00:00:00.000Hello, and welcome to Vulgar History, Season 2, Episode 2. My name is Anne Foster, and this
00:00:15.920is a feminist women's history comedy podcast. I don't know why I made there be so many words
00:00:22.960in explaining what it is, but I think I've explained it properly in every episode so
00:00:27.860far. So in season one, we were looking at women who made history by quote unquote misbehaving,0.98
00:00:36.180which is sort of like also not quote unquote misbehaving because several of them did murder
00:00:41.480people. This season, we're looking at women leaders and how men complained and were freaked
00:00:48.480out about it and how it's not so different from nowadays when women leaders are still much more
00:00:55.640rare than men leaders and men and women and just anyone living in the patriarchy still kind of
00:01:02.220freaks out about women leaders for exactly the same reasons they did 2000 years ago so last
00:01:09.520week's episode we looked at cleopatra and this week we're looking we're kind of going chronologically
00:01:15.180this season last season was kind of like random people well not random like people i chose but i
00:01:20.480sort of put them in in order of i don't know the order that seemed to work best but this season i
00:01:25.400think what's going to work best is going chronologically. So you can kind of see the
00:01:30.580development of how women leaders are seen and accepted and treated throughout several centuries
00:01:37.760of Western history and how so little has changed. And it's all really depressing, actually. But
00:01:44.720what's not depressing is a skandalicious story. And today we're going to be looking at the story
00:01:50.040of Agrippina the Younger, who is called that because her mother was also called Agrippina.
00:01:56.860Agrippina the Elder was her mother. And this takes place in ancient Rome. So Agrippina was
00:02:03.560born November 6th in the year 15, like plus 15. So when we were looking at Cleopatra, she was in the
00:02:10.560before common era scenario. Agrippina is a bit later on. So just to sort of put us in the place
00:02:17.540in time. So Cleopatra was fighting against Emperor, or the guy who would become Emperor
00:02:24.240Augustus, aka Octavian, when he was sort of like in his teens slash early 20s. Agrippina
00:02:30.340is the granddaughter, granddaughter? Yes, granddaughter of Augustus. So he was quite a
00:02:39.360lot older. So just kind of Agrippina and Cleopatra were never alive at the same time,
00:02:44.720but they're not like so far apart that people in the story wouldn't have known Cleopatra and
00:02:50.420been around for that whole situation, which you can hear about in last week's episode.
00:02:54.360So this week we are looking at Agrippina. So her full name was Julia Agrippina Minor,
00:03:00.040because, and I have not done a lot of studying and research of ancient Rome. I kind of did a
00:03:05.320crash course to prepare for this podcast episode, but it seems to me that everyone who is female
00:03:10.800in ancient Rome had the first name Julia, but no one actually went by the name Julia.
00:03:15.620It's kind of how it seems. So she's mostly written about as Agrippina. And I also want to
00:03:20.200mention that the main source I'm using for this podcast is the amazing biography of Agrippina
00:03:27.980by Emma Southen, which is, it's got two different titles in some markets, I think in the UK,
00:03:35.240The book is called Agrippina, Empress, Exile, Hustler, Whore in North America. It's got a much more tame title, which is Agrippina, the most extraordinary woman of the Roman world. The book is amazing. It's very much kind of like, I've never before read a history book that so much feels like something I myself could have written, like in the best possible way.
00:03:58.080I feel such a kinship to this book, the way that she puts in jokes and asides and like
00:04:03.340makes fun of historically powerful men.
00:04:06.420And just the very casual conversational way that it's written is amazing.
00:04:11.180And it's also superbly well-researched.
00:04:17.320She uses as her source numerous people who were writing in ancient Roman times.
00:04:22.600And you can read her full bibliography for what all of her sources are.
00:04:26.280but basically just bear in mind that all of the sources she used, like all of the sources that
00:04:31.840exist about Agrippina were basically men who really didn't like her and wanted to make her
00:04:39.300seem as awful as possible. Not unlike Cleopatra. So some of the stuff in this story probably did
00:04:46.840happen. Some of it might be exaggerated. Some of it might be totally made up, but just like
00:04:51.820imagine the word allegedly before almost everything i'm about to tell you because we can't really go
00:04:57.840back and fact check but there's some it's like we know when she was born we know when certain
00:05:02.300events happened but a lot of it we're just kind of filling in the gaps based on what these men
00:05:06.880who hated her claimed had happened so other than births and deaths the dates of everything is kind
00:05:13.080of like here's a story and you kind of get a sense of who she was and what she was like the details
00:05:18.560here or there, no one can ever truly verify, really. So, okay. Agrippina. Julia Agrippina
00:05:25.660Minor, aka Agrippina the Younger, was born November 6th in the year 15. She was the fourth
00:05:32.380surviving child and the first daughter born to two extremely important and popular Roman people.
00:05:37.960So her mother, Vipsania Agrippina, aka Agrippina the Elder, was the daughter of two really important
00:05:44.280Roman people. Her father was Agrippa, who was a really popular and important statesman. And her
00:05:52.220mother was Julia the Elder, who was the daughter of Emperor Augustus. So Agrippina's mother is
00:05:58.800descended through her mother to Emperor Augustus, which I guess makes our Agrippina the great
00:06:05.440granddaughter of Augustus. So that's the spread of time. Sorry, I said grandfather before. It's
00:06:10.760like everyone has the same names and are all married to each other this is not the first mistake
00:06:15.660i'm going to make regarding how people are related to each other because it's just like the family
00:06:20.160tree instead of a tree it's just kind of like a bundle of sticks that's just like thrown haphazardly
00:06:27.000on the ground like and then bundled back together it's there's a lot of intermarrying but what is
00:06:31.920important here to know effectively is that our agrippina agrippina the younger was descended
00:06:37.480very directly through her mother to Emperor Augustus, who was a super long-standing emperor
00:06:44.020of Rome. He was made a god, like everybody respected him super a lot. Her father was named
00:06:51.840Germanicus, and he was the nephew of the person who's the emperor when the story begins, who is
00:06:58.180Emperor Tiberius. So basically, Tiberius is the uncle of Aragropena. So she's the niece of the
00:07:05.280current emperor. And she's also the great granddaughter of famous Emperor Augustus,
00:07:12.940basically. So she's descended on both sides from basically emperors, even though there's still this
00:07:19.940thing in Rome where they're like, we're technically still a republic. Like we don't have one person
00:07:24.300who's the emperor. It's more just like he's elected and everyone just agrees to keep him
00:07:28.600the emperor forever. This sort of like pretend democracy. Again, not my area of expertise,
00:07:34.280But basically, it's a situation where everybody loved Augustus, everybody loved Germanicus.
00:07:40.940So our Agrippina and her sibling and group, her whole family were just sort of beloved,
00:07:45.720sort of like in a, when they were little kids, like William and Harry were beloved because
00:07:50.440Diana was beloved. Like it's that same sort of thing. Like people just reflect the popular
00:07:55.240parents onto the younger kids. Anyway, so her parents, Agrippina the Elder and Germanicus
00:08:01.580were the it couple of Roman history at the time. Agrippina the Elder was doing exactly what a Roman0.55
00:08:08.620woman was expected and wanted to do. And so everybody loved her for that. She was a wife.
00:08:14.380She was a mother. She was devoted to both duties. Well, Germanicus was super handsome and a very
00:08:20.600successful military leader to the point that when he was born, his name wasn't Germanicus. His name
00:08:26.360got changed to Germanicus in recognition of how well he did conquering parts of Germany for the
00:08:31.180Roman Empire. And actually, Agrippina, today's heroine, was born while the whole family was in
00:08:36.820Germany for invasion-related reasons. She was born in a Roman outpost located on the Rhine
00:08:43.860River near modern-day Cologne, Germany. So she was born amid the battlefield, basically,
00:08:50.720to these very popular and successful parents. So the family headed back to Rome a little while
00:08:57.280later. And Germanicus was hailed as a hero in a major triumphant parade slash festival. So this
00:09:04.880is these parades. It's not just like, you know, the Thanksgiving parade or whatever. This is like
00:09:10.420days long festival. Like everybody came there, like they paraded through everywhere. Like it
00:09:16.180was a massive celebration. So Agrippina would be a little toddler seeing just exactly how much the0.58
00:09:21.880city loved her whole family. Germanicus died just a few years later, though, seemingly of natural
00:09:28.800causes. But everyone in this story dies of maybe being murdered. And he is one of them, basically.
00:09:35.800So he died and the city mourned in like a massive scale, like again, sort of like Princess Diana's
00:09:41.560death scale, just like mounds of flowers, just like everybody like weeping, like everyone was
00:09:47.100so devastated because he was so popular and so beloved. So it seemed like he maybe died of
00:09:53.780diseases because he was like traveling around a lot doing battles in a period of time well before
00:09:59.780antibiotics. But his wife, Agrippina the Elder, was pretty sure that he had probably been murdered
00:10:06.280by Tiberius, who was both Germanicus's uncle and also adoptive father. So his uncle father,
00:10:14.340emperor tiberius this is entirely possible who knows but um basically it also makes sense that
00:10:21.820agrippina the elder would assume murder because basically her entire family had been murdered
00:10:26.500mostly by each other like her brothers her parents her aunts and uncles i mean it makes sense like
00:10:31.740to her like that's the normal way most people die is from inter-family murder so um what happened
00:10:39.440is that Germanicus died while he was away. And Agrippina, our Agrippina was a little kid
00:10:46.700staying in Rome with her other little siblings. And her mother sailed into town from being away
00:10:52.660with her husband. And she did sort of like a grief parade. So it's sort of like this sad
00:10:58.060version of the triumph parade that happened before. She reunited with her daughter Agrippina
00:11:03.760and her other children. And everybody, like everybody in Rome was just like freaking out
00:11:08.820about Germanicus being dead he was like their number one favorite person they were like pushing
00:11:13.440over statues smashing dishes like screaming and these like grief riots like killing themselves
00:11:21.500like everybody was was really affected by the death of Germanicus and so Agrippina our little
00:11:28.360Agrippina who at this point was a little girl should have been again paraded through town
00:11:32.280seeing how everybody loved her father so much how she and her family were sort of special
00:11:37.820sort of different from everybody else. And this really doesn't change too much over the course
00:11:42.400of this whole story, which is like decades and decades. Basically the people of Rome
00:11:46.080loved her parents so much, ergo they loved her and her siblings so much. And she kind of saw
00:11:53.240herself as special and different and better than everybody else. And basically the way they treated
00:11:59.540like she kind of was in a way. So we move now into the phase of her life where she is a half0.87
00:12:08.960orphan. Her father is dead and she's being raised by sort of a squad of powerful women. So including0.90
00:12:14.540her mother, Agrippina the Elder, her father's mother, Antonia Minor, and her great grandmother,
00:12:20.840Livia Drusilla, who was the widow of Augustus. And if you watch I, Claudius, the old
00:12:27.640masterpiece theater show. And there's side note, a new podcast just started called iPodius,
00:12:34.240where these two men are watching and discussing episodes of iPodius. And I'm really excited about
00:12:39.040it because I'm very into Roman history at the moment. Anyway, Livia in iPodius is just like
00:12:44.820ideal Roman woman. Again, she's a devoted wife and mother. She also seemed to have been really0.58
00:12:51.640proficient at poisoning people and murdering people and being ambitious and pretty badass.
00:12:57.280So basically, Agrippina, this little girl is being raised by these like very powerful women who had basically thrived as best as they could in the wildly murderous patriarchy that they'd all been born into. And almost immediately, Agrippina got to watch her mother flex her power in a number of different ways.0.99
00:13:16.600So this is also just crucial. So like she's a little girl and these formative events are basically being worshipped by all of Rome and watching her, these influential women in her life, sort of sidestep the fact that in ancient Rome, women had no rights. They couldn't own land. They couldn't have their own money. They couldn't vote. They were basically property. They couldn't go outside unless they were escorted by a male relative.
00:13:42.140they were um i just keep thinking of it i know i read this somewhere and i forget where but
00:13:47.440basically landowners would own you know a house and maybe some chickens and maybe some daughters
00:13:53.400and maybe a wife and those were all sort of the same the same to them basically but agrippine was1.00
00:13:58.200watching these three powerful women um find their own way to to have power and to be powerful in a1.00
00:14:06.640situation where that wasn't expected. So that was kind of, to her, that became normal. That became
00:14:12.680what she figured out her life would be like as well. So the thing to bear in mind here is that
00:14:17.380the emperor, who was her uncle, Tiberius, was awful. Or no, her great, no. Oh my god,
00:14:26.460this family tree. Great uncle. Great uncle. So the emperor is the great uncle. His name is Tiberius.
00:14:31.900he is was a really shitty emperor and not in the way that other emperors were going to maybe talk0.95
00:14:39.340about in this story were really shitty emperors but more in the sense of he just kind of pieced0.97
00:14:43.720out of the whole thing um he was really serious and really stoic and had sort of hermit like0.82
00:14:50.020tendencies to just run away and not want to engage with people and hide and not be emperor
00:14:55.800a lot of the time which is a totally totally fine way for a person to be if that's what you're like
00:15:02.700but it's not the best way to be if you were the roman emperor at this point in time so if you
00:15:08.880will recall agrippina's mother and others were pretty sure tiberius had been responsible for
00:15:13.820the murder of germanicus who might have also just died of like you know getting a cut infected
00:15:19.640anyway um so Agrippina's mother basically was just like she blamed Tiberius for the death of her
00:15:27.300husband and she just sort of started running around and seizing as much power and influence
00:15:31.980as she could to try and destroy Tiberius while Tiberius just sort of hid away on an island
00:15:36.400not wanting to be emperor basically and this was the next sort of 15 years this sort of power play
00:15:43.940went on. So basically this comprised much of the childhood and young adolescence of
00:15:49.660Agrippina the Younger. So in the midst of all of this, Agrippina the Younger was married at age 14
00:15:56.800to a man named Nyas Domitius Ahinobarbis. And that's three different words. And his last name,
00:16:04.640Ahinobarbis, means bronze beard, which means he had red hair. And their son that she's going to
00:16:09.700have with him later also has red hair. So I'm just like, as a red hair person myself, I'm always
00:16:14.540excited to encounter red hair people in stories. Anyway, we're going to call her husband Domitius
00:16:19.460because that is what most people called him back then. He was about 20 years older than her,
00:16:24.460which wasn't weird for that time and or place. They were also related, which wasn't weird either.
00:16:31.100They were distantly enough related that it wasn't a weird thing. Spoiler, she's going to later have1.00
00:16:36.260another husband who's much more closely related and that was treated as weird. So Domitius's
00:16:42.580mother was Agrippina's great grand-aunt Octavia, who was the sister of Augustus and the previous
00:16:51.900wife of Mark Anthony, which just like a bunch of important people. He's an important person.
00:16:58.060He's a lot older than Agrippina, and he also is connected through blood relations to the beloved Emperor Augustus.
00:17:07.520So basically, they became the new it couple.
00:17:12.640He was extremely rich, and he was also, according to literally every source who ever wrote about him, a really heinous and awful person.
00:17:21.560Um, for instance, one time he apparently killed a slave because the slave was less drunk than
00:17:28.800Domitius was and that bothered him. Um, another time he ripped out a man's eye because he felt
00:17:35.880that the man had been rude to him. He also apparently, um, would seduce and or assault
00:17:42.460most women he ever met with or without their consent. So basically he was awful. Um, Agrippina0.97
00:17:50.300was 14. And that is the husband that she landed with. But basically, she'd lived through a pretty
00:17:56.380chaotic 14 years so far. And I'm sure that her, her mother and her female relatives maybe gave
00:18:02.180her some advice about how to not be murdered by this horrible person she was married to.
00:18:07.320And so basically, so the feud between her mother and the emperor continued. The whole thing was
00:18:14.420just like over the top, melodramatic, wildly interesting, and we don't have time to get into
00:18:18.900all of it. But basically, it culminates with the emperor runs away to Capri, the island of Capri
00:18:25.200and never returns. Agrippina was accused of incest. Some people actually maybe had incest.0.89
00:18:34.140Side note on incest, which is basically, it was a thing that people in ancient Roman times seemed
00:18:40.360to accuse each other of a lot, not necessarily because it was happening a lot, but because it
00:18:46.120was kind of the grossest worst thing you could say about a person so there's just like a lot of
00:18:49.920people in the story are going to be accusing a lot of other people of incest there probably wasn't
00:18:54.400actually that much incest happening i'm guessing because it seems like it was such a social
00:19:00.020taboo that it was like accusing someone of it like destroyed their whole life or you wanted
00:19:05.840it to destroy their whole life so probably it wasn't a thing people were up to anyway a lot
00:19:10.360of dramatic things happened. Agrippina's mother and her two older brothers had all at various
00:19:15.940points been sent into exile, put in prison, and all three of them, I believe, had all died by
00:19:21.720suicide to avoid being murdered by Tiberius, basically. The only surviving family members
00:19:29.080Agrippina had at this point were her brother Gaius, who was off living in exile in Capri
00:19:35.920with emperor tiberius because he was maybe sort of his heir um and two other sisters drusilla and
00:19:42.600livilla and then everything the next major plot twist happens in the year 37 tiberius finally
00:19:49.780died and agrippina's brother gaius was named the new emperor um gaius was his his birth name but
00:19:57.620you might know him better by his nickname which was little boots or as it is said in latin caligula
00:20:04.080Ah, so Caligula was Agrippina's younger brother and the oldest slash only surviving boy in her
00:20:12.060particular branch of this very messy family tree. I guess this is just a little side note on Caligula
00:20:18.600to explain kind of what's about to happen, which is just a lot of interesting things.
00:20:24.720So Caligula had spent some time in jail when their mother was sent to jail slash exile.
00:20:30.800And then when she died, he went to live with Agrippina and his two other sisters, Drusilla and Lovilla, in the care of the in the household of just like mighty women in this like, oh, what's the thing called?
00:20:43.160Just this house of super powerful badass women, basically, this sort of steel magnolias, but ancient Rome scenario.
00:20:50.660So the thing is that so Tiberius saw Caligula is basically the guy who is going to be probably emperor after him.
00:20:59.740But Tiberius was also really paranoid about someone trying to steal the throne away from him, because everybody constantly was. So is that paranoia when it's true? Anyway, so to keep Caligula from being able to emerge and like take over before Tiberius died slash kill Tiberius, Tiberius arranged it so that Caligula would be treated like a little boy way longer than most people were then.
00:21:23.140So there's a whole thing where, sort of like a bar mitzvah scenario, where a little Roman boy would finally get his toga for the first time. And when you get your toga, there's like a toga ceremony. And it's like, at that point, it's like, you are a man. I think you could like vote at that point. And this happened when people were like, I don't know, 14, 15, 16. But Caligula was not allowed to do this.
00:21:44.120He was sent to live with Tiberius on his hermit island in Capri, where Caligula stayed from ages 19 till 27. Presumably he got his toga at some point in there, but it's still very embarrassing.
00:21:57.040And so he was raised away from Rome, away from the Senate, away from learning how to be the emperor, away from learning how to be an adult person, of which to say what happened during his reign isn't entirely his own fault. He'd been kind of set up to fail in a lot of ways.
00:22:15.900but at the beginning everybody in Rome was really excited for Caligula to take over because no one
00:22:21.960had ever really liked Tiberius because he was not a very good emperor what with the like running
00:22:28.420away and hiding all the time Caligula was still um he was the son of Germanicus he was the daughter
00:22:34.340of Agrippina the elder he was the son from this beloved family that they had had all these parades
00:22:40.200for and so everyone was excited to have just like a young emperor Tiberius had been 77 when he died
00:22:45.880so just like this new young energy from this like beloved royal family so Rome was super excited
00:22:51.920they welcomed him and his three sisters back to Rome basically and everyone thought everything
00:22:59.040kind of seems pretty great but Caligula even though he hadn't been raised being groomed to
00:23:07.160be the emperor or know how to be a politician etc he knew from just growing up in this situation
00:23:11.800that people could take away your power at any moment. And he needed to sort of find reasons
00:23:16.680for people to keep believing in him and for people to not turn on him. And so knowing how
00:23:21.060popular his parents were and his family was. So he sort of elevated his three sisters to be like,
00:23:27.260look, it's me and my three sisters. You loved her parents. We're these young, cool people.
00:23:32.800So Caligula, Agrippina, Drusilla, and Lovilla were sort of a reminder of their father who
00:23:40.340everybody had loved, but also of their ancestors, Emperor Augustus and even Julius Caesar. So they
00:23:46.160were just kind of like, see, we have this bloodline, like, look at us, we're this family,
00:23:50.260you love us. Caligula had not married at this point, he didn't have his own children. So
00:23:54.880basically, he needed his sisters there with him to present himself as like a family man
00:23:58.980sort of person. So he granted his three sisters the same rights as the Vestal Virgins,
00:24:05.760which the Vestal Virgins is a whole other thing I don't entirely have the ability to explain to
00:24:11.300you right now but basically they were women with they're the most rights of everybody in Rome they1.00
00:24:16.440had rights that other women didn't have basically they're able to make independent decisions about1.00
00:24:20.940their lives without requiring the permission of a male relative their bodies were seen as sacred
00:24:25.140touching them was punishable with death so Caligula gave those same rights to his three
00:24:32.020sisters basically no roman women in history including the wives and mothers of previous0.75
00:24:36.840emperors had any had this amount of autonomy or power so his three sisters were just like elevated
00:24:43.580to this extent that was had no precedent basically every day at the start of senate or whenever
00:24:50.520somebody was introducing like a new bill or whatever into senate the men did sort of like
00:24:54.900the pledge of allegiance where they say like i promise to honor the emperor and also i think we
00:24:59.940should raise minimum wage or whatever. So Caligula changed the wording of this. So every time people
00:25:05.100said that, they had to say, I promise to honor the emperor and his three beloved sisters. So the
00:25:10.540three sisters were sort of, they weren't present in Senate because women couldn't be there, but
00:25:16.740they were seen as almost basically equally as important as the emperor. Caligula had coins
00:25:24.380made there's a lot of like big moves made vis-a-vis coins in the story so he had coins made with his
00:25:30.440face and name on one side which was like the normal thing usually on the other side was a
00:25:34.580picture of like a god who the emperor wanted to be like or picture of him like an action shot or
00:25:40.500something but he put on the other side of the coin his three sisters posing like goddesses and this0.91
00:25:46.600was the first time that living roman women had ever been put on coins dead roman women had been
00:25:52.460like people's beloved dead mothers and things and this is the first visual proof that agrippina
00:25:58.220herself was a person um so she was a little tiny image on the back of a coin shared with her with
00:26:04.520her siblings and then um this is a podcast about agrippina not a podcast about caligula perhaps0.96
00:26:12.720he would be a good topic for a future episode of my patreon only spin-off podcast so this asshole
00:26:18.200to get into all the messy stuff that he did but basically a bunch of stuff happened really quickly
00:26:24.280and we're just kind of looking at how it affected Agrippina basically. So towards the end of
00:26:30.180Caligula's first year's emperor several important things happened. So firstly he fell ill of
00:26:35.920something and retreated from public life for several months. Everybody was really worried he
00:26:39.880might die. He did not but he had to retreat for a bit. Agrippina gave birth to her first child
00:26:46.600around this time. It was a son with red hair who she named basically the same name as her husband,
00:26:52.320Lucius Domitius Ahino Barbas. A few attempts were made while Caligula was recuperating during his
00:26:59.320illness. Other people tried to take over. And at this point, Caligula began his ongoing habit
00:27:04.540of murdering people who he thought were trying to take over from him. So it's sort of like the PR
00:27:11.340was flipping. Like at first it's like, yay, this young man, we love him. We love his sisters
00:27:15.040because their parents were great this is awesome but then it started to seem like oh this Caligula
00:27:21.120guy is maybe not quite as awesome as we had thought but also people at this point were like
00:27:26.360oh we want to usurp him and have somebody else take over instead so how can they ruin his name
00:27:31.420rumors of incest so rumors started to to spread around the Caligula and was having sex with his
00:27:39.280sisters and he didn't help calm these rumors down by behaving increasingly erratically and0.98
00:27:45.300losing his shit an awful lot um so he did stuff like smashing pottery um replacing governors of0.98
00:27:52.040important colonies randomly with random people running away like tiberius to just like meditate1.00
00:27:57.320by himself on an island um stop shaving his beard and basically murdering anyone who looked at him
00:28:03.660funny. So he became a little bit of a tyrant, tyrant type issue happening. And for reasons we
00:28:10.960don't know, because unfortunately, the records we have that mention Agrippina don't mention this
00:28:16.880detail. In the year 39, Caligula exiled his sister Agrippina for conspiring against him,
00:28:22.840along with her other sister, Lovilla. Note that the third sister, Drusilla, had died one year
00:28:28.200before this happened, which might be part of what caused Caligula's psychological breakdown.
00:28:32.360Anyway, so there's two sisters left. Agrippina and Lovilla and Caligula just exiled them both because he thought they were scheming against him. And this is a whole complicated thing. We don't need to get into to understand the effect of on Agrippina's life.
00:28:49.740But basically, the plot was that Agrippina, her sister and her sister's husband were, well, firstly, Caligula was like, and they're all having sex with each other. Incest. And also he accused that they were trying to raise an army to try and remove him from power. And at this point, it's like, who could blame them if they were trying to do that? He was not doing the best of jobs.
00:29:11.180And now for a quick advertising break. And we're back. At this point, also Caligula had his own
00:29:18.780son, which was maybe Agrippina was a bit jealous or nervous about that because she had her own son
00:29:27.100and she really wanted her son to become the next emperor, but Caligula's son would maybe become
00:29:31.480emperor instead. So some tension between the two of them. Also, Agrippina was really smart and knew
00:29:37.100what she was doing. Caligula did not know what he was doing. So Agrippina at this point is age 24
00:29:43.180and she was sent in exile, but it's not like, oh no, living in like a little prison tent or
00:29:48.100whatever. She was living in a luxury villa on the island of Pontia. She had a household of slaves,
00:29:53.680a personal bodyguard, and just kind of had a year to, I mean, it would have upset her, obviously,
00:29:59.640to be away from Rome, unable to scheme, unable to know what people were saying about her,
00:30:04.480knowing that at any second her brother could change his mind and kill her but also she had
00:30:09.760some time to just like make some plans and just like practice her swimming and i'm not joking
00:30:14.880because we learned later she was a really good swimmer so i think she's probably practicing her
00:30:19.600swimming um but then in the year 41 so i think she was there for about a year or so caligula was
00:30:28.260assassinated. It seems like that's how most people stop being emperor in my limited research at this
00:30:34.740point. Anyway, Cleus died of murder and their uncle Claudius was named the new Roman emperor.
00:30:41.820So Claudius was the brother of their father, Germanicus. So he basically did a military coup
00:30:49.100and usurped power and then went back and was like, delete from the historical record the events of
00:30:54.980this past two days so that happened and then it was kind of like and one day claudius was the
00:31:00.860emperor and caligula was dead that's weird who knows what happened and what else seemed to happen
00:31:05.660a lot too is when a new person took over as emperor especially in this violent sort of way
00:31:09.220they would undo what their predecessor had done to try and show like look i'm different
00:31:13.300i'm changing the way things are so one of the first things claudius did was he released agrippina
00:31:18.620from exile and invited her to join him back in Rome. So she came back to Rome, basically.
00:31:26.940And what happened next is that, so she's 25 years old, she is reunited with her son,
00:31:32.820who hadn't been in exile with her. So I'm sure that was very upsetting for her.
00:31:36.740So her son was four years old, she was 25. Oh, and her husband also died. So she was also a widow
00:31:43.000as well and just quick side note about claudius is that he was 50 years old um had barely held
00:31:50.500any political positions before he seems to have had some sort of like quirky personality traits
00:31:57.260that the people in rome didn't much care for and also might have had some physical disabilities um
00:32:04.900he apparently had a limp he would like drool sometimes maybe like so people if you watch
00:32:10.820iClaudius, which again, it's a great and interesting way to learn all of these crazy
00:32:17.580rumors. He, everybody in iClaudius assumed he was an idiot because he had a stutter and a limp,0.99
00:32:25.160but actually he was the smartest of them all. That's an iClaudius. In real life, I don't know0.99
00:32:29.280if he was actually secretly super smart, but he was definitely underestimated and had some sort of
00:32:35.140physical things going on with his body that made people um not respect him as much as others but0.99
00:32:42.780he was the emperor so fuck you basically um Claudius was really suspicious of everybody0.99
00:32:48.580which makes sense because he himself had just killed his nephew in a military coup and everyone0.99
00:32:54.880his whole life was always killing each other so the only people he trusted were his own freed
00:32:59.960slaves, like former people who were former enslaved people who he had freed, known as
00:33:06.060freedmen. So he sort of elevated them to be his advisors and his family members were other people
00:33:11.860he trusted. And then again, and he had a new wife who he trusted, which is like, oh God. Okay. So
00:33:18.580his new wife was a teenager named Messalina and she had had a son named Britannicus who became
00:33:25.460the emperor's, everyone assumed that would be probably the next emperor after Claudius, which
00:33:29.720again, Agrippina would be like, oh, I wanted my son to be the next emperor. Then Messalina had0.85
00:33:34.200this son. Oh, and he was named Britannicus because Claudius was the one, he was the emperor at the
00:33:40.520time that Rome invaded Britain and started colonizing over there. So the son's name at
00:33:47.180first wasn't Britannicus and was changed to Britannicus, sort of like Agrippina's father's
00:33:51.420name was changed to Germanicus after he conquered some areas over there. Oh, and then also Claudius
00:33:58.020pretty shortly after taking over executed Agrippina's only remaining sibling her sister0.99
00:34:03.680Lovilla for the usual random reasons basically scheming potential adultery two no's at this1.00
00:34:10.280point but basically Agrippina age 26 the only surviving member of her entire family basically0.62
00:34:18.060both of her parents were dead all of her brothers are dead both of her sisters were dead she was0.96
00:34:23.000still alive and I don't think that's an accident because she just really knew her shit and she knew0.99
00:34:27.840what she was doing. So she took a new husband after she came back to Rome and her new husband0.99
00:34:34.040had an even longer name than the first husband. He's four names. Gaius Celestius Crispus Passianus.
00:34:41.020He was vaguely related to her because everybody is vaguely related to everybody else. It's sort
00:34:46.520of like the Kardashian-Jenner's Hadid whole thing, fosters in a way. Anyway, so her new husband,
00:34:53.640we'll call him crispus i'm just choosing one of his four names that's easiest for me to pronounce
00:34:58.000so he was her former brother-in-law meaning he had been previously married to agrippina's
00:35:03.120first husband's sister um which i think makes him the least actually related to her out of all of
00:35:10.180her husband's spoiler um he sounds like total upgrade personality wise from her first husband
00:35:16.440in the sense of he was like a pretty straight up guy um he's known for making jokes getting along
00:35:21.400with everybody. The fact that no one had murdered him to this point spoke well of him as a person.
00:35:26.820He's not known for ripping out the eyes of people who look at him funny. But he was a step down for
00:35:32.640Agrippina in the sense of he was not as important as her first husband. And he was also friends with
00:35:39.680Claudius. So the whole thing was kind of like the emperor, just like giving his friend a gift,
00:35:44.240which was marriage to his niece. But also it was sort of like Claudius wanted to
00:35:50.660use some of Agrippina's still leftover rockstar popularity. Like her whole family had been
00:35:55.920murdered slash killed themselves slash like the family was still so beloved. And I think that was
00:36:02.200a lot of what was keeping Agrippina from being murdered at this point. So Claudius just wanted
00:36:06.540to hitch himself close to her star. But also he didn't want her to get too powerful because she
00:36:12.360could maybe usurp him and maybe her son would take over everyone is just suspicious of everybody
00:36:17.600else for great reasons murder murder reasons so claudius literally got agrippina out of his way
00:36:25.320by sending her and her husband off to asia where they lived as a year while crispus served as the
00:36:31.340governor uh they returned to rome and a couple of very suspicious things happen such as um passianus
00:36:40.440sorry crispus her husband wrote a new will that made agrippina the sole beneficiary of his estate
00:36:46.520and then he suddenly died and if this was an episode of murder she wrote we'd all be like
00:36:51.320okay like you change your will to leave it all to your wife and then you die is like she probably
00:36:58.980killed him i mean right right um but basically crispus got a super public funeral um another
00:37:06.160like triumph march etc agrippina got to be in yet another parade this time but now she's 28 which
00:37:13.020is just like so young what an eventful life she's a double widow she's a single mother um she's the0.98
00:37:19.780only living descendant of julius caesar and augustus and everybody still still just fucking0.88
00:37:25.580loves her basically um and then five years pass so there's rumors that she killed her husband so0.79
00:37:33.520she could marry someone else but she didn't marry someone else so that's where it's like
00:37:37.660did she kill her husband unclear she's gonna maybe kill some other people so this is where0.98
00:37:42.920people are tracking back and maybe trying to see where where she started practicing murders but
00:37:47.120anyway five years pass um during this time she was maybe hanging out like in one of the other
00:37:55.420villas that she had inherited from her rich dead husband maybe practicing her swimming some more
00:38:01.620and but basically during these five years Claudius's wife Messalina went from being a0.71
00:38:06.600teenager to being 20 and she sort of took over as the number one most talked about Roman woman
00:38:12.580and I can't avoid talking about Messalina because this is it affects Agrippina but also it's just
00:38:18.620like oh my god so Messalina was the third wife of Claudius she was 18 when she married him when
00:38:26.620he was 50 when he was the emperor um she was also in some random way descended from augustus
00:38:32.860etc which made her a good wife for claudius because she was more directly descended from
00:38:38.800them and the whole thing was everybody like you were more beloved the more directly descended
00:38:44.060you were from augustus basically um so they had a daughter named octavia they had their son
00:38:49.200Britannicus um there hadn't been Messalina and Agrippina feuded a lot um I think largely because
00:38:58.560they both really wanted their own sons to become the emperor next but also they are just like both0.51
00:39:03.840really opinionated strong-minded women um they're both really ruthless there was a lot of scheming
00:39:09.640um similar to Agrippina a lot of stuff written about almost everything written about Messalina
00:39:16.060actually it was written after her death and it was sort of defamatory because of people saw what
00:39:20.880happened to her but also because she had a lot of enemies so there's a lot of sexy scandals about1.00
00:39:25.640her um like that she had that she lived in a in a whorehouse and like was a sex worker and like1.00
00:39:32.600challenged another sex worker to a contest to see who could have sex with the most men in a row and1.00
00:39:38.080like lots of stuff is included in i claudius the the mini series if you want to watch that
00:39:43.300how much of it is true i don't know but what the weirdest story about her is the one that is true
00:39:51.140which is basically she had a lover who was not her much older husband and when claudius was out
00:39:57.280of town messalina decided to marry her lover in a public ceremony so it's not even like a secret
00:40:02.960sexy marriage it was like everyone knew about it claudius obviously found out about it and had her
00:40:09.940executed along with eight men suspected of helping her out and like why in the the biography of
00:40:15.940Agrippina the one by Emma Southen she sort of theorizes it's almost like a slow motion suicide
00:40:22.020like Messalina would have known that this wasn't going to turn out like what was she doing I don't
00:40:26.760know but Claudius had her name erased from all historical records and monuments like she'd never
00:40:32.320existed sort of like how when he took over in a military coup he had all records of those two days
00:40:38.940deleted claudius was just all about um erasing public record anyway less than three months later
00:40:45.820claudius took a new wife who was agrippina who is yes his niece so that's what happened um despite
00:40:54.420the fact that people in here were marrying their like second cousin once removed or like someone
00:40:59.840who they share a great great grandmother with like for an uncle to marry a niece was basically0.97
00:41:05.180as fucked up in ancient Rome as it would be if someone did that now. Everyone thought it was0.98
00:41:11.480weird, inappropriate, gross. Because remember, this is a culture where when you really wanted to
00:41:18.640say something bad about somebody else, you would accuse them of incest. Incest was the worst thing
00:41:23.800you could accuse somebody of. And this was incest. So if we set aside the fact that they're related,
00:41:31.340let's just look at like how does this make sense as a match basically so claudius age 59 um agrippina
00:41:39.180is what like 32 i think um so she she was a descendant of augustus which is always a benefit
00:41:46.020claudius wanted to ally himself with that family as possible she was also still very popular because
00:41:51.740of her super popular parents and everybody remembered that her son was also more directly
00:41:58.940descended from augustus than claudius's son was so he would maybe that could be a selling point
00:42:04.520as well she's also rich and smart um very capable and clearly a really cool person um and what was
00:42:12.460in it for her was that well she'd be the wife of the emperor which basically elevates her to as
00:42:17.780much power as she could possibly get um she'd always grown up with a sense that she was better
00:42:21.980than everyone and destined for great things and this might have seemed like basically her best
00:42:25.960chance to like seize onto that um and get the power that she felt like she deserved for who
00:42:31.240she was um it would also she would assume um cement the future for her son and she had always
00:42:36.840been sort of like margaret beaufort was in the tudor era just like she was all about clearing
00:42:42.420the way so her son could have as much power as possible and also claudius was older than her so
00:42:47.620she might think you know i'll be married to him for a bit but then eventually i'll hopefully be
00:42:51.200the emperor's mother which was also still a pretty powerful position or it could be it had been for
00:42:57.300other people before her so basically it wasn't legal like it was illegal for an uncle and an0.99
00:43:03.300niece to get married because incest reasons but claudia sort of manipulated the senate to change0.99
00:43:09.180the law to allow this weird gross marriage to happen um and he did it in such a way that it
00:43:16.800almost seems like the Senate ended up being like, please, Claudius, won't you marry her?
00:43:21.620And it was whatever. They got married on January 1st in the year 49. But even though the law had
00:43:28.480been changed, everyone, like, I just want to emphasize, it wasn't like, it wasn't like with
00:43:32.660the Cleopatra story where it's just like, brothers and sisters got married, whatever. That's just
00:43:36.700what happened. Like in Rome, this is like really fucking weird. Claudius's former best friend,0.97
00:43:42.100solanus um killed himself the day of the wedding to sort of make a point that this was like0.87
00:43:48.020really fucking gross thing to do but get married they did and then three things happened quite0.89
00:43:54.100quickly um which were that claudius formerly adopted agrippina's son changed his name to nero0.97
00:44:00.400and married nero off to claudius's daughter octavia so it was like a double marriage like
00:44:05.980the two parents got married and then their kids got married to each other and it's just a big
00:44:10.380incest bath bomb i don't know agrippina um demanded that a man named seneca who was a
00:44:18.620famous sort of philosopher person who had been exiled by caligula um agrippina demanded that
00:44:25.040he be returned to be nero's new tutor because he was like the smartest person and she wanted the
00:44:29.140best tutor for her son um and a woman named lolia paulina was accused of witchcraft sent into exile
00:44:36.120and died. This part, I'm going to explain a bit. Why does that matter? So Lolia Paulina was a
00:44:42.980woman who had been briefly married to Caligula. He had several wives. He kept getting bored of
00:44:47.400them and getting new wives. When Claudius was looking for a new wife after the whole Messalina1.00
00:44:52.020scenario, Lolia Paulina had been suggested as maybe a possible woman that he could marry,
00:44:59.320but he of course married his niece instead. And this is again, where it's like allegedly
00:45:03.980did Agrippina conspire to kill Lalea Paulina to remove her as a rival for her uncle slash husband?
00:45:13.680Maybe, basically, but this is sort of another rumored person that perhaps Agrippina was
00:45:18.700responsible for killing. Anyway, after one year of marriage, Claudius had Agrippina,
00:45:25.340he gave her the title Augusta. So remember, Octavian became Augustus. So Augusta was a
00:45:31.600title that kind of meant not quite empress but basically a huge honor um agrippina was only the
00:45:38.140third woman in history to be given this title um and it was the first time that the title was given
00:45:42.740to the living wife of the current emperor so this title had been previously given to the mother of
00:45:50.200the emperor and a dead mother of the another emperor i think basically this title meant that
00:45:56.180she was more or less on equal standing with Claudius, the emperor. No woman in Western
00:46:02.740history had ever had this much power before in terms of like her role in the empire and how big0.89
00:46:08.500the empire was. She also didn't just, she was involved in things. Like she was an active figure1.00
00:46:15.000who sat beside her husband during business meetings. Like she helped run things. She wasn't
00:46:18.940just like decorative. Like she was actually in there getting shit done. For instance, in the year1.00
00:46:25.16050. She founded a new Roman colony in the place near where she had been born in Germany. The
00:46:32.260colony was originally called Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium, which is a long name. And so
00:46:38.580people started calling it Colonia Agrippinensium, then later just Colonia, and now it's called
00:46:43.820Cologne, and it's still a city in Germany. So she was the patron of this colony, and it was a place
00:46:48.520where, um, like retired military people would go to live. She, you know, paid money to improve
00:46:55.520things there, install, you know, the Roman famous sewage systems, et cetera. The, the Romans lived0.99
00:47:02.660apparently like pretty multiculturally with the indigenous UB people who were in the area already.
00:47:09.040And it was a successful little colony. And then more coin related news. So she was placed in a
00:47:16.240coin opposite her husband in the year 50. So when she had been on the coin with Caligula on one
00:47:23.080side, it was her and her sisters on the other side. But this time, it was her and Claudius,
00:47:29.400and it was kind of like the two faces both face in the same way. His face was in front and hers
00:47:33.300was behind, but she was on the front of a coin. So that's the first time ever a woman had been1.00
00:47:37.820on a coin like that. She also commissioned statues made in her likeness that were wearing
00:47:43.780a diadem which is a specific kind of crown slash tiara that no living roman woman had ever been
00:47:50.820shown to wear in a piece of art so she was just like ensuring that like artistically culturally0.95
00:47:56.160like in every possible level like people remind it all the time she was really fucking important
00:48:01.740so the next three years continued um more of the same and till uh caligula died in the year0.52
00:48:10.46054. And an awful lot of people suspected that Agrippina had murdered him. Why was that? So
00:48:17.700partially, it's sort of the Messalina thing, again, where people, she had enemies. And so
00:48:22.840the enemies like to spread rumors about her that weren't true, that made her look bad because they0.76
00:48:27.600wanted her to have less power. So, and especially like her, Agrippina, she had so much power,
00:48:31.880so much power. No woman had ever had this much power before. It really bothered a lot of men.
00:48:36.360so she had a lot of enemies um and so they were spreading rumors about stuff like agrippina was1.00
00:48:43.220too masculine um that she was having sex with lots of men like she was a whore um she was0.98
00:48:49.340scheming too much she wanted to destroy the roman empire etc etc basically but also a lot of people0.99
00:48:55.800were murdering a lot of people so anytime somebody died like if the emperor died it's sort of like
00:49:00.280um if your first guess is he was murdered you're probably right basically looking at
00:49:05.380statistically. So Claudius was 63 years old when he died. And he had been sick. He had various
00:49:11.680medical conditions, seemingly. But also, it sounds like so there's a woman called Locusta,
00:49:19.640who had was a poisoner, she had been in jail. So she was a convicted poisoner. So side note on
00:49:28.540Locusta. So she was apparently a woman who's born in present day France, was a peasant,
00:49:34.580She became a master botanist and herbalist and quickly deduced that Rome, with all the nefarious deeds being carried out by the aristocracy, was the place to make her fortune as a master poisoner.
00:49:45.980So she became so well known for her skill that she was identified as just Locusta the Poisoner.
00:49:51.540So she was arrested twice for poisoning people, but she was arrested a third time and Agrippina actually is the one who released her.
00:50:00.100but Agrippina said like I'll release you but you need to also do me a favor and that favor is you
00:50:07.160need to help me poison my husband uncle the emperor to death so the problem is that um so
00:50:14.100they wanted to poison him to death Claudius really liked mushrooms but he had a food taster
00:50:18.800obviously because everybody was trying to kill everybody all the time so what they did was
00:50:23.740Locosta made sure that the personal assistant the food taster was busy that day Agrippina
00:50:29.380would distract Claudius with lots of wine, so he wouldn't notice that his food taster is not there.
00:50:34.540And then they served mushrooms, which were his most favorite thing to eat. Basically,
00:50:39.400he started having physical symptoms of poisoning. Allegedly, a doctor was summoned to help out the
00:50:47.620emperor to save him, but Locusta, and what they were doing was in a time before, what's it called?
00:50:52.460Ipecac. So they stuck a feather down his throat to make him throw up, but Locusta had already put
00:50:57.920poison on the feather and he died and that's an amazing story so he also could have died of
00:51:05.660natural causes who knows um there's another version of this event that claudius ate the
00:51:11.100mushrooms and felt sick so then to agrippina offered him some porridge to try and settle
00:51:16.040his stomach but there was poison in the porridge as well one way or another the emperor had died
00:51:21.200and no one could find his will again it's like an agrippina related story where it's like
00:51:25.540what no one can find the will that's not suspicious at all but she was like don't worry he told me
00:51:31.540what he wants and he wants Nero to become the next emperor instead of Britannicus and everyone was
00:51:36.160like okay so she was now three times a widow and now the mother of the emperor and the emperor was
00:51:43.660Nero so where things get complicated here is that basically she was amazing she got everything she
00:51:51.020ever wanted but the the problem is that her son was really shitty so it's very much like Cersei
00:51:57.680and Joffrey in Game of Thrones in the sense of like Agrippina was so smart so clever she would
00:52:04.260have been an amazing emperor on her own but it was a society in which that was not possible0.98
00:52:08.620so instead she has to sit and watch her son be an asshole and ruin everything basically so Nero age0.98
00:52:16.08016 was the new emperor. And unlike Caligula or even Claudius, he'd actually been taught how to0.99
00:52:23.020do this from a very young age. Having grown up in Rome, being taught what to do, he had alliances
00:52:29.160with like army people and other people, like he's in a pretty good position. But the problem is that
00:52:34.240he actually wanted to be an actor slash singer, and not emperor. So personality wise, it was not
00:52:41.320great fit. And for the first little while, Agrippina was sort of unofficially like his
00:52:48.000regent. So he was 16, you know, he had his toga, he was a man, but she had done a really good job
00:52:53.820sort of running things with Claudius. If you look at Claudius's reign, actually, on almost
00:52:59.300everything you can measure, things just got better once he married Agrippina. So it seems like she
00:53:04.580was able to kind of jump in and just handle the books better. Just like her help was really
00:53:09.440helpful so i think she thought she could kind of do the same stuff for nero who was still just a
00:53:13.060little kid um and for the first little while they're always together like when he made an
00:53:17.420appearance somewhere she'd be with him just like she had been with claudius so she also suggested
00:53:22.460that she'd be allowed to attend senate meetings which not like in person that's crazy she's a0.59
00:53:30.160woman um but she asked like if she could stand behind a curtain and like listen in on the senate0.89
00:53:35.920meetings which was more than any woman had been able to do before and before this what she had to1.00
00:53:41.580do was rely on second secondhand information about who had said what and what went on but now she0.98
00:53:46.320could actually like listen in um and then there was more coins drama um she had some new coins
00:53:52.200commissioned so this time like she'd shared the one with claudius where they're both facing the
00:53:57.320same way but his face was on top the new coins that she had done was her and nero on the front
00:54:02.740of the coin facing each other so both of their faces were there in full so again like she just
00:54:07.720kept breaking new ground for like women having power it was all and i don't mean this in like0.51
00:54:14.000she should have done more like but it was all very self-serving like she wanted herself to have this1.00
00:54:19.620power she wasn't like i want to make it so the women who follow me will also have all these1.00
00:54:23.760advantages like that wasn't her deal at all she wasn't like climbing up a ladder and then helping1.00
00:54:28.740other women up the ladder she was just like me i want this power for me and unfortunately as it0.79
00:54:35.160would turn out is that a lot of the power that she had was based on like understandings and people1.00
00:54:40.760assuming things not actually having laws written or changed for her which meant spoiler when it
00:54:49.000all started to come undone like she didn't have any ground to stand on because it was all just
00:54:52.820kind of like through her force of will and personality she like made some stuff change but
00:54:57.340like the laws didn't actually change so she had set herself up as kind of like she was a wife and
00:55:03.980a mother but she never ever presented herself like her mother had been or like Livia had been
00:55:09.160who was just kind of like I'm this good Roman woman who just like stays at home and loves being
00:55:12.880a wife and mother and I'm like secretly scheming in the background she was like scheming out loud1.00
00:55:18.420in front of everybody she presented herself as kind of like not traditionally feminine so she
00:55:23.380didn't present herself as a man but also not as a woman she was just kind of like i am basically a
00:55:28.720goddess and people acted like she was until one day um she started being treated like a woman
00:55:34.760and everything started to fall apart so the first major blow was she went in to join nero in a
00:55:42.460meeting with some foreign delegations um and nero she went to sit next to him um which was like even
00:55:49.280a bold move for her um usually she should have sat like beside or like behind claudius but she
00:55:55.080went to sit right next to nero and nero basically stopped her um and made her and walked her over to0.99
00:56:01.000a different seat further away from him so that was like humiliating her in front of this foreign
00:56:04.880delegation and everybody else and it was like through body language a major statement about
00:56:10.080her loss of power um nero fell in love with a woman named actay and agrippina wasn't a fan of0.99
00:56:17.400the relationship and they had a big fight about it and Nero is sort of uh sort of a fuck you to0.96
00:56:23.100her sent her a gift of some jewels and a new dress um which was kind of like his way of saying0.99
00:56:28.640like hey you're just a woman here are some woman things mind your own business and especially0.98
00:56:35.640because Agrippina wasn't a person who was ever interested in like dresses or jewels or being1.00
00:56:40.960flashy or luxury things so apparently in response she said something like i gave him the empire and0.99
00:56:48.480he gave me a dress which is like ugh put that on a poster sons suck um i mean sometimes sons suck0.99
00:56:57.320so he also nero um brought in lucosta again um to help him murder his stepbrother slash cousin0.99
00:57:06.880Britannicus who was the son of Claudius because he saw Nero saw Britannicus as a threat as somebody0.70
00:57:13.920who could maybe become emperor instead of him um which is like it's sort of a shitty thing Nero
00:57:20.600did but also like everyone was killing everyone it's not that different but basically he was just
00:57:26.320clearing the way for himself to have ultimate power and part of that was he expelled Agrippina
00:57:30.760from the palace. They made her go live elsewhere. So they were just sort of back and forth fighting0.99
00:57:36.600about a bunch of random things. And one day Agrippina basically went in, forced her in to1.00
00:57:41.920talk to Nero. And we don't know what happened in this like closed door meeting. But at the end of
00:57:46.140this, they clearly reached some sort of understanding. And based on how stable the
00:57:50.400government went after this, it seems like the agreement might have been Agrippina will just1.00
00:57:54.620like secretly run things behind the scenes, but she won't make public appearances or let anyone1.00
00:58:00.020know that she's doing that because the next sort of four years were okay for her Nero started he
00:58:08.000put on plays made everybody listen to him sing made everybody clap for him and was just sort of
00:58:13.180like little baby Caligula tyrant type person Nero fell in love with a woman named Poppea Sabina
00:58:20.900who has her own interesting story we can talk about another day but basically at around the
00:58:27.120same time he got involved with her um Nero decided it was time to murder his mother so some of the0.85
00:58:32.620rumors are that Poppea was jealous of Agrippina because of like incest reasons but also maybe she0.98
00:58:39.340just kind of saw how smart Agrippina was or maybe Poppea didn't give a shit we don't know but0.62
00:58:44.220basically Nero started hanging out with this woman named Poppea and around the same time he decided0.96
00:58:50.080to try and kill his mother so a couple things so Agrippina was friends with Lacosta and knew about
00:58:56.740poisons herself and so just like that guy in princess bride she it turns out she had been
00:59:01.660secretly um dosing herself with small amounts of poison for a really long time just to make
00:59:06.800herself like immune to all of them so apparently nero tried to poison her but it didn't work
00:59:13.000because she was immune to all poisons which is just kind of like love that for her nero knew
00:59:19.040that he couldn't just send in the army to stab her because she was still still so popular as
00:59:24.100the daughter of Germanicus um and Germanicus had been this great army leader and so the army might
00:59:28.980not listen to those orders and do that so Nero who was also just like huge drama queen literally
00:59:35.280drama queen he had seen a play that had a prop boat with like a false floor in it and he was
00:59:41.040like what if we build an actual version of that boat with a like trap door in it get Agrippina
00:59:46.340on the boat and then she like drowns because the boat trap door opens when she's like in open water
00:59:51.740which is a ridiculous plan but it's in every source and so it seems to be like this is what
00:59:57.760he wanted to do so he invited his mother to come and visit him at a villa that he had to take a
01:00:03.920boat to get to agrippina was like i see what you're up to and she refused to take his offer
01:00:08.480for boat instead took her own boat up to meet him um they dinner together and somehow nero i guess
01:00:14.200using his like acting skills pretended like he didn't want to kill her to the point that at the
01:00:18.540end of the dinner she agreed to take his special boat back home um as per the plan part of the boat
01:00:24.900collapsed when they were in the middle of the water and the ship started to sink um but this0.85
01:00:29.980is where agrippina being a great swimmer um pays off and she's able to swim back to shore basically
01:00:36.700um she arrived back at the villa people applauded because they were like oh my god agrippina our
01:00:42.480beloved agrippina almost died but she didn't look at her she's an amazing swimmer we love her so
01:00:47.400much the daughter of Germanicus so she had a messenger send a message back to Nero saying
01:00:52.800that she was still alive did she know that he had tried to kill her I mean probably at this point
01:00:58.800but she so the note was just basically like guess what foiled you again people were just like
01:01:04.560weeping and praying all around her house like again I just the only comparison I can think of
01:01:10.220from contemporary anything is like princess Diana's death like people are just so grateful
01:01:15.180that she hadn't died but what happened is that later that night when she was in bed soldiers
01:01:21.300came marching up um and they had sort of fake charges from Nero so Nero claimed Agrippina had
01:01:28.360tried to kill him um and the soldiers came in to murder her basically she tried to talk them out
01:01:34.100of it she tried to talk them out of it but they were having none of that and basically her final0.97
01:01:39.020act is that she flung open her robe to reveal her womb saying like stab me here like if you0.99
01:01:44.980really from my son. And then they did. And then she died aged 44. So Agrippina, she achieved more0.99
01:01:53.240individual power than any Roman woman before her. And no other Roman woman would for basically0.98
01:01:59.240another hundred years when the third century Syrian matriarchy came along. These were three1.00
01:02:05.120Roman noblewomen who were pretty awesome people themselves. They were called Julia Domna,
01:02:09.880Julia Soamias and Julia Mamea and they wound up getting similar levels of power but basically
01:02:16.880Agrippina is kind of it for a while um shortly after she died um and that's the story of Agrippina
01:02:26.900so again I just want to shout out my main source of information about this the reason I even started
01:02:32.300learning about Agrippina was because I read this biography which is amazing um so it's the
01:02:38.160Biography of Agrippina by Emma Southen, which I recommend heartily. You can read it as a book.
01:02:45.480You can also read it on audible.com, which is my little sponsor. So if you go to audibletrial.com
01:02:52.700slash vulgar history, you can look up, you can get your free trial and maybe your free trial
01:02:57.720could be reading Emma Southen's biography of Agrippina, which I read as an audiobook and which
01:03:02.920is really fun to read in that way. Actually read it as an audiobook slash as a book book.
01:03:07.320I was kind of bouncing back and forth. It's really, really good. And now it is time for us
01:03:12.660to score her. So there's four, four metrics that we score people on for vulgar history. And the0.98
01:03:20.640first is scandaliciousness. So there's a number of things here for scandal, for Agrippina. We've1.00
01:03:28.480got the, um, just her whole family situation. That's not her specifically, but she's growing
01:03:33.020up in this wild family situation. We've got the marrying her uncle. We've got the maybe poisoning0.97
01:03:38.880her husband to death. We've got the maybe poisoning her uncle husband to death. We've0.96
01:03:43.600got the maybe killing of other people. Like the liciousness of her scandals, I think is quite0.59
01:03:50.600high. I'm going to give her, I think a nine. The next category is scheminess. And this is like
01:03:57.280flat out 10 like she she schemed like she schemed behind the scenes then when she got more power1.00
01:04:03.520she was scheming out in public by like making things like the new rules so she could hide behind1.00
01:04:08.240the curtain and listen into the senate like she was i feel like even in her sleep she was scheming
01:04:13.080just like so much so much scheming the next measure is significance and this is tricky
01:04:20.280because she was very significant in her time. She herself didn't really pave the way for other
01:04:28.200people. So she didn't really in that sense, but also in terms of the significance of because of
01:04:33.900her, basically, she's the reason why Nero became the emperor. He wasn't a good emperor. In fact,
01:04:40.620I believe he was the last emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. But the fact that she was0.90
01:04:46.880basically instrumental in making her son be emperor is pretty significant this is tricky
01:04:52.480i think i'm gonna give her i feel like a six a six for significance and the final category is
01:05:00.540sexism um this is where the bonus basically how much how much more could she have achieved if she
01:05:06.580was a man like how much did her gender affect what she did in life and i mean in every conceivable0.99
01:05:14.060way, really. She would have been a great emperor if a woman could be an emperor, but she couldn't1.00
01:05:19.120be an emperor. But she kind of didn't let that stop her. But then it kind of did her in at the0.99
01:05:23.800end. It's tricky for her with the sexism. She achieved a lot in spite of sexism. So it's not1.00
01:05:30.200like sexism held her back. Oh, it's tricky. I'm going to give her a six, a six for sexism. So
01:05:34.940that's 31. That is Agrippina takes the lead. I mean, not that it's a contest, but just in terms0.99
01:05:41.560of like who scores the highest on these four metrics um she's the first over 31 so last we
01:05:48.460did cleopatra she was 28 from season one elizabeth bathory was 29 but agrippina 31 kind of proud of
01:05:55.920her and so that's agrippina the younger my god okay so just a couple of things to say to wrap
01:06:03.140things up so again um if you want to support the show and also listen to a cool book if you go to
01:06:11.220audibletrial.com slash vulgar history sign up for a trial with audible um and some of that that helps
01:06:18.180support us financially a little bit and emma southen's biography of agrippina is a book that
01:06:23.800i think would be a great a great choice to listen to um you can also if you want to just straight
01:06:28.640up support me and this podcast and the other writing i'm doing um patreon.com slash ann foster
01:06:34.500writer and you can find us on instagram at vulgar history pod twitter at vulgar history and thank
01:06:42.340you so much for listening in oh and i mentioned it before i'll mention it again so if you do on
01:06:47.720the patreon i do have a spin-off podcast there that's patreon only so this asshole which is
01:06:53.300where i look at the stories of some of the men who happen to be involved in the lives of the women
01:06:57.960that we talk about on vulgar history as of the time of this recording there's two episodes up
01:07:02.960there. And I think more, I feel like, I feel like Caligula and possibly Nero also, maybe even
01:07:09.480Claudius, like they could each have their own little episode of that as well. But anyway,
01:07:14.420thank you so much for listening. And I will talk to you all next time.
01:07:19.820Vulgar History is researched, written and hosted by Anne Foster. That's me. The editor is Christina0.70
01:07:25.780Lumagi. Theme music is by the Severn Duo. The Vulgar History Show image is by Deborah Wong.
01:07:32.100Transcripts are written by Aveline Malek.
01:07:34.500Find transcripts of recent episodes at vulgarhistory.com.