a mushroom of one's own
Or, the ACME-sponsored Ancient Roman escapades of Agrippina the Younger.
Hello friends!
It’s time for another installment in what I did not realize was becoming a series on Dirtbags Through the Ages: “Schemey Bitches Allison Learned About from the 1970s BBC Miniseries I, Claudius, Which They Watched During COVID Because the Judge John Hodgman Podcast Recommended It.”
If you know of another period in Ancient Rome that’s equally full of dirtbags and has an accompanying television miniseries, please recommend it to me in the comments. I adore these fuckers but I absolutely need to see them dramatized in front of my eyes to tell all the Drususes and Germanicuses apart.
(Germanicii? Unsure.)
Previously in this series:
Empress Livia Drusilla, the Poisoning HBIC of Ancient Rome
Emperor Caligula, the Unhinged Fuckup Who Made His Horse a Senator (apocryphally)
And now, moving on to another fucked-up lady who only showed up tangentially in I, Claudius and so I did not fall in love with until more recently:
Agrippina the Younger, the Scheming Roman Empress Who Would Murder a Bitch for Any Reason Whatsoever
Agrippina slots right into the Julio-Claudian dynasty described previously in this not-a-series, or at least as neatly as anyone can fit in a family tree that contains as many circles as that one. She was the younger sister of Caligula, which made her the great-niece (and granddaughter) of Useless Noodle Emperor Tiberius and the great-great niece slash great-granddaughterof Livia Drusilla Augusta Queen of My Heart.
If you are trying to figure out how someone can be their own great-uncle’s granddaughter, I would encourage you not to think too hard about it.
Agrippina’s mother was also named Agrippina, and her father was named Germanicus, because every man in Rome was named Germanicus. I am going to talk about them as little as possible for that reason.
Everything Is Allowed at Grandma’s House, and by Everything I Mean Murder
Julia Agrippina was born in 15 CE, while her dad was on campaign in the Rhine Valley in modern-day Germany. The family traveled around for several years before returning to Rome when Agrippina was maybe three years old. Everyone in Rome loved her dad, who was a very popular warrior and all-around cool guy. (The Germans, probably, did not share this assessment.)
Daddy Germanicus died when Agrippina was four, leaving her to be co-raised by her mother and her great-grandmother Livia, whose son Tiberius was at this point Emperor of Rome.
Do you think you know where this story is going? Because I am here to confirm that yes, YOU DO. Any child raised from the age of four by Poison Mastermind and Murdery Queen Livia is going to be a dirtbaggy badass. And Agrippina did not disappoint.
When Agrippina was 13, Emperor Tiberius arranged for her to marry an old man with political connections named Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus. This is the gnarliest name I encountered throughout this story, and it made me dislike him instantly. A contemporary historian described him as “loathsome in every respect,” so at least my first impressions were right.
Aside: Roman historians did not fuck around with their petty bitching and I love them for it. Every source reads like the Burn Book from Mean Girls.
O Brother, What The Fuck Art Thou Doing
In 37 CE, Emperor Tiberius died. I like to believe Agrippina poisoned him for making her marry an asshole, which is not supported by the evidence but would make me happy. In any case, the person next in line for the throne was none other than Agrippina’s older brother Caligula.
History remembers Caligula for one thing, and it’s being a bad time for Rome and everyone around him. This was probably extra-true for Agrippina, since she had to be very close to her brother while he was visibly losing his hold on sanity and pretending to be Zeus Himself. There are rumors about whether he sexually assaulted her and her sisters, which I can’t prove but wouldn’t doubt.
In 38 CE, a 24-year-old Agrippina teamed up with her sister Livilla to murder Caligula and instate their cousin on the throne instead. I don’t know much about the cousin except that he was (statistically) less likely to make his horse a senator, which would make him an improvement. This was known to history as the Plot of the Three Daggers, which is indisputably spectacular. I don’t have time to start writing historical mysteries set in the Julio-Claudian era, but if I did, that would be the title of Book One.
Despite sounding like a long-lost Sherlock Holmes story, the Plot of the Three Daggers was foiled by Caligula. The cousin was executed, and Agrippina and Livilla were exiled from Rome to an island in the Mediterranean. Unpleasant Husband did not accompany them, so honestly this might have been a win all around.
About this time, Agrippina gave birth to her first child, a boy. His given name has entirely too many words in it, as appears to be Roman tradition. Fortunately for me, he picked a pretty distinctive name later in life, so let’s just call him Nero.
A Startling Number of Murders
Now, as you can imagine, Agrippina was not the only person in Rome who had the idea “hey, maybe we should just totally stab Caligula.” So it came as no surprise that just a few years later in 41, a comical number of soldiers stabbed Caligula to death in a secret tunnel under the imperial palace. Reminder to all my readers: stay sexy, don’t venture alone into secret tunnels.
Around this time, Agrippina’s Unpleasant Husband had also died of an old-timey illness, so it really looked like the start of something good for Rome’s schemiest single mother.
The next person to become Emperor was Agrippina’s cousin Claudius, for the understandable reason that he was virtually the only man left in that family tree who had not already been murdered. At this point, I imagine Agrippina had the following conversation with the Ghost of Serial Killer Great-Grandma Livia:
Ghost of Livia: do you remember the most important lesson I taught you, my child?
Agrippina: poisoned figs are an exceptional way to murder your husband?
Ghost of Livia: no, but log that away, it will be important later
Agrippina: if you want to scare people, recline on a couch while wearing a toga and say snarky things over a too-large glass of wine?
Ghost of Livia: once again, no but still good advice
Agrippina: the surest way to power in Ancient Rome is to murder everyone in your path, make your dickhead son emperor, and then control his every move from the shadows?
Ghost of Livia: that’s the one
Agrippina was ruthless, intelligent, and devastatingly sexy, all of which put her in a great position to seduce the new Emperor Claudius and get Lil Nero in line for the throne through the side door. However, Claudius was also no dummy. Perhaps he suspected that the woman hand-raised by Livia, AKA ol’ Poisoned-Fig McGee, was not the best person to start dating. Whatever the reason, he quickly found another husband for her, this one a deeply miscellaneous member of the Roman Consulate.
Agrippina and Miscellaneous Man were married in 41 CE. I’m not even going to bother telling you his name, because Agrippina let him live just long enough to become extremely rich and name her as heir in his will. Then this certified queen poisoned him, took all his money, sidled back up to Claudius, and said “Hey Emperor, I’m single again and three times as rich as before, what do you say now?”
Garden Slayed
I don’t think anyone has ever claimed Claudius was in love with Agrippina. For one thing, he was almost 60 years old to Agrippina’s 34. For another, Claudius was a real fucking nerd, and Agrippina’s greatest joys in life were causing problems and killing bitches. But Claudius had just executed his third wife for treason, and so I guess the train of thought was “look, Agrippina’s rich, and if the last wife couldn’t kill me neither can this one.”
So Agrippina and Claudius were married in 49 CE, making Agrippina Empress of Rome. Rome, almost unanimously, hated this.
Rumors started spreading immediately about Agrippina’s wickedness, most of which were probably true. All of Agrippina’s political enemies had a habit of dropping dead by suicide, which is suspicious enough if it happens once, but when it happens repeatedly and over decades, honestly who are we kidding.
Wikipedia provides the following list of Agrippina’s murder victims. See if you can find my favorite.
If you guessed “Statillus Taurus in 53 CE,” you are obviously correct. Rival, rival, ex-husband, THIS GUY WITH A DOPE-ASS GARDEN, rival. We love a HGTV fan with her eyes on the prize.
A Shortcut to The Roman Empire Mushrooms
Claudius probably thought it was easier to go along with whatever Agrippina wanted, so he allowed her to be his closest royal advisor. She started making policy decisions, ordering executions, commissioning temples with her face on them, naming cities after herself, all the usual imperial things.
In 50 CE, she even convinced Claudius to formally adopt Nero and then arranged his marriage to Claudius’s daughter, because why would you make Nero the son of the emperor when you could make him the son of the emperor TWICE.
But then Claudius had a thought I feel like should have come to him earlier in the story, and that thought was this: “Hmm, maybe the woman who has been poisoning my advisors and murdered her last husband is not the best person to take political advice from?”
Around 53 CE, Claudius started distancing himself from Nero and favoring his son Britannicus as his heir. This was arguably not an improvement, since Britannicus’s mom had also tried to murder Claudius, but whatever. This was Ancient Rome. The options for “woman who has not tried to murder the emperor” were slim and getting slimmer by the day.
Agrippina saw the political tide beginning to turn and knew what she had to do:
Yes, MUSHROOMS!
In her most Mini-Me Livia moment of all time, Agrippina snuck poisoned mushrooms into Claudius’s dinner one night in 54 CE. As the emperor lay dying, she locked the palace down, summoned all the soldiers, and presented Nero as the new Emperor of Rome.
And that shit worked.
Mom! You Threw Off My Groove!
Nero was 16 at the time, so Agrippina knew full well she was going to be in charge of everything for at least the foreseeable future. Women were still technically not allowed to do political things in Rome, but Agrippina had never seen a law that was going to stop her. She hid behind a curtain during Senate meetings and whispered political advice to Nero, who then basically repeated whatever she said. This is some Polonius-ass nonsense and I adore it. All schemes should involve hiding behind a tapestry of some sort.
I think it’s safe to say that Agrippina would have been an amazing empress, if a particularly murdery one. She had the skills, she had the brains, she had the unmitigated audacity. Unfortunately, Nero was a teenage boy, and teenage boys, despite the best efforts of Murderous Stage Moms throughout history, don’t always make great figurehead emperors. He started sleeping around, fucking up politically, and getting misogynist notions about how much a woman could really know about politics.
Agrippina threatened to have Nero deposed and put her stepson Britannicus on the throne instead if he didn’t shape up. So in 55 CE, Nero, having learned from his mother, poisoned Britannicus at dinner.
Now! You might think this would be the start of a beautiful mother-son bonding relationship! Two poison enthusiasts coming together over a shared hobby! But this, alas, was not to be. Agrippina knew that she couldn’t control her son anymore, and the power struggle to be Head Asshole In Charge Of Rome was on in earnest.
The sniping got worse and worse, until ultimately Nero had Agrippina thrown out of the royal palace in 58 CE. She went to live in her own house, where Nero sent the most annoying people at court to come bother her on a daily basis with stupid lawsuits. This is the kind of petty revenge I am obsessed with. Obviously I am Team Agrippina in this story, but that is the funniest way to get back at your mom.
In Which I Didn’t Know Ancient Rome Was the Inspiration for Loony Toons but We All Learn Something New Every Day
Historians vary wildly about what happened next. The facts agree on one point: Agrippina died in 59 CE at the age of 44. But how??? There are many possible explanations, and each of them is fucking insane. Let’s look at two.
Option One: The Most Elaborate and Unnecessary Boat-Based Accident Since the Dave Matthews Band Incident of 2004
One possible sequence of events goes like this:
Nero’s girlfriend made fun of him for being afraid of his mom
To get revenge, Nero built a boat and drilled a bunch of holes in the bottom
Agrippina took the boat out for a sail
The boat did not sink, but instead had the roof collapse on top of her
However, Agrippina saved herself by holding onto a floating couch and swam to shore
Nero, annoyed, then sent a guy to stab her, making the whole boat thing an unnecessary expense
Option Two: Yzma-Core
Another historian suggests the following:
Nero decided he was going to poison his mother
However, Agrippina had been taking various antidotes to poison every morning for years in case of just such an event, so none of the poisons had any effect
Frustrated, Nero rigged up a machine that would drop ceiling tiles made of stone on Agrippina as she walked by down the hallway
However, the machinery fucked up and this didn’t work
Nero, annoyed, then sent a guy to stab her
Both of these have the most insane Wile E. Coyote energy and I fucking love it. You can imagine Nero painting a train tunnel on the side of a canyon, muttering “I’ll get you this time, Mummy.”
Whether by boat shenanigans, poison, or falling rocks, Agrippina was indeed somehow murdered by Nero in 59 CE. Even after her death, though, Nero remained fucking terrified of his mother. At one point, he sent for a necromancer to summon her ghost so he could apologize. This is the most perfect encapsulation of Agrippina’s swag. I encourage us all to live our lives so our enemies are so afraid of us they call up our ghosts to admit they were wrong.
RIP to a real one.
That’s all for this time, friends! Thanks as always for joining me down a rabbit hole in which half the characters have the same name. Until we meet again, be well, and approach the week ahead with the energy of a Roman historian who has tea to spill and salacious rumors to spread,
-Allison
God I love Wikipedia lists and that one did not disappoint!
The body language in the statue of Agrippina and Nero! 😆