Agrippina the Younger (In Our Time)

this is the BBC this podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK thank you for downloading this episode of in our time for more details about in our time and for our Terms of Use please go to BBC co dot uk' / radio 4 i hope you enjoy the program hello Agra peda the younger was four-time one of the most powerful women in the Roman world born in the early 1st century AD she was a member of the Giulia Claudian dynasty that ruled the Roman Empire for many decades when her brother Caligula became Emperor she exercised at first considerable influence after she married the Emperor Claudius she enjoyed high status as Empress and secured that position through complex political maneuvers when a teenage son Nero came to power she effectively acted as his regent her life was full of tremendous drama and intrigue in 39 ad she allegedly took part in a plot against Caligula her brother and he sent her into exile it was said that she poisoned her husband Claudius Nero eventually turned against his mother and had her killed with me to discuss the dark operatic and contested life of atropine to the younger ah Catherine Edwards professor of classics and ancient history Birkbeck University of London Alice Koenig lecturer in Latin and classical studies at the University of st. Andrews and Matthew Nichols associate professor of classics at the University of Reading Catherine Edwards AG repeated younger was born in about 15 AD what changes are taking place in Rome in Rome's political situation in the decades or so leading to her purse well Agri Pina was born into what was really Rome's first family if you like Rome had previously been a republic but in the tumultuous years of the first century BC long periods of civil war were succeeded by an autocracy that was established by agra poenas great-grandfather the Emperor Augustus Augustus had then ruled Rome for about 40 odd years he died in the year fourteen just before Agra Pina was born and was succeeded by his stepson Tiberius he was the son of his wife Livia but we're talking about Augustus being a quite remarkable man I mean to be the first M after the mushy nations of a republic and the efforts of a republic is one thing and he but to stay there for such a long time is another to turn himself into semi-god is another but then he introduced dynastic politics from now on somehow other people had to be related to previous empires ie to his family he was the founding family that's right but it was a it was a very sort of in a way rather informal set up because it wasn't the case that he designated an heir in an official way but he would there were there are signs that first of all that his grandsons were were marked out to be his heirs he didn't actually have a son he had a daughter Julia so her sons were marked out as his heirs but they died before him and then later he was obliged to adopt Tiberius his stepson to take over his powers the idea of adoption was very strong then wasn't it and was very positive you adopted somebody and that was that they were your son to all intents and purposes people didn't challenge that that's right I mean adoption had traditionally been used by the Roman aristocracy in a family where there wasn't a male a male heir particularly you would adopt someone who would take on your family name take on your family religious obligations and inherit your family's prestige and that became all the more important under the principle with emperors many of whom didn't actually have a son who survived to adulthood and they would then adopt someone who was a plausible looking candidate to take over their to inherit their their property in that in due course so can we take a take up I'd Rapinoe from her birth over the first few years what what did Shakespeare's the first family was it massive wealth Marcus you tell me well Agri poenas father was Germanicus he was a tremendously glamorous and popular character he was in fact the the grandson of Augustus wife Livia he was a very successful general and he'd had military successes in Germany particularly and indeed it was in Germany that Agra Pina was born and what isn't modern cologne now her mother Agra Pina the elder was actually the granddaughter of Augustus himself so she she was both from Augustus and from his wife Livia her mother Agri Pina was a very powerful had raised little partial character and is described with some ambivalence by ancient historians particularly Tacitus who in some ways admires her her courage I mean she stood up to mutinying soldiers when they were in the camp in the Rhine I didn't quite get them how and who were they well she made the Roman soldiers ashamed of having mutiny because they were posing a threat to her and her young family say when she and when there was a suggestion that there was too much trouble in the camp and that Agri Pina and her young children would have to leave the soldiers were so ashamed that Augustus's granddaughter was going to be leaving them that that sort of calmed them down and then there's another occasion when she intervenes to stop a bridge being destroyed and again these are seen as in a way brave acts but also ones that are not entirely appropriate to a woman and so she was brought up in almost entirely martial family which is also a family of supreme power and what was expected of her that could be another younger how do I read the younger well we don't know very much about her early education in fact her father died when she was very young same as always in this in this mysterious very mysterious circumstances yes there are lots of stores that he was poisoned and suspicion fell on on another Roman leading Roman this at this stage Germanicus was in in the East in in Syria a suspicion fell on piezo and the idea was that Pisa had been put up to this by type areas on the grounds that Tiberius was jealous of Germanicus so it was a race of a complicated entry within the unity within the imperial family but Germanicus dies when a grouping is really very young and that leads her quite vulnerable because there's a lot of tension between her mother Agri Pina the elder and Tiberius and we'll say between Agri Pina and the L di gravina and Livia who's powerful because she's Tiberius his mother just finally before I move on how far it does she does she do we feel do we know anything about her feeling of how far Shores from the center of power at this stage as a young girl not not even yet what we now call the teenager we don't know very much about how she felt and it's a bit tantalizing because we do know that she actually wrote her own memoirs much later when her son Nero was Emperor Agri Pina wrote her memoirs which recorded her life and the fortunes of her family they would have been very gripping reading those memoirs were known to the historian Tacitus and he has one episode which he explicitly says he's taken from those memoirs but he may well have taken all sorts of other things as well but we never find out what she really felt when she was a teenager in Rome because they otherwise lost yes I'm afraid so a laconic how to multi as' was so young that you're going to develop this younger child which she brought up in I said a father died in mysterious circumstances that seems to be mysterious circumstances seem to be in the order of the day yes absolutely Agri Pina the youngest spent much of her childhood watching various members of her family disappear in mysterious or unpleasant circumstances so she must have had a very unsettled childhood Tina she lost her father when she was about 4 or 5 she then that the the loss of her father pitched her mother a Kapena the elder and Tiberius into a very hostile relationship a groupie near the elder came back from Syria with the ashes of her husband Germanicus and was met Mike America's his brother Claudius but conspicuously not met by Tiberius Olivia and she proceeded then to try and bring Tiberius and Livia to your account for the death of her husband so and it precipitated a great crisis in Tiberius his reign he was forced in the end to put on trial Paizo who was supposed to have been instrumental in poisoning Jamarcus in fact positive and his wife plan Sina were put on trial plans Nene was a great friend of Livia's and Livia managed to get her off the charges but PA was eventually dealt with and but Agra Pina the elder continued to be a thorn in Taveras aside and she became a great rallying sent someone for him around whom antipathy for the emperor tiberius gathered and so Agra Pina the younger grew up well that relationship was breaking down and it culminated eventually in Agra Pina the elder being arrested being exiled and eventually being done to death so horribly done to them be flogged until she lost an eye and then starve to death yes absolutely and in the meantime also two of Agra penis brothers were imprisoned and killed and starve to death eating started from mattresses absolutely that's the the story that one of them was so hungry he ended up eating the stuffing from inside his mattress and while in prison she was surrounded by all this is a mother these are her brothers and there was another brother of course mr. feature absolutely um the one brother who survives becomes the Emperor Caligula so she grew up with the the incredible example of her formidable mother and who as catherine has just said managed to it was almost a more effective military commander at times than her husband Germanicus in quelling mutinies but who also was incredibly ill-advised in her hostility to the emperor but she also grew up she ended up once her mother was exiled she ended up going to live with her great-grandmother Livia and so she grew up under the influence of a very different powerful subtly powerful woman there and she married domitius enobarbus absolutely thirteen when she was 13 and he would have been about 30 and they were married for about 12 years we we don't know a great deal about the marriage we're told by Suetonius that he was a very shady character so there are various stories that he deliberately ran over a child playing in a village street because he was in his way and you know he seems to be a very on salubrious character although those stories might have come about because he gave he produced one child the marriage produced us one child about nine years in the boy who was to become the in preneur oh and his father didn't give him a very good casual reference City from the start no apparently de Matias had said that any offspring of himself in Agra Pina was bound to be a monstrosity again who knows how much that story is based in truth or is a colorful way of preparing the ground for what did the significant marriage or is it just a sort of sideways shunt for a younger daughter it was like many of the marriages that were arranged for Agra Pina and members of the imperial family it's you she was faintly related to Matthias Ahenobarbus he was descended via Octavia or Justices sister so it it was a it wasn't a sideways shunt it was a it was a prestigious marriage and it was it was always going to be the case that any offspring of that marriage if it was going to be male would be a potential air in the Julia Claudia family and this is one thing that happens again and again and again producing male heirs is massively important and they're the sort of Kings on the chest but Kings in Waiting on the chessboard out there yes if Agra peda had had daughters or it had no children at all she would not have gone on to have their career that she had because she gave birth to Nero or the Empire though the or he would become Nero she went on to have an extraordinary time Matthew Matthew Nichols in 37 ad group eNOS brought the Caligula the game Emperor and what kind of status did that give you Pina it gave her enormous status very quickly and she was caught up in the glamour and excitement of the change from the decrepit old rather disliked emperor Tiberius to someone who appeared at that stage to be a promising young prince he was full of the glamour of Germanicus that we've heard about his name Caligula is a nickname his real name is Gaius Caligula is a name that means little boots from the little army boots the soldiers in the camp for would dress him up in so he was full of this millage many colleges file campaigns yeah that's right so he was seen as a great hope and historians one of astonishingly quick decline from promise to complete dissolution and his sisters are caught up in that but initially she was given very very positive status she was promoted she and her two sisters she was given the rights at the Vestal Virgins had for example which means that she got to sit in the front seats at public spectacles and that's not a trivial honor it puts her right in center stage right in front of the Roman people as a princess of the blood she was commemorated on coyness news there's an extraordinary sister Tia stitches her and her two sisters dressed up as goddesses of security and prosperity and Concord as if they are somehow underpinning the happiness of the times and her name is included in the loyalty oaths that the Roman army and the Senate and the governor's all swear to the Emperor and that's the first time that's happened to have Imperial women right there in the the core of the loyalty of the the soldiers to the to the Emperor so early on she's given great status that turns time off fairly fast easy that this time that can we talk about the reputation I suppose I'm talking about sexual excess here well I am and what morale what we would call moral depravity or some people would some people wouldn't there you go but the but this reputation attached itself to Khalil and to Agra pinna and previously mursaleen and so but let's stick with who we know Agra Pina and killing it well Corregidor was accused of incest with his sisters and the tranche of incest comes up fairly frequently and attaches to all sorts of people it seems to be a way of blackening people's names quickly in a fairly unprovable way is it completely unprovable do we is it one of those things that we have to say it was said it was reported and that's as far as written by authors later on um it's not always there as far as we can tell right at the time but Tillich did was making a great deal of his sisters and you could see how rumors might start he was using his sisters in a way that sisters hadn't quite been used before such as well in his promotion of them as part of his regime he is saying that he is a lineal descendant of Augustus which Tiberius wasn't and so the previous the previous Emperor's life with whom cleared Leone to stay for about six years in Capri that's right and according to I think more fact than fiction this time Tiberias had blackened him I'm a vitamin tree business you say it's in the clear I'm nursing a viper for the Roman people the idea that this awful child brought up well awful great-uncle was a kind of punishment for the Roman people by this stage Tiberius was in self-imposed exile on Capri and was very degenerate and strange so we're back to Caligula and a group unit there that you've described as it were two good years he was welcomed he gave them what they wanted there was this young man and so she was black him then then what the mood starts to change Caligula is ill in the summer of 37 and when he recovers somehow the the glamour has worn off and things are starting to become difficult his favorite sister Drusilla dies in 38 leaving the other two sisters a little bit exposed perhaps and Caligula remarries which means he's starting to look to establish his own line so now Agra Pina and her son Nero are possibly a threat to that future dynastic line and then there's a conspiracy brought up or caught up with a possible military conspiracy on the German frontier where there are a lot of powerful legions and the commander of those legions go to Lucas seems to be in some sort of rebellion Caligula is on his way to put this down and at a place called norvania where he and his party are on the road there's then an accusation that Drucilla's widower Lepidus it's been sleeping with both sisters both remaining sisters simultaneously Agri Pina and La Villa and that this is somehow not just yet more adultery and sleeping around but it's also a conspiracy against the Emperor and so he moves against them exile some confiscates their goods Lepidus is killed and we're told that the wagon trains to take their confiscated goods to auction with so many it interrupted the food supply for the whole city right San rehab we've got a long way to go still I mean it's it's quite a plot right sold hold on tight to the back isn't that sit-ups right Catherine how much let's generalize we're saying to give ourselves a breather what give us some idea of the influence maybe even power that roman women could have in that beginning of the first century you reach a first lady I think it is interesting to think about a change from the Republican period where political decisions were made very much in the Senate or in in the public spaces of the city from which women were really excluded but with the move to imperial power autocratic power decisions are made within the imperial household and of course women have an acknowledged place in the household so they have an influence they can they can intervene with the Emperor if they're close to the Emperor so there's that level of political power but I think nevertheless it's also true that in Roman society generally women as property holders have more power than perhaps in some other ancient societies and women are expected to participate in in the social lives of the elite in the way they work for instance in classical Athens and we do find women and particularly under under the under the Emperor's we find women visible in public in terms of statues so we've got statues of Livia around the place and even in a town like Pompeii we find women as patrons so as you machia who builds a portico which has a statue of herself in it as well as a statue of livius as a sense of of kind of women of the imperial family as role models but the power shifted from the Senate men only to what we could call the palace lots of women there that's right and I think that's one of the things that makes traditionally minded Roman senators like Tacitus who's one of our main sources for this period very suspicious of the new system they don't like the fact that decisions are being made behind closed doors and so we get a lot of anxiety and suspicion about the influence of women on those decisions and these are real decisions and it's not it is reported it was said it's people getting being favored it's people getting laid off stuff it's people the the women not only you know are being very effective at getting favors influenced for their friends just to start with another yes I mean there are lots of stories about for instance Olivia doing favors for her friend a girl Anila or when I repeat as Mary took Claudius that she seems to intervene to get the brother of her favorite Friedman palace put into a position of power in Judea so that really women's influence appears to be extending to the you know to the provinces of the Empire we're getting the Claudius thanks for the Cure and Caligula is assassinated Claudius comes into power and with his bad health his limp his stammer is unlikeliness active in emperor can you tell us more about him Alice yes well from very early on in his teenage years it was decided by Augustus and and also called his mother Antonia and Livia together that Claudius should never really have a public role you've mentioned the fact that he had some kind of nervous disorder people speculate about exactly what it was but it involved him stammering and limping and we have Suetonius reports letters from Augustus to Livia talking about how you know this would if if Claudius became too visible it would make people laugh about the imperial family so there was a decision made very early on that while his brother Germanicus was being promoted and given all sorts of public appointments that claudia should be kept behind the scenes that's not how history turned out because when Caligula was assassinated there was no quickly tell the listeners who assassinated him and why why well Caligula's unpopularity had been growing and we hear of a number of potential conspiracies and plots against him following the one that Matthew mentioned earlier eventually in early in January 41 members of the Praetorian Guard the military forces stationed in Rome possibly with some support from members of the Senate and with support of imperial freedmen managed to concoct a plot that actually worked Caligula had been in watching some games was making his way back from the games to the palace down a corridor he was suddenly stranded without any bodyguards and at least three characters came along and stabbed him 30 times and then they raced back to the palace managed to kill his wife his baby daughter and then the accounts of the assassination and what follows differ so it's hard to piece together the jigsaw and I think we've got enough to be going on with let's go back law just became emperor in a most unlikely fashion as well well absolutely only one story is that he was found in the palace by members of the Praetorian Guard cowering behind a curtain afraid that he was also going to be done to death and that he was marched off to the barracks and proclaimed Emperor and as Suetonius says he was proclaimed Emperor by some dreadful accident and why do they want him these tough guys in the Praetorian Guard why do they want him the Praetorian Guard want an emperor for a start they don't want to return to the Republic their power relies on their being an emperor and Claudius perhaps was seen as someone who might be malleable he is an obvious he's not his not obvious in terms of his personality but in terms of his descent from Tiberius not like Tiberius but from Libya he's amendment he's a member of the dynasty so he's still in the clan he becomes a remarkably effective Emperor in a lot of ways doesn't he Matthew Mercer Nicholls and but his wife when he mine was Messalina he was about 42 years about a teenager now how much of a threat was Mussolini at Agrippina the younger I think there were threats to each other and it's because of this business of the importance of the bloodline and maneuvering heirs you might still be infants into a position where in 10 15 20 years time they might one day become emperor so there is a core bloodline we've seen is not it's not straightforward but there are people actually descended from Augustus and in orbiting around them like electrons around a nucleus of these outer shells of cousins and cousins of cousins all of whom might have a claim or a distant stake to to power Messalina is in one of those lateral branches her descent is not from Augustus's from Augustus his sister wears a grip Lena is descended from Augustus and therefore her baby son Nero it's just a little more justice so that's an obvious threat to any any lineage that Messalina might be trying to establish so their threats to each other they need to maneuver around each other to secure the prosperity there in particular line and they seemed to circle around each other menacingly for the first few years of the reign and how does Claudia scope well Claudius we're told in our in the sources is is the dupe of his wives in his Friedman we've heard about the soft power of women imperial court from Catherine and alongside the women there are these freedmen ex slaves who can rise very high in terms of wealth and personal influence over the Emperor but they can never prove I'm a freedmen next slaves often Greeks and they're useful to the Emperor because they can have no real ambition everything like the Praetorians they didn't they thought oh yes yes that's right so at the court women and freedmen we are told by our our sources make Claudius their their dupe and their puppet for a time whether we believe their sources who are reaching for cliche and stereotyped I don't know but that's the story and he gets on with being Emperor very effectively comes here and conquers Britain and becomes a man who's conquered a country that can be a real emperor with a military success builds good aqueducts which is always a mark in his favor he builds a new port to ensure Rome's grain supply he's a practical capable Emperor who rules for quite some time he has various pet obsessions he tries to reform Latin spelling and then never catches on but I think the record is broadly favorable to him Catherine Catherine Andrews and miss alline downfall what brought that about well I think Messalina probably was not as cautious as she might have been about protecting her own position the stories are that she was absolutely obsessed with sexual receiving her sexual desires and mmm yes I mean there's some very lurid stories that she actually completed we were growing the programming and one of them I think we could speak improper language so it doesn't offend younger listeners I mean she is said to have competed with prostitutes through the night and and one and once she won against property and the satirist Juvenal has this picture of her it's sort of gilded nipples and exposing the belly that bore Germanicus started Britannicus say say this is this since that and he calls her in fact Mara tricks our ghoster so she is she's the the August and that that wasn't a title she had at that time but that she is she's the Emperor's wife and she's also a prostitute Mara tricks so she is absolutely she's she's a public figure in the worst possible way so there are stories about her love affairs with actors like minister but the really when things have become really problematic is when she has a relationship with Gaius I let's who's another Roman senator because at that point and an alliance with Silas could potentially threaten Claudius its position there are stories that she wants to marry Silas have Silas adopt Britannicus and then of course he would be a stepfather to to the male heir so that's that's in a sense the you know the story that makes it possible for the the freed man in Claudius is caught to persuade Claudius that he should get rid of Messalina so the stammering Lea effective Claudius moves in and he suggests that she kill herself that's right yes yes she's given orders to kill herself she finds it just might her mother's encouragement she finds it difficult to carry these orders out and Tosca says that's because her soul had been corrupted by lust sort of sense that that kind of the erotic interests a kind of in a way sort of an extreme feminine vice that's not compatible with the bravery that you need to commit with the dagger but you know it was it was in fact I think in she didn't even I think others helped her in the end so she didn't even succeed in doing that right on we go now what's Pina doing at this time Alice well already Agri Pina has been maneuvering Nero into prominence so while Messalina was still married to Claudius and still very much alive a Kapena has been getting Nero to shine and beep applauded about this time so Nero I'm thinking particularly about the games that claudi's put on when to celebrate the 800 anniversary of the foundation of room at this time Nero is nine Britannicus Claudius is real son with Messalina is six and the story goes that Messalina actually maybe even provided clacks of people to applaud Nero and at this point Messalina started to worry that maybe maybe Nero and Agri Pina were posing a real threat and some of the sources suggest that that's why she started to establish this relationship with Silas and maybe try and oust as Claudius so already long before her marriage to Claudius Agri Pina is perhaps maneuvering behind the scenes what we're then told us that unmess Elena's death it becomes important for Claudius to marry again and one reason is that it's important for him to start to re-establish confidence in the imperial family we're told the number of names are put forward and Agri Pina is one of them and she's the one who finds favor because of her descent from Augustus and because she has Nero who's also descended from Augustus she and Claudius together can unite the two lines of the Giulio Claudian dynasty so what then emerges is really a joint PR campaign up to a point one thing that's important not to overlook is that the marriage between Claudius and his niece Agri Pina is incest it's it's a pending against divine and human law as Tacitus tells us and it requires a special dispensation from the Senate to get it approved and that's one reason why there's then quite a big PR campaign from both of them micropenis starts to feature very prominently on coins at the start of Claudius his reign the first time ever that a Roman Empress has been featured on the same coin as her living husband while he's still Emperor she's afforded all sorts of honors and titles far more than any of his other wives and indeed than any other Imperial women have been given so it's not just a group inna who starts to maneuver her way in it's Claudius who's got a makes it interesting that too and Matthew from what I've read from what you've written that's tough p.m. she's a good influence on him it seems but she is not without moral depravity must keep that in the ring I mean it isn't it mercenary from reports it is said but Messalina doesn't have the monopoly yes so can you give us a rounder picture back european and when she extraordinary marries Claudius well if we if we zoom right out and look at the bigger picture it has been said that the last years of Claudius is reimann egg Rapinoe is his life in the first years of Nero's reign when Agri Pina nero 16 when he took over she's a big influence over her teenage son that these years are relatively and this is by low standards admittedly calm free of extrajudicial murder and all the horrors that we hear often the Julia Claudian court so as a political operator she may could be said have brought some stability and we heard about Messalina being sexually leash so his Agra penis she sleeps with with a lot of people according to the sources but there's a difference Messalina does it for her own pleasure Agri Pina doesn't always Spade on an RT onus data to says in the hope of power and hope of control so she's a manipulator you can read a lot of bad on the surface in military sources who wanted to be a sort of pantomime villain an arch mother and manipulating behind the scenes but you can perhaps under the surface see some sense in which she was quite a canny political operator this might be a good term to chant to look at this pantomime villain thing this representation of the women as morally depraved these are from writers who could be called misogynist without stress you you're nodding I'm pleased to say thank you very much and also he throws the men into rather fine relief having these terrible women parodies right what I mean what value do you give to that representation of them in the sources you study too I think we can say that it throws into interesting relief the obsessions and fears of male elite writers in the early second century when spontaneous and Tacitus are writing many decades after the event whether it gives is a true picture of the human being Agri Pina when it's filtered through so many layers of here they and rumor and literary crafting I don't know but we can see that they're afraid of female soft power suborning what they see is the proper political exercise of power in the open as matter you mentioned oh yeah and while Agri Pina is married to Claudius and in the early years of Nero's reign there's an awful lot of successful foreign policy and awful lot of things that are going well at Rome but Tacitus gives a disproportionate amount of narrative to these episodes where Agri Pina is doing away with a potential rival or managing to persuade narrow to merging to sway Claudius to adopt Nero it doesn't see much data or he said that she did away with Claudius yes he poisoned him the sources are pretty unanimous and history Cephas and philosophy just cast a little doubt yes well the moment seems to be right for it's October 54 Claudius let us remember 64 years old it's been a hot summer he might just have died of natural causes of fever but all the sources suggest it was poisoning so in 53 Agrippa nor near starved and pretty high he was Nero was named as a successor and Claudius fell ill temporarily it looks like Nero's going to inherit oh she does poisoning we think Catherine Nero takes over he is the Emperor in waiting she's maneuvered him ahead of his real son Britannicus named after at this place and so well that's true I mean we have to remember there's a three year age difference between Nero and Britannica so Nero's only 16 Britannica is only 13 so Nero is kind of a more plausible candidate to succeed Claudius at this point I mean I do think we need to be quite skeptical about the stories of poisoning we find similar stories told about Livia in relation to all Gustus and it is very much a trait of the manipulative evil Emperor's wife who's scheming to get her son into power because of course it was Olivia's son you believe them on you think I'm intrigued I'm read all this stuff it's really exciting it's very operatic very dark very what it is sort of Game of Thrones - except + right do you believe it I don't think I do believe it to be honest but I think it is I think it is a it's um it becomes a kind of running theme so mostly there wasn't a prostitute and and well I don't believe many know as a prostitute either I think that's another way in which one come these aristocratic male writers make sense of women in public it is they've got to have found their way there by some evil means or other so none of it's true so what we'll be talking about is just a lot of box I think it represents the stories that were circulating at the time and those in themselves are interesting because they give us an insight into how people but you have proof that the proof is not right I don't have proof of course not but some of the historians themselves a Dyer Casius writing a good hundred fifty years later takes he talks about in particular in relation to Nero and Agri Pina he talks about the fact that there were there was nothing that went on behind the palace that didn't become public but also loads of other things were said of them that couldn't possibly be verified or true so there's a grain of truth in some of it presumably but to go back to the Messalina had Messalina benas sexually promiscuous as our sources claim surely someone would have said Britannicus wasn't fathered by Claudius and no one actually said that so that there must have been some assumption that she was a virtuous wife to Claudia well maybe just up until Britannica's perhaps up until then but it would have been entirely the truth here from this chair okay in this strange and and story Alice Nero and Agri Pina the relationship between them he came to power and as Matthew has said the first two years of his power of sixteen to eighteen were applauded he was welcomed by the Roman people he did things that they wanted him to do and then he degenerated how come and what what happened well one of the things we're dealing with is a teenage boy who starting to become frustrated by the interference and criticism of his mother and as Suetonius tells the story it is that it is it starts in as petty way as that that he's frustrated by her constantly criticizing him it is clear from the coinage that from about 55 onwards our penis stops being represented alongside Nero on the coins and he starts to break out from behind her shadow we're told that he starts to make friends of his own of whom she disapproves heartily and we're also told that those friends are terribly disruptive all characters who lead him into all sorts of vice he's someone who's interested in painting and singing doesn't necessarily lead to the fact that you want to and you succeed in assassinating your mother no and well one one episode is Nero begins an affair with a free woman Act II and we're told by Tacitus that this astute woman Agri Pina suddenly becomes incredibly jealous and silly and very worried about the fact that she's losing her grip over over her son and she starts trying to put a stop to the affair and then she starts trying to facilitate it when that doesn't work but this drives Nero into the arms of his other advisors Seneca and Buress whereas the prefect of the Praetorian Guard Seneca his former tutor and he ends up asking asking his mother to move out of the palace she becomes isolated he also we're told murders Britannicus which is something that shocks Agra Pina and further destabilizes her sense of power and eventually sounds anything going to kill her eventually he decides that he must do away with her and this is partly inspired by a new love of his Papa who starts who wants Nero to divorce but none of it is that he sends half a dozen people or whatever it is she's isolated in this place and the killer and she's big she's given she's given Matthew a sort of noble Roman death yet in the record there's also social anagrams before that with the collapsing boats and people can bypass those too many assassination attempts the one that did it is it's all part of the same one in it and she's alone in her villa she hears crashes in the corridor a party kind of not particularly high ranking officers a speech had cumin and and kill her and she does get a noble death speech where she bares her belly that bull Nero and says strike here fair event from kill me here where the trouble started and Tacitus says this fulfills a prophecy that when Nero was born it was foretold he would rule his Emperor but would kill her and she said okey dad dump her out let him kill me as long as he gets to be Emperor so she had her wish in a way and at the moment of her death she was reminded of that there's a sense in which in the records it is said that this redeemed her in many ways she had a noble death that right now you're nodding vigorously Catherine oh yes well I think I think the things that Tacitus is very very ambivalent about a group you know there are things that he finds actually quite admirable about her she's the great survivor she's made it through the rains of Tiberius Caligula Claudius and into the reign of Nero finally she falls victim and he does talk about how how ultimately vulnerable she is because it's never her own power it's always the path that she has through somebody else he's not a reckoning the you'd get we're summing up her now how would you how would you place her well I think that's right that I mean it's always soft power and that means you know she doesn't command the legions she's got people in the Praetorian Guard who are quite loyal to her but ultimately it's her son who gives them their orders so you know that really means that eventually she she kind of runs out of options when when her son has decided that she's got to go I mean you admire for the maneuvering between five is it work we're playing games five different Emperor's immerse she gets to have our own son as Emperor and well she might have been I mean perhaps if she'd been a ruler she would have done better job without having to do all that manipulating but I mean as Matthew was saying earlier if we look at kind of what happened in the reigns of of Claudius and narrow that the number of executions that happen in the first part of Claudius's reign is much higher than the second part of the rain it looks as though there's a real attempt for Claudius to cooperate with the Senate that we tend to get ideas being developed first in the Senate and then I think I'll fine do you think that the the dark side this sort of yeah the dark side of European which is poisoning murdering although how far do you think that is the real Agrippina I think it's very much a constructive Tacitus the historian there's a play that was written called the Octavia before Tacitus wrote his histories and in that Agra Pina appears as a ghost who's full of remorse and self-pity Tacitus is largely responsible for the image that we subsequently get this very colorful picture and he he he categorizes her with these cliches she's a she's a wicked stepmother she's a murderess she deserves male forms of power and you think that's not really what really happened what do you think Matthew finally I think there's no one around to defend her after she dies Nero rules for another nine years there's no one to give a positive image so she slips into history with her murder at the hands of her son being her last great act on the stage and that colours what comes after you've exhausted ridiculous and it's kanika and Catherine Andrews next week we'll be talking about the Sikh Empire thanks very much for listening and the inner time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests the collapsing boat which is a great story my it's a great so we didn't have time I could see you're revving up of the godmother with the lady in the roof and the maid servant who said I am swam to the shore to cheering crowds it's a great story but we didn't have yeah I think a couple of very interesting episodes that that typify the accusation that she's deserving male power of one in the reign of Claudius when the the British chieftain Kara Tarkas comes through him and he's made her to pay homage to Claudius and he also pays homage to a droopy nur he's sitting on a on another dais so that's a very important moment and the idea that there's this woman sitting in front of the standards of the Roman people this is a complete novelty and and then that's kind of superseded by an episode in the reign of Nero when a delegation comes from Armenia and Nero sitting on his desk waiting to receive them and Agri Pina comes in and it looks like she's going to come and sit next him and this is such a shocking idea but Seneca sort of whispers in near a Sierra near a has to go down and carefully meet his mother and steer her off in another direction so that she doesn't kind of take over this this what scene is an absolutely male perogative of interacting with with foreign dignitaries how far is the fact that you are women if I just affect your skepticism about the sources I find it very interesting reading the way in which lots of male 20th century historians have talked about Agra peda the younger they'll read Tacitus and they'll say well we have to take a lot of what Tacitus and Suetonius say with a pinch of salt because one of the things they're doing is expressing their male concern about the dreadful influence that women can have in public life and then they will use vocabulary and analogies of their own that they haven't got from Tacitus that a very revealing of their 20th century anxieties about powerful women conversely there's a there's a fantastic book by Judith Ginsberg which doesn't rehabilitate her Kapena but which actually looks hard at the visual evidence and at the literary evidence and looks at the inconsistencies and they the the the variety of ways in which Agra Pina was represented because in the visual evidence she's portrayed as often as the sort of the the goddess Ceres a woman who symbolizes Roman bounty Roman motherhood and yes so it is it is interest I think I probably do respond to her as a woman myself I wouldn't want to take tea with her I wouldn't want to take tea with her either yes it tasted carefully first our source is also a writing later is not just a fact that there they're men in a men's world that's of course important but they're also writing after an interval of time when Rome is looking back with horror at this dynastic mess the Julia Claudius got the city into the empire antifa century and at a period when there's been an emperor who came in with two adult sons that was part of the bargain since the succession was secured a political 1896 and then it moved to a system of succession by adoption where you could choose an adult heir who was right for the role so they looking back in a slightly more stable time at the shear tangle of dynastic politics men and women cause debt I think one's one thing that's very interesting about the period afterwards is that in the Flavian dynasty which followed the Giulio Clawdeen's and then afterwards as well you don't get very prominent women so Agra Pina may have been one reason with the notoriety of Agra peda maybe in one reason why Imperial women after that were kept very much under wraps and here's Victoria there are many more history and discussion programmes from Radio 4 to download for free find these on the website at bbc.co.uk/topgear you

Channel: BBC Podcasts

Views: 5,057

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: agrippina, history, nero, emperor, rome, younger, claudius, roman, empire, world, amazing, war, battles, battle, military, recovery, hosting, treatment, earth, mystery, truth, shocking, gladiator, gladiators, oldest, sparta, incredible, greek, greece, pyramids, egyptian, egypt, augustus, caesar, education, educational, history documentary, empires, civilization, documentary

Id: ztGt5qn4GOk

Length: 46min 58sec (2818 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 06 2018