) also reports the same prophecy, attributing it to an unnamed astrologer. Tacitus (Ann. 6.22.4) had earlier observed that he would later relate a prophecy about Nero’s reign made by the son of the famous soothsayer Thrasyllus.

86 It is to be remembered that these dramatic events had taken place in the course of a single night. His mother took her leave just before midnight.

87 There is no other evidence that Nero visited Eleusis on his tour of Greece.

88 Dio is the only source to report that Nero gave money to the praetorians; such generosity was likely, indeed was almost de rigeur, in situations where the loyalty of the praetorians was particularly crucial.

89 One of these missions is recorded by Quintilian (Inst. 8.5.15): Julius Africanus, a noted orator of Gallic origin, declared that on this occasion Nero’s Gallic provinces entreated him to bear his good fortune with courage.

90 Joint rule would have been constitutionally impossible for a woman in Rome, and Nero is clearly trading on the resentment felt about Agrippina’s patent desire for indirect power. Caligula had included his sisters in the traditional oath of loyalty sworn to the emperor (Suet. Cal. 15.3), but the suggestion here is that Agrippina sought to go much further. Of course, since the charge involves Agrippina’s future intentions, it cannot be disproved.

91 Agrippina had attempted to encourage frugality in Nero, but there is no evidence that she blocked donatives.

92 This is a considerable exaggeration. Agrippina had sought only to listen to meetings of the Senate (Tac. Ann. 13.5.1). On Agrippina’s attempt to meet the Armenian deputation, see Chapter II, n.73.

93 Seneca regularly gave Nero help in writing his speeches, as for instance in his eulogy on Claudius’s death (Tac. Ann. 13.3.1) and his early speeches advocating leniency (Tac. Ann. 13.11.2). Quintilian (Inst. 8.5.18) identifies this letter as a work of Seneca and quotes from it Nero’s declaration that he could scarcely believe that he had survived and that he took no joy from it.

94 Public prayers (supplicationes) were originally days of fasting in times of distress. Images of the gods were placed on a couch, and a table with food was set up before it. The Arval brethren had a special session on March 28, 59, to offer prayers for the safety of the emperor (Smallwood 22.5–9).

95 These so-called dies nefasti were those on which the praetor could not pronounce judgment in the law courts. Agrippina’s birthday was November 6.

96 This is the first allusion in the Annals to Thrasea Paetus, the famous Stoic victim of Nero (see Chapter VIII).

97 This eclipse is mentioned by Dio, and by Pliny (HN 2.180), who reports that it was seen in Rome on April 30 at midday and by Corbulo in Armenia three hours later.

98 Junia Calvina was at one time married to Lucius Vitellius, brother of the later emperor, and was said to be a woman of great charm (Sen. Apocol. 8.2). She was exiled after her brother’s suicide (Tac. Ann. 12.4.1, 8.1). She lived until near the end of Vespasian’s reign (Suet. Vesp. 23.4). Calpurnia was forced into exile by Agrippina, supposedly because Claudius had praised her beauty (Tac. Ann. 12.22.3).

99 Lollia Paulina was the wife of Caligula, and after his death was a contender for marriage to Claudius, after the death of Messalina. Agrippina saw her as a rival and brought about her death.

100 Junia Silana was probably the daughter of Marcus Junius Silanus and sister of Junia Claudilla, wife of Caligula; she was married to Gaius Silius before his affair with Messalina. Thwarted in a later marriage attempt by Agrippina, she sought to slander Agrippina before Nero and was exiled (Tac. Ann. 11.12.2, 13.19–22).

101 The divisions of the Roman people as instituted by King Servius. He established four city and twenty-six rural tribes. Their number was later raised to thirty-five.

102 The victorious general would mount the Capitol during a triumph, a tradition contributing to the irony of the present situation.

103 Dio (61.16.2²) places this line in the context of Nero’s return to Rome in 59 after the murder of his mother. The Argive Alcmeon’s mother, Eriphyle, accepted a bribe to persuade her son to participate in the expedition against Thebes. He returned to kill her. Orestes, son of Clytemnestra, killed his mother and her lover to avenge their murder of his father, Agamemnon.

104 “Nero killed his own mother” is conveyed in Greek as Neron idian metera apecteine. Greek numbers are represented by letters of the alphabet. The numerical value neron is the same as the rest of the line idian metera apecteine, namely 1005, suggesting that Nero = matricide.

105 Aeneas, the founder of the Roman nation and of the Julian line, was glorified for having carried his father from the burning ruins of Troy.

106 Parthians were celebrated for their skill at archery.

107 Orcus is god of the underworld. Isidorus and Datus are not otherwise known.

108 Suetonius and Dio (61.16.3) are in agreement that Nero’s reaction was restrained, Dio saying that he took no legal action.

109 This line is also cited by Suetonius (discussed earlier).

110 This is clearly the eclipse mentioned in Tac. Ann. 14.12.2.

111 A chariot carrying the image of Augustus.