The First Ladies of Rome: The Women Behind the Caesars (27 page)

Over the next three years, between 51 and 54, a haze of discontent settled over the metropolis and its outposts. For all the fanfare of the emperor’s remarriage and the drawn-out celebrations of the victory over Britain, the streets of the capital were hit by demonstrations against corn shortages, and on one occasion Claudius himself was attacked in the forum by an angry bread-throwing mob. Rumours flew about a row within the imperial household between the two stepbrothers, sparked by Britannicus’s provocative refusal to call Nero by his new Julio-Claudian name. Britannicus’s future certainly looked bleak. Nero was getting much more positive publicity and Agrippina’s manoeuvring even went as far as removing old household retainers and installing individuals who would be loyal to herself and her son. One such appointment was the new prefect of the praetorian guard Afranius Burrus, a one-time procurator on Livia’s estates and a stolid individual who would have a key supporting role to play in events to come.
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Plunging on in the face of public disgruntlement, Claudius tried to claw back popular ground in 52 by staging a spectacular mock naval battle on the Fucine Lake 50 miles (80 km) outside Rome, to celebrate the eleven-year culmination of an ambitious public works project to dig a drainage tunnel that would prevent the surrounding region from flooding. The event attracted an audience of thousands from the city and the provinces and involved the participation of 19,000 player-combatants, navigating about the 12-mile-long (19-km-long) lake in two teams of fifty ships a side.
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One of those present in the wooden viewing stands that day was the great Roman writer Pliny the Elder, who described the dazzling sight of Agrippina dressed in a golden
chlamys
, a Greek version of the Roman military cape that her husband was wearing. The
chlamys
was a foreign warrior’s garment, hardly the typical uniform of a Roman woman, though tellingly it was the dress of Virgil’s tragic heroine of the
Aeneid
, Queen Dido of Carthage, who like Agrippina had taken on traditionally male responsibilities, attempting to found a new kingdom for her people.
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Then, what should have been a spectacular public-relations coup for Claudius fizzled into a damp squib. The grand opening of the drainage tunnel failed to lower the level of the lake, an engineering blunder that reportedly provoked a behind-the-scenes spat between Agrippina and the agent of the works, Narcissus, drawing complaints from the disgruntled freedman about the
Augusta
’s ‘dictatorial feminine excess of ambition’.
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Narcissus, agent of Messalina’s
destruction, now found himself increasingly sidelined at court in favour of Pallas, the freedman who had championed Agrippina as Claudius’s new bride and with whom, people whispered, the
Augusta
was sharing her bed.

Agrippina’s use of sex was another of the key differences between Claudius’s old wife and his new one, according to her ancient appraisers. Like Messalina, she was said to have used murderous force to eliminate her enemies and sexual favours to keep her supporters close. But if Messalina, portrayed as a born whore, had traded politics to gratify her love of sex, Agrippina traded sex to gratify her love of politics.
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In other words, she had sex ‘like a man’, using it purely as a means to an end just as her great-grandfather Augustus was said to have done during his campaign against the profligate Antony, tapping up the wives of his enemies to secure information against them.

Like Messalina, Agrippina chalked up a long list of victims during Claudius’s reign, but the latter’s motives were usually seen to have been pragmatic rather than sexual. Those whose downfall was attributed to her included Caligula’s former wife Lollia Paulina, once considered a candidate to replace Messalina as Claudius’s bride, who was accused of involvement with magicians and astrologers; her vast fortune was confiscated and she was sent into exile, where according to one account she was forced to commit suicide, and in another, decapitated, her severed head later brought for inspection and identification to the
Augusta
.
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The influence accumulated over Nero by Domitia Lepida, the elder sister of Agrippina’s first husband who had taken guardianship of the boy while Agrippina was in exile under Caligula, was also resented, and a death sentence was passed against Lepida for sedition and trying to curse the emperor’s wife. In 53, Agrippina was accused of bringing about the false prosecution of the senator Statilius Taurus, on the grounds that she coveted his gardens. That this was exactly the same reason given for Messalina’s decision to frame Valerius Asiaticus surely hints that at least some of the accusations against Agrippina Minor were just recycled fiction. Such duplications of plotline recur frequently throughout the history of Roman imperial women – and indeed men – reflecting a tendency to adopt a one-size-fits-all approach to the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ wives of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ emperors. Another of the ancient historian’s favourite recurring characters was the emperor’s wife who poisoned her husband to pave the way for her own choice of successor. In this respect, Agrippina was to prove herself
the true successor to the historical legacy of her great-grandmother Livia.
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Accounts of Claudius’s last years describe him as afflicted by poor health and a dissatisfaction with his choice of wife that saw him take to the bottle, reportedly slurring one day that it was his lot in life to marry outrageous wives and then punish them. This ominous remark, coupled with other dropped hints that he regretted having adopted Nero and now wanted Britannicus to succeed him after all, apparently spurred Agrippina to take action. Although most later reports were convinced that the sixty-three-year-old emperor met his death at his wife’s hand, wildly differing accounts of how she managed it were in circulation. One line of thought had it that she had employed Claudius’s official taster Halotus to slip a drug into his master’s dinner at an official banquet. Another said that Agrippina herself had spiked Claudius’s favourite dish of mushrooms at a family dinner, mimicking Livia’s supposed trick with Augustus’s snack of green figs. Yet another claimed that Agrippina had enlisted the services of notorious professional poisoner Locusta, but that when Claudius did not seem to be succumbing to his toxin-laced mushrooms as hoped, a panicking Agrippina threw caution to the wind and called in the family doctor Xenophon to baste Claudius’s throat with the poison which eventually had the required effect.

Whichever version one chooses to accept, the end result was the same. On 13 October 54, Claudius’s death was announced. In an almost identical replay of events involving Livia following the death of Augustus, news of the emperor’s demise had been concealed until the Senate could be convened and all arrangements for a succession confirmed. Once Agrippina was satisfied that everything was in place, the doors of the imperial palace were flung open, and sixteen-year-old Nero emerged, flanked by his praetorian prefect Burrus, to be dutifully hailed by his troops as emperor.
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In 1979, archaeologists working on the eastern side of the ancient city centre of Aphrodisias in Roman Asia Minor, made a remarkable discovery. During the first century, Aphrodisias, a small but prosperous provincial city with a population of around 50,000, enjoyed a special relationship with the Roman imperial family, thanks in large part to the Julio-Claudian family’s long-standing claim to be descendants of the city’s patron goddess Aphrodite. In tribute to the connection, not long after Tiberius’s accession, the people of Aphrodisias had spent
several decades constructing an elaborate religious complex consisting of a 100-metre-long (330-foot-long) walkway flanked by three-storeyed porticoes of relief panels carved from single blocks of native white medium-grained marble, dedicating the monument to the worship of the Julio-Claudian emperors.

When the remains of this complex, known as a Sebasteion (after the Greek word
Sebastos
, meaning ‘Augustus’) were found, only around half of the original sculptural relief panels survived, but several preserved images of a stellar line-up of the key Julio-Claudian players, including one, pieced together from eleven fragments of varying size, showing Agrippina Minor standing next to Claudius whilst he was crowned with an oak wreath by a representative of either the Roman Senate or the people. In keeping with their semi-divine personae here, Claudius appears naked but for a military cloak hanging off his right shoulder, while Agrippina wears the flowing
chiton
gown typical of female deities, and, by the sheaf of corn-ears in her left hand, is clearly intended to be associated with Demeter, Greek patron goddess of the harvest. Husband and wife are shown clasping hands, a gesture that signified marital or political concord rather than affection in Roman portraiture, though it seems ironic now given the alleged nature of Claudius’s demise.

But an even more startling sight met the excavators’ eyes when they flipped over another heavy, almost perfectly preserved slab, 172 cm (67 inches) in height and 142.5 cm (56 inches) in width, found face-down in the north portico, where it originally would have hung. It was a larger-than-life sculptural relief of Agrippina, standing to the right of her son Nero, on whose head she almost casually places a laurel wreath. Once more, she is dressed in the regalia of Demeter, and in the crook of her left arm is balanced an overflowing cornucopia of pomegranates, apples and grapes. Nero wears military dress, and gazes off into the middle distance while Agrippina’s stance is angled inwards, towards him, seemingly contemplating her son’s profile as she rests the laurel over his carefully ordered locks. It is the first known visual representation of one member of the Roman imperial family crowning another, let alone of a mother stage-managing her son’s coronation. Since Nero’s dress proclaims him a military victor, Agrippina’s appropriation of the role of master of ceremonies, rewarding him for his notional triumphs, is all the more startling, and contrasts sharply with her depiction as a dutiful hand-holding spouse at the side of Claudius. Not even Livia had been given so powerful a role in her son’s iconography.
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From the day that her sixteen-year-old son stepped out of the imperial palace to be hailed by his troops as emperor, Agrippina was in fact given a standing in Roman public life closer to a man’s than any woman before her had enjoyed. Gold and silver coins minted in 54 to mark Nero’s accession featured the profiled heads of both the emperor and his mother facing each other nose-to-nose on the same side of the coin, inscribed underneath with the words
Agripp[ina] Aug[usta] divi Claud[ii] Neronis Caes[aris] mater
: ‘Agrippina Augusta, mother of the divine Claudius Nero Caesar’ – Agrippina’s name, note, given precedence. No Roman mother had been previously given pride of place in an emperor’s genealogy as opposed to his father – Tiberius of course had vetoed similar advertisements of the relationship between himself and Livia – while the head-on pose of these facing portraits appeared to give neither seniority.
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The effect of all these images was to make it very clear to whom Nero owed his authority as emperor. During that first year of his reign, Agrippina was promoted both publicly and privately as her son’s running mate, a ubiquitous companion in the officially sanctioned artistic expression of his authority. She was also a perpetual presence at his side in the popular anecdotes of his principate that did the rounds of Roman society long after his downfall. It was said Nero’s mother reclined next to him while they travelled about in his litter, wrote letters to foreign dignitaries on his behalf and generally managed the business of empire for him.
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When, as was customary, the new commander-in-chief was asked by his personal bodyguard for a password to assist with security arrangements, Nero chose
optima mater
– ‘best of mothers’.
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The Senate also contributed unusual honours to Agrippina, voting that she have the right to be accompanied by two public officials or
lictores
– going one better than Livia who had only been permitted a single lictor in her train – and decreeing that Agrippina become the official guardian of Claudius’s divine cult, ironic given the clamorous insistence of the literary record that she had had a hand in his murder.
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Agrippina was subsequently credited with striking foundations on the Caelian hill for a temple dedicated to her deified husband’s worship. When finished, the structure would be one of the largest temple complexes in Rome, though it had a difficult route to completion: Nero had the building ripped down before it was later salvaged by future emperor Vespasian.
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The priesthood to their deified husbands was still the only official
position women of the imperial household were permitted to hold, and it is not clear exactly what kind of public duties it required. But Agrippina’s apparent ability to wade into the lion’s den of Roman imperial power during the early days of her son’s reign was without precedent, stressing how much Nero’s claim to the throne depended on her. In part, this was an inevitable consequence of Nero being so young and needing advisers around him. His first speech in the Senate made an attempt at appeasement of its patrician members, offering assurances that from now on, the separation of imperial house and state would be respected, and the Palatine would not intervene in the jurisdiction of the Senate as had happened sometimes under the previous incumbent. This promise was somewhat undermined, however, by the fact that meetings of the Senate were now often convened in the imperial palace, precisely so that Agrippina could eavesdrop on proceedings from a curtained-off vantage point at the rear of the room. One wonders whether she had a discreet way of making her feelings on matters known. She certainly tried to involve herself in their decisions, as evidenced by her attempt – and failure – to overturn an old policy of Claudius that aspiring
quaestors
should be required to finance gladiatorial shows from their own pockets.
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