Vulgar History - Women Leaders, part 2： Ancient Rome's Most Murderous Woman (Rerelease)

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women's history comedy podcast. My name is 0.73

00:00:15.360 Anne Foster, and this is a re-release of an episode from 2020, from early 2020. It's like

00:00:23.620 from just before the pandemic started, actually. This is from season two of Vulgar History,

00:00:28.680 which was the season's theme was women leaders in history and the men who whined about them.

00:00:34.920 And remember in 2020, that was like a thing, you know, people used to be not cool with women

00:00:39.120 leaders, but now it's 2024. And it's no problem for anybody, obviously, right? In this episode,

00:00:44.940 what you're going to hear in a bit is me from back then, doing an episode about Agrippina,

00:00:51.620 the younger and so since then i became a huge fan of the 1976 bbc miniseries i claudius which

00:01:00.860 features agrippina because her mother agrippina the elder is also a character on the show sort

00:01:05.900 of a bigger character that they call her agrippinilla this character anyway so it's interesting

00:01:10.860 to see those events happen in kind of the last few episodes of i claudius after having known the

00:01:15.620 story from doing this podcast. And this podcast episode, you're about to hear my main slash only

00:01:21.760 source for it was Emma Southen's amazing book, Agrippina, which has a couple different subtitles

00:01:28.420 and it's just been re-released in paperback. So just one sec, I'm going to tell you the title

00:01:35.180 so you know how to look for it. And I will put links in the show notes as well so you can get

00:01:40.340 a copy of it. So the sort of like tame title for it is Agrippina, The Most Extraordinary Woman of

00:01:47.560 the Roman Empire. The cooler title, which I think might have been only the title in the UK, is

00:01:52.320 Agrippina, Empress, Exile, Hustler, Whore. Anyway, it's the same book, just slightly different titles.

00:01:58.480 Just came out in paperback by Emma Southern, who I was so excited. Last season, I had her on to

00:02:03.760 talk about one of her more recent books as well. All of her books are so fundamental to me. She

00:02:09.240 really combines writing about history in a well-researched way with just silly jokes and

00:02:14.760 having a nice time and making it understandable for people who are not necessarily familiar with

00:02:20.440 the history you're talking about. And so she's been kind of a role model of mine. So it was

00:02:25.060 really cool when I got to talk to her a bit ago. And so it's nice to revisit this, the story of

00:02:29.880 Agrippina. I mean, I don't want to say anything else because I don't want to spoil any of the

00:02:34.200 twists and the turns. Anyway, so enjoy this episode. Vulgar History presents Agrippina the

00:02:40.980 Younger. Hello and welcome to Vulgar History season two, episode two. My name is Anne Foster

00:02:53.620 and this is a feminist women's history comedy podcast. I don't know why I made there be so

00:03:00.400 many words in explaining what it is, but I think I've explained it properly in every episode so

00:03:06.380 far. So in season one, we were looking at women who made history by quote unquote misbehaving, 0.99

00:03:14.700 which is sort of like also not quote unquote misbehaving because several of them did murder

00:03:20.000 people. This season, we're looking at women leaders and how men complained and were freaked

00:03:27.000 out about it and how it's not so different from nowadays when women leaders are still much more

00:03:34.160 rare than men leaders and men and women and just anyone living in the patriarchy still kind of

00:03:40.740 freaks out about women leaders for exactly the same reasons they did 2 000 years ago so last

00:03:48.020 week's episode we looked at cleopatra and this week we're looking we're kind of going chronologically

00:03:53.680 this season last season was kind of like random people well not random like people i chose but i

00:03:59.000 sort of put them in in order of i don't know the order that seemed to work best but this season i

00:04:03.920 think what's going to work best is going chronologically so you can kind of see the

00:04:09.100 development of how how women leaders were seen and accepted and treated throughout several

00:04:15.680 centuries of western history and how so little has changed and it's all really depressing actually

00:04:22.540 But what's not depressing is a skindalicious story. And today we're going to be looking at 0.79

00:04:28.040 the story of Agrippina the Younger, who is called that because her mother was also called Agrippina.

00:04:35.320 Agrippina the Elder was her mother. And this takes place in ancient Rome. So Agrippina was

00:04:42.080 born November 6th in the year 15, like plus 15. So when we were looking at Cleopatra, she was in the

00:04:49.100 before common era scenario. Agrippina is a bit later on. So just to sort of put us in the place

00:04:56.060 in time. So Cleopatra was fighting against emperor, or the guy who would become emperor

00:05:02.760 Augustus, aka Octavian, when he was sort of like in his teens slash early twenties. Agrippina is

00:05:09.940 the granddaughter, granddaughter? Yes, granddaughter of Augustus. So he was quite a lot older. So just

00:05:18.840 kind of Agrippina and Cleopatra were never alive at the same time, but they're not like so far

00:05:25.020 apart that people in the story wouldn't have known Cleopatra and been around for that whole

00:05:29.780 situation, which you can hear about in last week's episode. So this week we are looking at Agrippina.

00:05:35.820 So her full name was Julia Agrippina Minor, because, and I have not done a lot of studying

00:05:41.400 and research of ancient Rome. I kind of did a crash course to prepare for this podcast episode,

00:05:46.680 But it seems to me that everyone who is female in ancient Rome had the first name Julia, but no one actually went by the name Julia is kind of how it seems.

00:05:55.360 So she's mostly written about as Agrippina.

00:05:57.640 And I also want to mention that the main source I'm using for this podcast is the amazing biography of Agrippina by Emma Southen, which is it's got two different titles in some markets.

00:06:12.860 I think, in the UK. The book is called Agrippina, Empress, Exile, Hustler, Whore. In North America,

00:06:19.620 it's got a much more tame title, which is Agrippina, The Most Extraordinary Woman of the

00:06:23.820 Roman World. The book is amazing. It's very much kind of like, I've never before read a history

00:06:30.280 book that so much feels like something I myself could have written, like in the best possible way.

00:06:36.640 I feel such a kinship to this book, the way that she puts in jokes and asides and like,

00:06:41.880 makes fun of historically powerful men. And just the very casual conversational way that it's

00:06:48.860 written is amazing. And it's also superbly well-researched. So I'm using this book as my

00:06:55.380 source. She uses as her source numerous people who were writing in ancient Roman times. And

00:07:01.460 you can read her full bibliography for what all of her sources are. But basically,

00:07:05.840 just bear in mind that all of the sources she used, like all of the sources that exist

00:07:10.840 about Agrippina were basically men who really didn't like her and wanted to make her seem as

00:07:18.980 awful as possible. Not unlike Cleopatra. So some of the stuff in this story probably did happen.

00:07:26.280 Some of it might be exaggerated. Some of it might be totally made up. But just like imagine the word

00:07:31.220 allegedly before almost everything I'm about to tell you, because we can't really go back

00:07:36.660 and fact check but there's some it's like we know when she was born we know when certain events

00:07:41.080 happen but a lot of it we're just kind of filling in the gaps based on what these men who hated her

00:07:46.160 claimed had happened so other than births and deaths the dates of everything is kind of like

00:07:52.000 here's a story and you kind of get a sense of who she was and what she was like the details here

00:07:57.320 there no one can ever truly verify really so okay agrippina julia agrippina minor aka agrippina

00:08:05.840 the Younger was born November 6th in the year 15. She was the fourth surviving child and the first

00:08:13.100 daughter born to two extremely important and popular Roman people. So her mother, Vipsania

00:08:18.140 Agrippina, aka Agrippina the Elder, was the daughter of two really important Roman people.

00:08:23.940 Her father was Agrippa, who was a really popular and important statesman. And her mother was Julia

00:08:31.860 the elder, who was the daughter of Emperor Augustus. So Agrippina's mother is descended

00:08:37.680 through her mother to Emperor Augustus, which I guess makes our Agrippina the great-granddaughter

00:08:44.480 of Augustus. So that's the spread of time. Sorry, I said grandfather before. It's like

00:08:49.520 everyone has the same names and are all married to each other. This is not the first mistake

00:08:54.180 I'm going to make regarding how people are related to each other, because it's just like

00:08:58.140 the family tree, instead of a tree, it's just kind of like a bundle of sticks that's just like

00:09:03.480 thrown haphazardly on the ground, like, and then bundled back together. It's, there's a lot of

00:09:09.300 intermarrying, but what is important here to know effectively is that our Agrippina, Agrippina the

00:09:14.820 Younger, was descended very directly through her mother to Emperor Augustus, who was super long

00:09:21.500 standing emperor of Rome. He was made a god, like everybody respected him super a lot. Her

00:09:27.960 father was named Germanicus. And he was the nephew of the person who's the emperor when the story

00:09:35.940 begins, who is Emperor Tiberius. So basically, Tiberius is the uncle of Aragropena. So she's

00:09:42.840 the niece of the current emperor. And she's also the great granddaughter of famous Emperor Augustus,

00:09:51.040 basically so she's descended on both sides from basically emperors even though there's still this

00:09:58.460 thing in rome where they're like we're technically still a republic like we don't have one person

00:10:02.820 who's the emperor it's more just like he's elected and everyone just agrees to keep him the emperor

00:10:07.580 forever this sort of like pretend democracy again not my area of expertise but basically it's a

00:10:14.060 situation where everybody loved Augustus, everybody loved Germanicus. So our Agrippina and her sibling

00:10:21.200 and group, her whole family were just sort of beloved, sort of like in a, when they were little

00:10:26.080 kids, like William and Harry were beloved because Diana was beloved. Like it's that same sort of

00:10:31.960 thing. Like people just reflect the popular parents onto the younger kids. Anyway, so her parents,

00:10:37.040 Agrippina the Elder and Germanicus were the it couple of Roman history at the time. Agrippina

00:10:44.200 the Elder was doing exactly what a Roman woman was expected and wanted to do. And so everybody 0.94

00:10:51.440 loved her for that. She was a wife. She was a mother. She was devoted to both duties while

00:10:56.320 Germanicus was super handsome and a very successful military leader to the point that when he was

00:11:02.760 born, his name wasn't Germanicus. His name got changed to Germanicus in recognition of how well

00:11:07.620 he did conquering parts of Germany for the Roman Empire. And actually, Agrippina, today's heroine,

00:11:13.720 was born while the whole family was in Germany for invasion-related reasons. She was born in

00:11:19.120 a Roman outpost located on the Rhine River near modern-day Cologne, Germany. So she was born

00:11:26.100 amid the battlefield basically to these very popular and successful parents so the family

00:11:33.780 headed back to rome a little while later and germanicus was hailed as a hero in a major

00:11:39.220 triumphant parade slash festival so this is these parades it's not just like you know the thanksgiving

00:11:47.340 parade or whatever this is like days-long festival like everybody came there like they

00:11:52.280 paraded through everywhere. Like it was a massive celebration. So Agrippina would be a little

00:11:58.100 toddler seeing just exactly how much the city loved her whole family. Germanicus died just a

00:12:04.720 few years later, though, seemingly of natural causes. But everyone in this story dies of maybe

00:12:11.280 being murdered. And he is one of them, basically. So he died and the city mourned in like a massive

00:12:17.380 scale, like again, sort of like Princess Diana's death scale, just like mounds of flowers, just

00:12:23.200 like everybody like weeping, like everyone was so devastated because he was so popular and so

00:12:27.980 beloved. So it seemed like he maybe died of diseases because he was like traveling around

00:12:34.980 a lot doing battles in a period of time well before antibiotics. But his wife, Agrippina the

00:12:41.580 elder was pretty sure that he had probably been murdered by Tiberius, who was both Germanicus's

00:12:48.780 uncle and also adoptive father. So his uncle father, Emperor Tiberius. This is entirely possible.

00:12:56.320 Who knows? But basically, it also makes sense that Agrippina the elder would assume murder

00:13:02.220 because basically her entire family had been murdered mostly by each other, like her brothers,

00:13:07.180 her parents, her aunts and uncles. I mean, it makes sense like to her, like that's,

00:13:11.580 the normal way most people die is from inter-family murder. So what happened is that Germanicus 0.99

00:13:19.220 died while he was away. And Agrippina, our Agrippina was a little kid staying in Rome with

00:13:26.520 her other little siblings. And her mother sailed into town from being away with her husband. And

00:13:33.440 she did sort of like a grief parade. So it's sort of like this sad version of the triumph parade

00:13:37.720 that happened before she reunited with her daughter Agrippina and her other children

00:13:43.240 and everybody like everybody in Rome was just like freaking out about Germanicus being dead

00:13:48.720 he was like their number one favorite person they were like pushing over statues smashing

00:13:53.960 dishes like screaming and these like grief riots like killing themselves like everybody was

00:14:01.220 was really affected by the death of Germanicus. And so Agrippina, our little Agrippina, who at

00:14:07.740 this point was a little girl, should have been again paraded through town, seeing how everybody

00:14:12.600 loved her father so much, how she and her family were sort of special, sort of different from

00:14:17.340 everybody else. And this really doesn't change too much over the course of this whole story,

00:14:21.720 which is like decades and decades. Basically, the people of Rome loved her parents so much,

00:14:26.420 ergo they loved her and her siblings so much and um she kind of saw herself as special and

00:14:33.960 different and better than everybody else and basically the way they treated like she kind of

00:14:39.060 was in a way so we move now into the phase of her life where she is a half orphan her father is dead

00:14:48.960 and she's being raised by sort of a squad of powerful women so including her mother agrippina

00:14:54.020 the Elder, her father's mother, Antonia Minor, and her great-grandmother, Livia Drusilla,

00:15:00.560 who was the widow of Augustus. And if you watch I, Claudius, the old masterpiece theater show,

00:15:08.360 and there's, side note, a new podcast just started called I, Podius, where these two men are watching

00:15:14.520 and discussing episodes of I, Claudius. And I'm really excited about it because I'm very into

00:15:18.800 Roman history at the moment. Anyway, Livia in I. Claudius is this just like ideal Roman woman.

00:15:25.520 Again, she's a devoted wife and mother. She also seemed to have been really proficient at poison, 0.98

00:15:32.620 poisoning people and murdering people and being ambitious and pretty badass. So basically,

00:15:37.040 Agrippina, this little girl is being raised by these like very powerful women who had basically

00:15:42.000 thrived as best as they could in the wildly murderous patriarchy that they'd all been born

00:15:47.200 into. And almost immediately, Agrippina got to watch her mother flex her power in a number of 1.00

00:15:54.280 different ways. So this is also just crucial. So like she's a little girl and these formative 0.99

00:15:59.160 events are basically being worshipped by all of Rome and watching these influential women in her 0.90

00:16:06.120 life sort of sidestep the fact that in ancient Rome, women had no rights. They couldn't own land, 1.00

00:16:13.420 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. They were, I just keep thinking of it. I know I read this somewhere and I forget where, but basically landowners would own, you know, a house and maybe some chickens and maybe some daughters and maybe a wife. And those were all sort of the same, the same to them, basically.

00:16:35.540 but Agrippine was watching these three powerful women find their own way to to have power and to 0.97

00:16:44.200 be powerful in a situation where that wasn't expected so that was kind of to her that became 0.72

00:16:50.200 normal that became what she figured out her life would be like as well so the thing to bear in mind

00:16:55.340 here is that the emperor who was her uncle Tiberius was awful or no her great no oh my god

00:17:04.940 this family tree great uncle great uncle so the emperor is a great uncle his name is Tiberius he 0.53

00:17:10.860 is was a really shitty emperor and not in the way that other emperors were going to maybe talk about

00:17:18.060 in this story were really shitty emperors but more in the sense of he just kind of pieced out of the 0.97

00:17:22.740 whole thing um he was really serious and really stoic and had sort of hermit-like tendencies to 0.92

00:17:29.420 just run away and not want to engage with people and hide and not be emperor a lot of the time,

00:17:35.560 which is a totally, totally fine way for a person to be, if that's what you're like. But it's not

00:17:42.040 the best way to be if you were the Roman emperor at this point in time. So if you will recall,

00:17:48.380 Agrippina's mother and others were pretty sure Tiberius had been responsible for the murder of

00:17:53.180 Germanicus, who might have also just died of like, you know, getting a cut infected. Anyway,

00:17:58.960 um so Agrippina's mother basically was just like she blamed Tiberius for the death of her husband

00:18:06.140 and she just sort of started running around and seizing as much power and influence as she could

00:18:10.980 to try and destroy Tiberius while Tiberius just sort of hid away on an island not wanting to be

00:18:16.340 emperor basically and this was the next sort of 15 years this sort of power play went on so basically

00:18:24.600 this comprised much of the childhood and young adolescence of Agrippina the Younger. So in the

00:18:31.360 midst of all of this, Agrippina the Younger was married at age 14 to a man named Nias Domitius

00:18:38.640 Ahinobarbus. And that's three different words. And his last name Ahinobarbus means bronze beard,

00:18:45.000 which means he had red hair. And their son that she's going to have with him later also has red

00:18:49.620 hair. So I'm just like, as a red hair person myself, I'm always excited to encounter red

00:18:54.120 hear people and stories. Anyway, we're going to call her husband Domitius because that is what

00:18:59.020 most people called him back then. He was about 20 years older than her, which wasn't weird for that

00:19:04.000 time and or place. They were also related, which wasn't weird either. They were distantly enough

00:19:10.740 related that it wasn't a weird thing. Spoiler, she's going to later have another husband who's 1.00

00:19:15.680 much more closely related and that was treated as weird. So Domitius' mother was Agrippina's

00:19:23.360 great-grandaunt Octavia, who was the sister of Augustus and the previous wife of Mark Anthony,

00:19:32.720 which just like a bunch of important people. He's an important person. He's a lot older than

00:19:37.900 Agrippina. And he also is connected through blood relations to the beloved Emperor Augustus.

00:19:45.780 So basically they became the new it couple. Domitius was a high-ranking official. He was

00:19:51.600 extremely rich. And he was also, according to literally every source who ever wrote about him,

00:19:56.660 a really heinous and awful person. For instance, one time he apparently killed a slave because the

00:20:05.760 slave was less drunk than Domitius was, and that bothered him. Another time he ripped out a man's

00:20:12.660 eye because he felt that the man had been rude to him. He also apparently would seduce and or

00:20:20.520 assault most women he ever met with or without their consent so basically he was awful um agrippina

00:20:28.820 was 14 and that is the husband that she landed with but basically she lived through a pretty

00:20:34.900 chaotic 14 years so far and i'm sure that her her mother and her female relatives maybe gave her

00:20:40.800 some advice about how to not be murdered by this horrible person she was married to and so basically

00:20:47.820 So the feud between her mother and the emperor continued. The whole thing was just like over the top, melodramatic, wildly interesting, and we don't have time to get into all of it. But basically, it culminates with the emperor runs away to Capri, the island of Capri and never returns. Agrippina was accused of incest.

00:21:08.980 um some people actually maybe had incest side note on incest which is basically it was a thing

00:21:16.680 the people in ancient roman times seem to accuse each other of a lot not necessarily because it

00:21:23.080 was happening a lot but because it was kind of the grossest worst thing you could say about a person

00:21:27.240 so there's just like a lot of people in the story are going to be accusing a lot of other people of

00:21:30.980 incest there probably wasn't actually that much incest happening i'm guessing because it seems

00:21:37.460 like it was such a social taboo that it was like accusing someone of it like destroyed their whole

00:21:43.000 life or you wanted it to destroy their whole life so probably it wasn't a thing people were up to

00:21:47.380 anyway a lot of dramatic things happened um agrippina's mother and her two older brothers

00:21:52.980 had all at various points been sent into exile put in prison and all three of them i believe had

00:21:59.300 all died by suicide to avoid being murdered by tiberius basically the only surviving family

00:22:07.200 members Agrippina had at this point were her brother Gaius who was off living in exile in

00:22:13.960 Capri with Emperor Tiberius because he was maybe sort of his heir and two other sisters Drusilla

00:22:20.700 and Livilla. And then everything the next major plot twist happens in the year 37. Tiberius finally

00:22:28.300 died and Agrippina's brother Gaius was named the new emperor. Gaius was his birth name but you

00:22:36.280 might know him better by his nickname, which was Little Boots, or as it is said in Latin,

00:22:41.800 Caligula. So Caligula was Agrippina's younger brother and the oldest slash only surviving boy

00:22:50.040 in her particular branch of this very messy family tree. I guess this is just a little side

00:22:56.040 note on Caligula to explain kind of what's about to happen, which is just a lot of interesting

00:23:02.140 things. Um, so Caligula had spent some time in jail when their mother was sent to jail slash

00:23:08.820 exile. Um, and then when she died, he went to live with Agrippina and his two other sisters,

00:23:15.280 Drusilla and Lavilla in the care of the, in the household of just like mighty women in this like,

00:23:19.740 oh, what's the thing called? Um, just this house of super powerful, badass women, 1.00

00:23:24.560 basically this sort of steel magnolias but ancient rome scenario so the thing is that

00:23:30.840 so tiberius saw caligula is basically the guy who is going to be probably emperor after him

00:23:38.240 but tiberius was also really paranoid about someone trying to steal the throne away from him

00:23:42.600 because everybody constantly was so is that paranoia when it's true anyway so to keep caligula

00:23:49.580 from being able to emerge and like take over before tiberius died slash kill tiberius and

00:23:55.360 tiberius arranged it so the caligula would be treated like a little boy way longer than most

00:24:00.480 people were then so there's a whole thing where sort of like a bar mitzvah scenario where a little

00:24:06.180 roman boy would finally get his toga for the first time and when you get your toga there's

00:24:10.800 like a toga ceremony and it's like at that point it's like you are a man i think you could like

00:24:15.440 vote at that point. And this happened when people were like, I don't know, 14, 15, 16. But Caligula

00:24:21.180 was not allowed to do this. He was sent to live with Tiberius on his, like, hermit island in Capri,

00:24:28.440 where Caligula stayed from ages 19 till 27. Presumably, he got his toga at some point in

00:24:33.600 there, but it's still very embarrassing. And so he was raised away from Rome, away from the Senate,

00:24:40.640 away from learning how to be the emperor, away from learning how to be an adult person.

00:24:45.440 All 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. But at the beginning, everybody in Rome was really excited for Caligula to take over because no one had ever really liked Tiberius because he was not a very good emperor, what with the like running away and hiding all the time.

00:25:08.120 caligula was still um he was the son of germanicus he was the daughter of agrippina the elder he was

00:25:15.820 the son from this beloved family that they had had all these parades for and so everyone was

00:25:19.740 excited to have just like a young emperor tiberius had been 77 when he died so just like this new

00:25:25.840 young energy from this like beloved royal family so rome was super excited um they welcomed him

00:25:31.660 and his three sisters back to Rome, basically. And everyone thought everything kind of seems

00:25:38.600 pretty great. But Caligula, even though he hadn't been raised being groomed to be the emperor or

00:25:46.640 know how to be a politician, etc. He knew from just growing up in this situation that people

00:25:51.260 could take away your power at any moment. And he needed to sort of find reasons for people to keep

00:25:56.080 believing in him and for people to not turn on him. And so knowing how popular his parents were

00:26:00.640 and his family was. So he sort of elevated his three sisters to be like, look, it's me and my

00:26:06.620 three sisters. You loved her parents. We're these young, cool people. So Caligula, Agrippina,

00:26:13.540 Drusilla, and Lovilla were sort of a reminder of their father who everybody had loved, but also of

00:26:20.760 their ancestors, Emperor Augustus and even Julius Caesar. So they were just kind of like, see, we

00:26:26.000 have this bloodline, like, look at us. We're this family. You love us. Caligula had not married at

00:26:31.600 this point. He didn't have his own children. So basically he needed his sisters there with him

00:26:35.300 to present himself as like a family man sort of person. So he granted his three sisters the same

00:26:42.560 rights as the Vestal Virgins, which the Vestal Virgins is a whole other thing. I don't entirely

00:26:48.000 have the ability to explain to you right now, but basically they were women with, 1.00

00:26:51.820 They had the most rights of everybody in Rome. They had rights that other women didn't have. 1.00

00:26:57.060 Basically, they're able to make independent decisions about their lives without requiring 1.00

00:27:00.520 the permission of a male relative. Their bodies were seen as sacred. Touching them was punishable

00:27:05.160 with death. So Caligula gave those same rights to his three sisters. Basically, no Roman women

00:27:12.920 in history, including the wives and mothers of previous emperors, had this amount of autonomy

00:27:18.920 or power. So his three sisters were just like elevated to this extent that was, had no precedent,

00:27:25.700 basically. Every day at the start of Senate or whenever somebody was introducing like a new bill

00:27:31.040 or whatever into Senate, the men did sort of like the pledge of allegiance where they say like,

00:27:35.260 I promise to honor the emperor. And also I think we should raise minimum wage or whatever. So

00:27:40.960 Caligula changed the wording of this. So every time people said that they had to say, I promise

00:27:45.320 to honor the emperor and his three beloved sisters so the three sisters were sort of they

00:27:51.240 weren't present in senate because women couldn't be there but um they were seen as almost basically

00:27:59.260 equally as important as the emperor caligula had coins made there's a lot of like big moves made

00:28:05.400 vis-a-vis coins in the story so he had coins made with his face and name on one side which was like

00:28:10.920 the normal thing. Usually on the other side was a picture of like a god who the emperor wanted to

00:28:16.840 be like, or a picture of him like an action shot or something. But he put on the other side of the

00:28:21.180 coin, his three sisters posing like goddesses. And this was the first time that living Roman 1.00

00:28:27.680 women had ever been put on coins. Dead Roman women had been like people's beloved dead mothers and 0.96

00:28:33.120 things. And this is the first visual proof that Agrippina herself was a person. So she was a

00:28:39.480 little tiny image on the back of a coin shared with her with her siblings and then um this is

00:28:46.140 a podcast about agrippina not a podcast about caligula perhaps he would be a good topic for 0.91

00:28:52.620 a future episode of my patreon only spin-off podcast so this asshole to get into all the

00:28:58.300 messy stuff that he did but basically a bunch of stuff happened really quickly and we're just kind

00:29:04.120 looking at how it affected Agrippina. Basically, so towards the end of Caligula's first year's

00:29:09.700 emperor, several important things happened. So firstly, he fell ill of something and retreated

00:29:15.880 from public life for several months. Everybody was really worried he might die. He did not,

00:29:20.560 but he had to retreat for a bit. Agrippina gave birth to her first child around this time.

00:29:25.820 It was a son with red hair who she named basically the same name as her husband,

00:29:30.680 Lucius, Domitius, Ahino, Barbas. A few attempts were made while Caligula was recuperating during

00:29:37.680 his illness. Other people tried to take over. And at this point, Caligula began his ongoing

00:29:42.720 habit of murdering people who he thought were trying to take over from him. So it's sort of

00:29:48.920 like the PR was flipping. Like at first it's like, yay, this young man, we love him. We love his

00:29:53.220 sisters because their parents were great. This is awesome. But then it started to seem like,

00:29:58.840 this Caligula guy is maybe not quite as awesome as we had thought. But also people at this point

00:30:04.360 were like, ooh, we want to usurp him and have somebody else take over instead. So how can they

00:30:09.360 ruin his name? Rumors of incest. So rumors started to spread around the Caligula and was having sex

00:30:17.360 with his sisters. And he didn't help calm these rumors down by behaving increasingly erratically 0.88

00:30:23.200 and losing his shit an awful lot um so he did stuff like smashing pottery um replacing governors 0.98

00:30:30.280 of important colonies randomly with random people running away like tiberius to just like meditate 1.00

00:30:35.840 by himself on an island um stop shaving his beard and basically murdering anyone who looked at him

00:30:42.180 funny so he became a little little bit of a tyrant tyrant type issue happening and for reasons we

00:30:49.460 don't know because unfortunately the records we have that mention Agrippina don't mention this

00:30:55.380 detail. In the year 39 Caligula exiled his sister Agrippina for conspiring against him along with

00:31:01.660 her other sister Lovilla. Note that the third sister Drusilla had died one year before this

00:31:07.260 happened which might be part of what caused Caligula's psychological breakdown. Anyway so

00:31:12.320 there's two sisters left. Agrippina and Lovilla and Caligula just exiled them both because he

00:31:18.740 thought they were scheming against him. And this is a whole complicated thing. We don't need to

00:31:24.540 get into to understand the effect of on Agrippina's life. But basically, the plot was that Agrippina,

00:31:31.920 her sister and her sister's husband were, well, firstly, Caligula was like, and they're all having 0.70

00:31:36.340 sex with each other, incest. And also he accused that they were trying to raise an army to try and 0.56

00:31:42.720 remove him from power. And at this point, it's like, who could blame them if they were trying

00:31:46.420 to do that he was not doing the best of jobs and now for a quick advertising break welcome

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00:34:21.720 At this point, also Caligula had his own son,

00:34:25.180 which was maybe Agrippina was a bit jealous or nervous about that

00:34:30.800 because she had her own son

00:34:32.300 and she really wanted her son to become the next emperor.

00:34:35.200 Caligula's son would maybe become emperor instead.

00:34:38.120 So some tension between the two of them. 0.99

00:34:40.640 Also, Agrippina was really smart and knew what she was doing. Caligula did not know what he was

00:34:45.340 doing. So Agrippina at this point is age 24 and she was sent in exile, but it's not like, oh no,

00:34:51.180 living in like a little prison tent or whatever. She was living in a luxury villa on the island

00:34:55.860 of Pontia. She had a household of slaves, a personal bodyguard, and just kind of had a year

00:35:02.080 to, I mean, it would have upset her obviously to be away from Rome, unable to scheme, unable to

00:35:08.260 know what people were saying about her, knowing that at any second her brother could change 0.86

00:35:12.460 his mind and kill her. But also she had some time to just like make some plans and just like

00:35:17.480 practice her swimming. And I'm not joking because we learn later she was a really good swimmer. So

00:35:23.620 I think she's probably practicing her swimming. But then in the year 41, so I think she was there

00:35:30.020 for about a year or so, Caligula was assassinated. It seems like that's how most people stop being

00:35:37.260 emperor in my limited research at this point. Anyway, Caligula died of murder and their uncle

00:35:44.520 Claudius was named the new Roman emperor. So Claudius was the brother of their father,

00:35:50.600 Germanicus. So he basically did a military coup and usurped power and then went back and was like,

00:35:57.780 delete from the historical record, the events of this past two days. So that happened. And then

00:36:04.020 it was kind of like and one day claudius was the emperor and caligula was dead that's weird who

00:36:08.700 knows what happened and what else seemed to happen a lot too is when a new person took over as emperor

00:36:12.940 especially in this violent sort of way they would undo what their predecessor had done to try and

00:36:17.480 show like look i'm different i'm changing the way things are so one of the first things claudius did

00:36:22.480 was he released agrippina from exile and invited her to join him back in rome so she came back to

00:36:30.320 Rome, basically. And what happened next is that, so she's 25 years old. She is reunited with her

00:36:37.300 son, who hadn't been in exile with her. So I'm sure that was very upsetting for her. So her son

00:36:42.340 was four years old. She was 25. Oh, and her husband also died. So she was also a widow as well.

00:36:50.000 And just quick side note about Claudius is that he was 50 years old, had barely held any political

00:36:56.300 positions before he seems to have had some sort of like quirky personality traits that the people

00:37:03.020 in rome didn't much care for and also might have had some physical disabilities um he apparently

00:37:10.460 had a limp he would like drool sometimes maybe like so people if you watch i claudius um which

00:37:17.840 again it's a great and interesting way to learn all of these crazy rumors um he everybody in i 0.96

00:37:26.000 Claudius assumed he was an idiot because he had a stutter and a limp, but actually he was the 0.98

00:37:31.060 smartest of them all. That's a night Claudius. In real life, I don't know if he was actually 1.00

00:37:35.220 secretly super smart, but he was definitely underestimated and had some sort of physical

00:37:40.900 things going on with his body that made people not respect him as much as others. But he was

00:37:48.180 the emperor, so fuck you. Basically, Claudius was really suspicious of everybody, which makes sense 1.00

00:37:54.840 because he himself had just killed his nephew in a military coup and everyone his whole life was

00:38:00.900 always killing each other so the only people he trusted were his own freed slaves like former

00:38:06.580 people who were former enslaved people who he had freed known as freedmen um so he sort of elevated

00:38:13.680 them to be his advisors and his family members were other people he trusted and then again and

00:38:19.540 he had a new wife who he trusted, which is like, oh God. Okay. So his new wife was a teenager

00:38:25.000 named Messalina and she had had a son named Britannicus who became the emperor's,

00:38:32.000 everyone assumed that would be probably the next emperor after Claudius, which again,

00:38:35.840 Agrippina would be like, oh, I wanted my son to be the next emperor. Then Messalina had this son.

00:38:40.200 Oh, and he was named Britannicus because Claudius was the one, he was the emperor at the time that

00:38:46.200 Rome invaded Britain and started colonizing over there. So the son's name at first wasn't

00:38:52.860 Britannicus and was changed to Britannicus, sort of like Agrippina's father's name was changed

00:38:57.120 to Germanicus after he conquered some areas over there. Oh, and then also Claudius, pretty shortly

00:39:04.500 after taking over, executed Agrippina's only remaining sibling, her sister Lovilla, for the

00:39:10.580 usual random reasons, basically scheming, potential adultery, two no's at this point,

00:39:16.180 but basically Agrippina, age 26, the only surviving member of her entire family. Basically, 1.00

00:39:23.440 both of her parents were dead. All of her brothers are dead. Both of her sisters were dead. She was

00:39:28.200 still alive. And I don't think that's an accident because she just really knew her shit and she knew 1.00

00:39:33.020 what she was doing. So she took a new husband after she came back to Rome and her new husband 0.99

00:39:39.240 had an even longer name than the first husband. He's four names. Gaius Celestius Crispus Passianus.

00:39:46.220 He was vaguely related to her because everybody is vaguely related to everybody else. It's sort

00:39:51.720 of like the Kardashian-Jenner's Hadid whole thing, fosters in a way. Anyway, so her new husband,

00:39:59.220 we'll call him Crispus. I'm just choosing one of his four names that's easiest for me to pronounce.

00:40:03.500 So he was her former brother-in-law, meaning he had been previously married to Agrippina's

00:40:08.300 first husband's sister, which I think makes him the least actually related to her out of all of

00:40:15.380 her husbands. Spoiler. He sounds like total upgrade personality-wise from her first husband

00:40:21.640 in the sense of he was like a pretty straight up guy. He's known for making jokes, getting along

00:40:26.580 with everybody. The fact that no one had murdered him to this point spoke well of him as a person.

00:40:32.020 He's not known for ripping out the eyes of people who look at him funny, but he was a step down for

00:40:37.840 Agrippina in the sense of he was not as important as her first husband and he was also friends with

00:40:44.860 Claudius so the whole thing was kind of like the emperor just like giving his friend a gift which

00:40:49.840 was marriage to his niece but also it was sort of like Claudius wanted to use some of Agrippina's

00:40:57.580 still leftover rock star popularity like her whole family had been murdered slash killed

00:41:02.340 themselves slash like the family was still so beloved and i think that was a lot of what was

00:41:07.820 keeping agrippina from being murdered at this point so claudius just wanted to hitch himself

00:41:12.300 close to her star but also he didn't want her to get too powerful because she could maybe usurp

00:41:18.820 him and maybe her son would take over everyone is just suspicious of everybody else for great

00:41:24.700 reasons murder murder reasons so claudius literally got agrippina out of his way by sending her and

00:41:31.720 her husband off to asia um where they lived as a year well crispus served as the governor

00:41:36.900 uh they returned to rome and a couple of very suspicious things happen such as um passianus

00:41:45.640 sorry crispus her husband wrote a new will that made agrippina the sole beneficiary of his estate

00:41:51.720 and then he suddenly died and if this was an episode of murder she wrote we'd all be like

00:41:56.500 okay like you change your will to leave it all to your wife and then you die is like she probably

00:42:04.180 killed him i mean right right um but basically christmas got a super public funeral um another

00:42:11.340 like triumph march etc agrippina got to be in yet another parade this time but now she's 28 which is

00:42:18.360 just like so young what an eventful life she's a double widow she's a single mother um she's the

00:42:24.980 only living descendant of Julius Caesar and Augustus. And everybody still, still just 0.66

00:42:30.420 fucking loves her, basically. And then five years pass. So there's rumors that she killed her 0.98

00:42:38.160 husband so she could marry someone else, but she didn't marry someone else. So that's where it's

00:42:42.660 like, did she kill her husband? Unclear. She's going to maybe kill some other people. So this

00:42:47.760 is where people are tracking back and maybe trying to see where, where she started practicing 0.99

00:42:51.600 murders. But anyway, five years passed. During this time, she was maybe hanging out like in one

00:42:59.740 of the other villas that she had inherited from her rich dead husband, maybe practicing her

00:43:05.900 swimming some more. But basically during those five years, Claudius's wife, Messalina, went from

00:43:11.500 being a teenager to being 20. And she sort of took over as the number one most talked about Roman

00:43:17.420 woman and i can't avoid talking about messalina because this is it affects agrippina but also 0.98

00:43:23.420 it's just like oh my god so messalina was the third wife of claudius um she was 18 when she

00:43:31.140 married him when he was 50 when he was the emperor um she was also in some random way descended from

00:43:37.280 augustus etc um which made her a good wife for claudius because she was more directly descended

00:43:43.740 from them and the whole thing was everybody like you were more beloved the more directly

00:43:48.900 descended you were from augustus basically um so they had a daughter named octavia they had their

00:43:54.160 son britannicus um there hadn't been messalina and agrippina feuded a lot um i think largely

00:44:03.380 because they both really wanted their own sons to become the emperor next but also they are just

00:44:08.640 like both really opinionated strong-minded women um they're both really ruthless there was a lot

00:44:13.940 of scheming um similar to agrippina a lot of stuff written about almost everything right about

00:44:20.920 messalina actually it was written after her death and it was sort of defamatory because of people

00:44:25.620 saw what happened to her but also because she had a lot of enemies so there's a lot of sexy scandals 1.00

00:44:30.520 about her um like that she had that she lived in a in a whorehouse and like was a sex worker and 1.00

00:44:37.540 like challenged another sex worker to a contest to see who could have sex with the most men in a row 1.00

00:44:43.060 and like lots of stuff that's included in i claudius the the mini series if you want to watch

00:44:48.280 that how much of it is true i don't know but what the weirdest story about her is the one that is

00:44:55.980 true which is basically she had a lover who was not her much older husband and when claudius was

00:45:02.340 out of town, Messalina decided to marry her lover in a public ceremony. So it's not even like a

00:45:07.920 secret sexy marriage. It was like everyone knew about it. Claudia's obviously found out about it

00:45:13.180 and had her executed along with eight men suspected of helping her out. And like why

00:45:19.160 in the biography of Agrippina, the one by Emma Southen, she sort of theorizes it's almost like

00:45:25.300 a slow motion suicide. Like Messalina would have known that this wasn't going to turn out.

00:45:30.080 What was she doing? I don't know. But Claudius had her name erased from all historical records

00:45:36.100 and monuments like she'd never existed. Sort of like how when he took over in a military coup,

00:45:41.960 he had all records of those two days deleted. Claudius was just all about erasing public record.

00:45:48.860 Anyway, less than three months later, Claudius took a new wife who was Agrippina, who is, yes,

00:45:54.940 his niece so that's what happened um despite the fact that people in here were marrying their like

00:46:01.840 second cousin once removed or like someone who they share a great-great-grandmother with like 0.97

00:46:07.200 for an uncle to marry a niece was basically as fucked up in ancient rome as it would be if 0.96

00:46:13.920 someone did that now um everyone thought it was weird um inappropriate gross um because remember 0.99

00:46:20.820 this is a culture where when you really wanted to to say something bad about somebody else you

00:46:25.800 would accuse them of incest like incest was like the worst thing you could accuse somebody of and

00:46:30.260 this like was incest um so if we set aside the fact that they're related let's just look at like

00:46:37.500 how does this make sense as a match basically so claudius age 59 um agrippina is what like 32 i

00:46:46.060 think. So she was a descendant of Augustus, which is always a benefit. Claudius wanted to allow

00:46:52.380 himself with that family as possible. She was also still very popular because of her super 0.98

00:46:57.580 popular parents and everybody remembered that. Her son was also more directly descended from

00:47:04.860 Augustus than Claudius' son was. So he would maybe, that could be a selling point as well.

00:47:10.140 She's also rich and smart, very capable and clearly a really cool person. 0.98

00:47:16.940 And what was in it for her was that, well, she'd be the wife of the emperor, which basically elevates her to as much power as she could possibly get.

00:47:25.400 She'd always grown up with a sense that she was better than everyone and destined for great things.

00:47:29.200 And this might have seemed like basically her best chance to like seize onto that and get the power that she felt like she deserved for who she was.

00:47:37.000 it would also, she would assume, cement the future for her son. And she had always been

00:47:42.300 sort of like Margaret Beaufort was in the Tudor era, just like she was all about clearing the

00:47:47.780 way so her son could have as much power as possible. And also Claudius was older than her.

00:47:52.720 So she might think, you know, I'll be married to him for a bit, but then eventually I'll hopefully

00:47:56.180 be the emperor's mother, which was also still a pretty powerful position, or it could be.

00:48:00.700 It had been for other people before her. So basically, it wasn't legal, like it was illegal

00:48:07.580 for an uncle and an niece to get married because incest reasons. But Claudia sort of manipulated 1.00

00:48:12.780 the Senate to change the law to allow this weird, gross marriage to happen. And he did it in such 1.00

00:48:21.500 a way that it almost seems like the Senate ended up being like, please, Claudia, won't you marry

00:48:25.920 her and it was whatever they got married on january 1st in the year 49 um but even though

00:48:33.320 the law had been changed everyone like i just want to emphasize it wasn't like it wasn't like

00:48:37.540 with the cleopatra story where it's just like brothers and sisters got married whatever that's

00:48:41.780 just what happened like in rome this is like really fucking weird claudius's former best friend

00:48:47.280 solanus um killed himself the day of the wedding to sort of make a point that this was like 0.79

00:48:53.200 really fucking gross thing to do but get married they did and then three things happened quite 0.89

00:48:59.300 quickly um which were that claudius formerly adopted agrippina's son changed his name to nero 0.97

00:49:05.580 and married nero off to claudius's daughter octavia so it was like a double marriage like

00:49:11.180 the two parents got married and then their kids got married to each other and it's just a big

00:49:15.560 incest bath bomb i don't know agrippina um demanded that a man named seneca who was a

00:49:23.820 famous sort of philosopher person who had been exiled by caligula um agrippina demanded that

00:49:30.220 he be returned to be nero's new tutor because he was like the smartest person and she wanted the

00:49:34.320 best tutor for her son um and a woman named lolia paulina was accused of witchcraft sent into exile

00:49:41.320 and died. This part, I'm going to explain a bit. Why does that matter? So Lolia Paulina was a woman

00:49:48.380 who had been briefly married to Caligula. He had several wives. He kept getting bored of them and

00:49:52.900 getting new wives. When Claudius was looking for a new wife, after the whole Messalina scenario, 0.74

00:49:58.920 Lolia Paulina had been suggested as maybe a possible woman that he could marry, but he of

00:50:05.420 course married his niece instead and this is again where it's like allegedly um did Agrippina

00:50:10.940 conspire to kill Lalea Paulina to remove her as a rival for her uncle slash husband maybe

00:50:19.160 basically but this is sort of another rumored person that perhaps Agrippina was responsible for

00:50:24.780 killing anyway um after one year of marriage Claudius had Agrippina he gave her the title

00:50:31.660 Augusta. So remember Octavian became Augustus. So Augusta was a title that kind of meant not

00:50:38.180 quite empress, but basically a huge honor. Agrippina was only the third woman in history

00:50:44.240 to be given this title. And it was the first time that the title was given to the living wife of the

00:50:50.040 current emperor. So this title had been previously given to the mother of the emperor and a dead

00:50:57.420 mother of the another emperor i think basically this title meant that she was more or less on

00:51:03.340 equal standing with claudius the emperor no woman in western history had ever had this much power 0.99

00:51:09.800 before in terms of like her role in the in the empire and how big the empire was she also didn't 0.98

00:51:16.720 just she was involved in things like she was an active figure who sat beside her husband during 0.94

00:51:21.600 business meetings like she helped run things she wasn't just like decorative like she was actually 0.98

00:51:26.840 in there getting shit done. For instance, in the year 50, she founded a new Roman colony 0.67

00:51:33.620 in the place near where she had been born in Germany. The colony was originally called

00:51:38.600 Colonia Claudia Ara Agripenentium, which is a long name. And so people started calling it

00:51:44.660 Colonia Agripenentium, then later just Colonia, and now it's called Cologne. And it's still a

00:51:50.260 city in Germany. So she was the patron of this colony. And it was a place where like retired

00:51:55.520 military people would go to live. She, you know, paid money to improve things there, install, 0.99

00:52:01.840 you know, the Roman famous sewage systems, et cetera. The Romans lived apparently like 0.99

00:52:09.080 pretty multiculturally with the indigenous UB people who were in the area already. And it was 0.98

00:52:14.600 a successful little colony. And then more coin related news. So she was placed in a coin opposite

00:52:22.040 her husband in the year 50 so when she had been on the coin with Caligula on one side it was her

00:52:29.440 and her sisters on the other side and but this time it was her and Claudius and it was kind of

00:52:35.000 like the two faces both face in the same way his face was in front and hers was behind but she was

00:52:40.140 on the front of a coin so it's the first time ever a woman had been on a coin like that she also

00:52:46.040 commissioned statues made in her likeness that were wearing a diadem which is a specific kind

00:52:51.640 crown slash tiara that no living roman woman had ever been shown to wear in a piece of art so she 0.85

00:52:57.720 was just like ensuring that like artistically culturally like in every possible level like

00:53:03.220 people remind it all the time she was really fucking important so the next three years

00:53:09.700 continued um more of the same and till uh caligula died in the year 54 um and an awful lot of people 0.68

00:53:18.700 suspected that Agrippina had murdered him. Why was that? So partially it's sort of the Messalina

00:53:25.080 thing again, where people, she had enemies. And so the enemies like to spread rumors about her

00:53:30.840 that weren't true, that made her look bad because they wanted her to have less power. So, and

00:53:34.640 especially like her, Agrippina, she had so much power, so much power. No woman had ever had this

00:53:38.780 much power before. It really bothered a lot of men. So she had a lot of enemies. And so they

00:53:46.120 were spreading rumors about stuff like Agrippina was too masculine, that she was having sex with 1.00

00:53:51.680 lots of men, like she was a whore. She was scheming too much. She wanted to destroy the 1.00

00:53:56.440 Roman Empire, et cetera, et cetera. Basically, but also a lot of people were murdering a lot 1.00

00:54:01.760 of people. So anytime somebody died, like if the emperor died, it's sort of like if your first

00:54:06.960 guess is he was murdered, you're probably right. Basically looking at statistically. So Claudius

00:54:12.720 was 63 years old when he died and he had been sick he had various medical conditions seemingly

00:54:18.500 but also it sounds like so there's a woman called locusta who had was a poisoner she had been in

00:54:28.840 jail so she was a convicted poisoner so side note on locusta so she was apparently a woman who was

00:54:37.000 born in present-day France, was a peasant. She became a master botanist and herbalist and

00:54:43.000 quickly deduced that Rome, with all the nefarious deeds being carried out by the aristocracy, 0.51

00:54:47.780 was the place to make her fortune as a master poisoner. So she became so well known for her

00:54:53.100 skill that she was identified as just Locusta the Poisoner. So she was arrested twice for poisoning

00:54:59.300 people, but she was arrested a third time and Agrippina actually is the one who released her.

00:55:05.300 but Agrippina said like I'll release you but you need to also do me a favor and that favor is you

00:55:12.360 need to help me poison my husband uncle the emperor to death so the problem is that um so

00:55:19.280 they wanted to poison him to death Claudius really liked mushrooms but he had a food taster

00:55:24.000 obviously because everybody was trying to kill everybody all the time so what they did was

00:55:28.940 Locosta made sure that the personal assistant the food taster was busy that day Agrippina

00:55:34.560 would distract Claudius with lots of wine so he wouldn't notice that his food taster is not there

00:55:39.340 and then they serve mushrooms which were his most favorite thing to eat basically he started having

00:55:45.660 physical symptoms of poisoning allegedly a doctor was was summoned to help out the emperor to save

00:55:53.840 him but Locusta and what they were doing was in a time before what's called Ipecac so they stuck a

00:55:59.540 feather down his throat to make him throw up but Locusta had already put poison on the feather

00:56:04.260 and he died and that's an amazing story so he also could have died of natural causes

00:56:11.460 who knows um there's another version of this event that claudius ate the mushrooms and felt sick so

00:56:18.620 then agrippina offered him some porridge to try and settle his stomach but there was poison in

00:56:22.600 the porridge as well one way or another the emperor had died and no one could find his will

00:56:27.880 again it's like an agrippina related story where it's like what no one can find the will

00:56:32.560 that's not suspicious at all but she was like don't worry he told me what he wants and he wants

00:56:37.800 Nero to become the next emperor instead of Britannicus and everyone was like okay so she

00:56:43.360 was now three times a widow and now the mother of the emperor and the emperor was Nero so where

00:56:51.080 things get complicated here is that basically she was amazing she got everything she ever wanted

00:56:56.700 but the the problem is that her son was really shitty so it's very much like Cersei and Joffrey

00:57:03.940 in Game of Thrones in the sense of like Agrippina was so smart so clever she would have been an

00:57:09.820 amazing emperor on her own but it was a society in which that was not possible so instead she 0.97

00:57:15.140 has to sit and watch her son be an asshole and ruin everything basically so Nero age 16 0.99

00:57:21.720 was the new emperor. And unlike Caligula or even Claudius, he'd actually been taught how to do this 0.99

00:57:28.600 from a very young age, having grown up in Rome, being taught what to do. He had alliances with

00:57:34.660 army people and other people. So he's in a pretty good position. But the problem is that he

00:57:39.740 actually wanted to be an actor slash singer and not emperor. So personality wise, it was not

00:57:46.520 great fit. And for the first little while, Agrippina was sort of unofficially like his

00:57:53.200 regent. So he was 16, you know, he had his toga, he was a man, but she had done a really good job

00:57:59.020 sort of running things with Claudius. If you look at Claudius's reign, actually, on almost

00:58:04.500 everything you can measure, things just got better once he married Agrippina. So it seems like she

00:58:09.760 was able to kind of jump in and just handle the books better. Just like her help was really

00:58:14.620 helpful so i think she thought she could kind of do the same stuff for nero who was still just a

00:58:18.240 little kid um and for the first little while they're always together like when he made an

00:58:22.620 appearance somewhere she'd be with him just like she had been with claudius so she also suggested

00:58:27.660 that she'd be allowed to attend senate meetings which not like in person that's crazy she's a 0.59

00:58:35.360 woman um but she asked like if she could stand behind a curtain and like listen in on the senate 0.89

00:58:41.100 meetings which was more than any woman had been able to do before and before this what she had to 1.00

00:58:46.780 do was rely on second secondhand information about who had said what and what went on but now she 0.98

00:58:51.520 could actually like listen in um and then there was more coins drama um she had some new coins

00:58:57.380 commissioned so this time like she'd shared the one with claudius where they're both facing the

00:59:02.520 same way but his face was on top the new coins that she had done was her and nero on the front

00:59:07.940 of the coin facing each other so both of their faces were there in full so again like she just

00:59:12.920 kept breaking new ground for like women having power it was all and i don't mean this in like 0.51

00:59:19.180 she should have done more like but it was all very self-serving like she wanted herself to have this 1.00

00:59:24.800 power she wasn't like i want to make it so the women who follow me will also have all these 1.00

00:59:28.960 advantages like that wasn't her deal at all she wasn't like climbing up a ladder and then helping 1.00

00:59:33.920 other women up the ladder she was just like me i want this power for me and unfortunately as it 0.84

00:59:40.360 turned out is that a lot of the power that she had was based on like understandings and people 1.00

00:59:45.960 assuming things not actually having laws written or changed for her which meant spoiler when it

00:59:54.200 all started to come undone like she didn't have any ground to stand on because it was all just

00:59:58.020 kind of like through her force of will and personality she like made some stuff change but

01:00:02.540 like the laws didn't actually change so she had set herself up as kind of like she was a wife and

01:00:09.180 a mother but she never ever presented herself like her mother had been or like Livia had been

01:00:14.340 who was just kind of like I'm this good Roman woman who just like stays at home and loves being

01:00:18.080 a wife and mother and I'm like secretly scheming in the background she was like scheming out loud 1.00

01:00:23.600 in front of everybody she presented herself as kind of like not traditionally feminine so she

01:00:28.560 didn't present herself as a man but also not as a woman she was just kind of like i am basically a

01:00:33.900 goddess and people acted like she was until one day um she started being treated like a woman

01:00:39.940 and everything started to fall apart so the first major blow was she went in to join nero in a

01:00:47.660 meeting with some foreign delegations um and nero she went to sit next to him um which was like even

01:00:54.460 a bold move for her i'm usually she should have sat like beside or like behind claudius but she

01:01:00.260 wanted to sit right next to nero and nero basically stopped her um and made her and walked her over to 0.95

01:01:06.200 a different seat further away from him so that was like humiliating her in front of this foreign

01:01:10.060 delegation and everybody else and it was like through body language a major statement about

01:01:15.260 her loss of power um nero fell in love with a woman named actay and agrippina wasn't a fan of 0.99

01:01:22.600 the relationship and they had a big fight about it and Nero is sort of uh sort of a fuck you to 0.96

01:01:28.280 her sent her a gift of some jewels and a new dress um which was kind of like his way of saying 0.99

01:01:33.820 like hey you're just a woman here are some woman things mind your own business and especially 0.98

01:01:40.820 because Agrippina wasn't a person who was ever interested in like dresses or jewels or being 1.00

01:01:46.160 flashy or luxury things so apparently in response she said something like i gave him the empire and 0.98

01:01:53.660 he gave me a dress which is like oh put that on a poster sons suck um i mean sometimes sons suck 0.99

01:02:02.520 so he also nero um brought in lucosta again um to help him murder his stepbrother slash cousin 0.99

01:02:12.080 Britannicus who was the son of Claudius because he saw Nero saw Britannicus as a threat as somebody 0.70

01:02:19.120 who could maybe become emperor instead of him um which is like it's sort of a shitty thing Nero

01:02:25.800 did but also like everyone was killing everyone it's not that different but basically he was just

01:02:31.500 clearing the way for himself to have ultimate power and part of that was he expelled Agrippina

01:02:35.940 from the palace. They made her go live elsewhere. So they were just sort of back and forth fighting 0.99

01:02:41.780 about a bunch of random things. And one day Agrippina basically went in, forced Dorian to

01:02:47.120 talk to Nero. And we don't know what happened in this like closed door meeting. But at the end of

01:02:51.320 this, they clearly reached some sort of understanding. And based on how stable the

01:02:55.600 government went after this, it seems like the agreement might have been Agrippina will just 1.00

01:02:59.820 like secretly run things behind the scenes, but she won't make public appearances or let anyone 1.00

01:03:05.200 know that she's doing that because the next sort of four years were okay for her Nero started he

01:03:13.200 put on plays made everybody listen to him sing made everybody clap for him and was just sort of

01:03:18.380 like little baby Caligula tyrant type person Nero fell in love with a woman named Popeya Sabina

01:03:26.100 who has her own interesting story we can talk about another day but basically at around the

01:03:32.320 same time he got involved with her Nero decided it was time to murder his mother so some of the 0.91

01:03:37.820 rumors are that Poppea was jealous of Agrippina because of like incest reasons but also maybe she 0.99

01:03:44.540 just kind of saw how smart Agrippina was or maybe Poppea didn't give a shit we don't know but 0.62

01:03:49.420 basically Nero started hanging out with this woman named Poppea and around the same time he decided 0.95

01:03:55.280 to try and kill his mother so a couple things so Agrippina was friends with La Costa and knew

01:04:01.680 about poisons herself. And so just like that guy in Princess Bride, it turns out she had been 0.77

01:04:06.860 secretly dosing herself with small amounts of poison for a really long time just to make

01:04:12.000 herself immune to all of them. So apparently Nero tried to poison her, but it didn't work

01:04:18.200 because she was immune to all poisons, which is just kind of like, love that for her. Nero knew

01:04:24.240 that he couldn't just send in the army to stab her because she was still, still so popular as

01:04:29.280 the daughter of Germanicus um and Germanicus had been this great army leader and so the army might

01:04:34.180 not listen to those orders and do that so Nero who was also just like huge drama queen literally

01:04:40.460 drama queen he had seen a play that had a prop boat with like a false floor in it and he was

01:04:46.220 like what if we build an actual version of that boat with a like trap door in it get Agrippina

01:04:51.520 on the boat and then she like drowns because the boat trap door opens when she's like in open water

01:04:56.940 which is a ridiculous plan but it's in every source and so it seems to be like this is what

01:05:02.940 he wanted to do so he invited his mother to come and visit him at a villa that he had to take a

01:05:09.120 boat to get to agrippina was like i see what you're up to and she refused to take his offer

01:05:13.680 of a boat instead took her own boat up to meet him and they dinner together and somehow nero i

01:05:19.200 guess using his like acting skills pretended like he didn't want to kill her to the point that at

01:05:23.600 the end of the dinner she agreed to take his special boat back home um as per the plan part

01:05:29.740 of the boat collapsed when they were in the middle of the water and the ship started to sink

01:05:33.680 um but this is where agrippina being a great swimmer um pays off and she's able to swim back

01:05:40.400 to shore basically um she arrived back at the villa people applauded because they were like oh

01:05:46.560 my god agrippina our beloved agrippina almost died but she didn't look at her she's an amazing

01:05:51.460 swimmer we love her so much the daughter of germanicus so she had a messenger send a message

01:05:57.160 back to nero saying that she was still alive did she know that he had tried to kill her i mean

01:06:02.240 probably at this point but she so the note was just basically like guess what foiled you again

01:06:08.160 people were just like weeping and praying all around her house like again i just the only

01:06:14.140 comparison i can think of from contemporary anything is like princess diana's death like

01:06:19.400 people are just so grateful that she hadn't died but what happened is that later that night when

01:06:25.120 she was in bed soldiers came marching up um and they had sort of fake charges from Nero so Nero

01:06:32.360 claimed Agrippina had tried to kill him um and the soldiers came in to murder her basically she tried

01:06:38.580 to talk them out of it she tried to talk them out of it but they were having none of that and 0.60

01:06:43.440 basically her final act is that she flung open her robe to reveal her womb saying like stab me here 1.00

01:06:49.300 like, if you're really from my son. And then they did. And then she died age 44. So Agrippina, 0.99

01:06:57.220 she achieved more individual power than any Roman woman before her. And no other Roman woman would 1.00

01:07:03.200 for basically another hundred years when the third century Syrian matriarchy came along. 0.97

01:07:09.620 These were three Roman noblewomen who were pretty awesome people themselves. They were called Julia 0.96

01:07:14.500 Domna, Julia Soamias, and Julia Mamea. And they wound up getting similar levels of power. But

01:07:21.540 basically, Agrippina is kind of it for a while. Shortly after she died. And that's the story of

01:07:31.500 Agrippina. So again, I just want to shout out my main source of information about this. The reason

01:07:36.820 I even started learning about Agrippina was because I read this biography, which is amazing.

01:07:41.420 um so it's the biography of agrippina by emma southen um which i recommend heartily um you can

01:07:49.060 read it as a book you can also read it on audible.com um which is my little sponsor so if you

01:07:56.160 go to audibletrial.com slash vulgar history you can look up of you can get your free trial and

01:08:02.240 maybe your free trial could be reading emma southen's biography of agrippina which i read

01:08:06.760 as an audiobook and which is really fun to read in that way actually read it as an audiobook

01:08:11.260 slash as a book book I was kind of bouncing back and forth it's really really good and now it is

01:08:16.760 time for us to score her so there's four four metrics that we score people on for vulgar history

01:08:25.380 and the first is scandaliciousness so there's a number of things here for scandal for Agrippina 1.00

01:08:33.280 we've got the um just her whole family situation that's not her specifically but she's growing up 0.99

01:08:38.420 in this wild family situation. We've got the marrying her uncle. We've got the maybe poisoning

01:08:44.080 her husband to death. We've got the maybe poisoning her uncle husband to death. We've 0.96

01:08:48.800 got the maybe killing of other people. Like the liciousness of her scandals, I think is quite 0.59

01:08:55.800 high. I'm going to give her, I think a nine. The next category is scheminess. And this is like

01:09:02.480 flat out 10 like she she schemed like she schemed behind the scenes then when she got more power she 1.00

01:09:08.900 was scheming out in public by like making things like the new rules so she could hide behind the 1.00

01:09:13.620 curtain and listen into the senate like she was i feel like even in her sleep she was scheming

01:09:18.260 just like so much so much scheming the next measure is significance and this is tricky

01:09:25.460 because she was very significant in her time. She herself didn't really pave the way for other

01:09:33.400 people. So she didn't really in that sense, but also in terms of the significance of because of

01:09:39.080 her, basically, she's the reason why Nero became the emperor. He wasn't a good emperor. In fact,

01:09:45.800 I believe he was the last emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. But the fact that she was 0.90

01:09:52.080 basically instrumental in making her son be emperor is pretty significant this is tricky

01:09:57.680 i think i'm gonna give her i feel like a six a six for significance and the final category is

01:10:05.740 sexism um this is where the bonus basically how much how much more could she have achieved if she

01:10:11.780 was a man like how much did her gender affect what she did in life and i mean in every conceivable 0.99

01:10:19.260 way, really. She would have been a great emperor if a woman could be an emperor, but she couldn't 1.00

01:10:24.320 be an emperor. But she kind of didn't let that stop her. But then it kind of did her in at the 0.99

01:10:29.000 end. It's tricky for her with the sexism. She achieved a lot in spite of sexism. So it's not 1.00

01:10:35.400 like sexism held her back. Oh, it's tricky. I'm going to give her a six, a six for sexism. So

01:10:40.140 that's 31. That is Agrippina takes the lead. I mean, not that it's a contest, but just in terms 0.99

01:10:46.740 of like who scores the highest on these four metrics um she's the first over 31 so last week

01:10:53.680 to cleopatra she was 28 from season one elizabeth bathory was 29 but agrippina 31 kind of proud of

01:11:01.120 her and so that's agrippina the younger my god okay so just a couple of things to say to wrap

01:11:08.340 things up so again um if you want to support the show and also listen to a cool book if you go to

01:11:16.420 audibletrial.com slash vulgar history sign up for a trial with audible um and some of that that helps

01:11:23.380 support us financially a little bit and emma southen's biography of agrippina is a book that

01:11:28.980 i think would be a great great choice to listen to um you can also if you want to just straight

01:11:33.820 up support me and this podcast and the other writing i'm doing um patreon.com slash ann foster

01:11:39.680 writer and you can find us on instagram at vulgar history pod twitter at vulgar history and thank

01:11:47.520 you so much for listening in oh and i mentioned it before but i'll mention it again so if you do

01:11:52.720 on the patreon i do have a spin-off podcast there that's patreon only so this asshole which is where

01:11:58.600 i look at the stories of some of the men who happen to be involved in the lives of the women

01:12:03.140 that we talk about on vulgar history as of the time of this recording there's two episodes up

01:12:08.160 there. And I think more, I feel like, I feel like Caligula and possibly Nero also, maybe even

01:12:14.680 Claudius, like they could each have their own little episode of that as well. But anyway,

01:12:19.640 thank you so much for listening. And I will talk to you all next time.

01:12:23.920 so with the Cleopatra Anne's version that I released or two weeks ago I guess and then I

01:12:38.560 did the special Cleopatra discussion with Gina Berry Cleopatra like I needed to write that wrong

01:12:43.260 I scored her much too low Agrippina I think the score still stands she's got a 31 and in terms of

01:12:51.320 this show. And if you keep up with the Scandalicious Scale, which you can actually see

01:12:55.660 all of them if you go to vulgarhistory.com and you hit on score, you can see where everybody

01:12:59.720 is in the Scandaliciousness Scale. I think Erica Pena is right at home. She's right at home. I 0.94

01:13:03.520 think a 31. Anything above 30 is quite remarkable for somebody on the show. I think where she

01:13:09.780 falls short in terms of like not getting up to like a Fredigan level of 38, it's similar to 1.00

01:13:15.860 Fredigan's own issue which was that the people around her were also messy bitches and Agrippina 1.00

01:13:23.500 was scandalous but kind of everyone kind of also was you know I can't give top marks in that 1.00

01:13:30.120 category when that's a situation so Agrippina I mean definitely one of the the most important

01:13:36.500 women in ancient Rome as the subtitle of Emma Southern's book says and it's just exciting to

01:13:42.220 revisit this episode now with my new iClaudius lens on all of it. And so I do want to also mention

01:13:50.020 Agrippina, the younger, is one of the designs you can get on a beautiful piece of jewelry by

01:13:55.220 our brand partner, Comet ERA Jewelry. So Comet ERA Jewelry, I do like when things synchronize,

01:14:01.600 whereas someone I talk about is a person who they have on their jewelry. So Comet ERA Jewelry,

01:14:06.900 our brand partner. So this is a small business, it's a woman-owned business, 1.00

01:14:10.320 and they are making beautiful heirloom pieces of jewelry. 0.52

01:14:15.460 They make pendants, they make rings.

01:14:18.260 All their stuff is made entirely in New York City.

01:14:20.680 Everybody involved in the company has healthcare and good wages.

01:14:24.040 Even the packaging is made by a little family-owned business in Chicago.

01:14:27.580 And basically the reason why I connected with him in the first place is,

01:14:30.560 first of all, because several of you shared this company with me

01:14:34.640 and felt like this made me think of you.

01:14:36.080 And I contacted Tori, the owner, and I was like,

01:14:38.260 do you want to work together?

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01:14:44.740 as well as women from history. She has a whole collection called the Difficult Women Collection,

01:14:50.300 which includes Agrippina, is somebody who's on there. And last week's heroine, Cleopatra,

01:14:56.920 you can also get her on your jewelry, as well as next week's person we're talking about,

01:15:01.240 which is going to be Boudicca. And if you're like, that's not how you pronounce Boudicca,

01:15:05.660 it's boadicia or whatever like stay tuned for next week because i talk about the pronunciation

01:15:10.660 and i really thought about the pronunciation and i came to a conclusion and i pronounce it like

01:15:15.960 bodica anyway bodica also is there on the difficult women collection from common era

01:15:21.620 there's also people in classical mythology um medusa is there aphrodite um from my sapphic

01:15:28.380 sappho is one of the options as well their pieces are available in solid gold as well as a more

01:15:33.560 affordable gold vermeil. And you listening right now, Vulgar History listener, you can always get

01:15:39.560 15% off your order, all items in your order from Common Era by going to commonera.com slash vulgar

01:15:45.760 or using code vulgar at the checkout. And I also have, this is just where I just let you know,

01:15:53.040 you know, if you don't know me, if you don't know what the vibe is, if you don't know what's going

01:15:56.260 on here, I also have a sub stack newsletter, which is where you can get an email newsletter

01:16:02.260 of my writing every alternate week. If you subscribe to that on Substack, which you don't

01:16:08.080 have to like become a Substack member or whatever. You can just like truly just subscribe to it. If

01:16:12.920 you go to vulgarhistory.substack.com, there it is. And so what I'm posting about there are essays

01:16:20.340 about women from history, sort of inspired by the name of the collection from Common Era. Actually,

01:16:24.840 I'm calling my new series, Difficult Women. My previous series there was called Tudor.

01:16:29.160 I hardly knew her. And I was talking about all the ladies of the Tudor era.

01:16:33.520 And now I'm kind of branching out into other things. So some of them are people I've talked

01:16:37.740 about on the podcast and some of them are not. But if you want to see what my writing is like,

01:16:41.840 check it out on Substack as well. It's free. And I do also want to mention that I am on

01:16:47.640 the most recent episode of a podcast called Ticklish Business. And if you don't know Ticklish

01:16:51.820 Business, it is a podcast about old Hollywood movies. It's hosted by Kristen Lopez and Emily

01:16:56.800 Edwards. And basically, they just talk about classic old Hollywood movies each time. It was

01:17:02.660 just Kristen's birthday. And so she decided to talk about one of her favorite movies of all time,

01:17:07.580 which is called Anne of the Thousand Days. And it is a movie from 1969 about Anne Boleyn. And

01:17:14.560 she invited me on. And I was really excited to be on. I hadn't seen that movie before. I was nervous.

01:17:19.640 Like, oh my God, what if I don't like the movie? I have to be honest on this podcast. But honestly,

01:17:24.080 Geneviève Bujold, a French-Canadian actress, plays Anne Boleyn. And she is stunning. For me,

01:17:32.340 my Anne Boleyn on film, not that I've seen all of them, but Natalie Dormer was it for me. I was

01:17:38.160 just like, Natalie Dormer, her Anne Boleyn, it's just iconic. But then when I saw Geneviève Bujold,

01:17:43.880 I'm like, she's up there too. She's up there too. It's just like, of course, somebody would

01:17:47.700 throw away their marriage, change the religion of their country for her. She is amazing in this

01:17:53.760 movie. And I had a lot of fun talking about it. So anyway, just look for Ticklish Business is the

01:17:58.280 name of the podcast. I'll put that link in the show notes as well. I have some other guest spots

01:18:02.600 and some other podcasts coming up soon too. I'm excited to be doing more of that sort of thing.

01:18:06.940 And if you, listener, have a podcast and you want me to be a guest on it, I mean, reach out. And if

01:18:13.740 anyone else wants to reach out to me for other reasons, you can as well. So you can find me on

01:18:18.220 Instagram, where I am at vulgarhistorypod and my DMs are open there. You can also go to my website,

01:18:24.740 vulgarhistory.com. And there's a little thing to contact me and you can fill in your little form

01:18:29.760 and let me know what you want to talk to me about. And I'm just back from my holiday, y'all. And I'm

01:18:36.560 getting back in the vibe of recording podcasts. I'm just like, all the things. What are the things

01:18:41.040 that I say? Oh, yeah. Speaking of my holiday. So I was just on a trip. I was in London. I was in

01:18:47.780 Edinburgh. I was in Braunschweig, Germany. I was briefly in Hanover, Germany. I had a layover

01:18:53.080 in the Amsterdam airport. Yeah, it was the first time that I've traveled internationally in, I

01:18:59.920 think, more than 10 years. And it was really exciting for me. And I got a lot out of it.

01:19:04.920 And part of what was really fun was taking pictures of things and knowing that I could

01:19:08.620 then share them with you, the Titswood Brigade, my podcast listeners who get it, who would know

01:19:13.720 why it's thrilling to see things like John Knox's grave, to see in Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh, 0.70

01:19:20.520 this darnly secret sex stares, Rizzio's death stain. Why I freaked out fully when I saw 0.93

01:19:28.800 Carolina Brunswick and Frances Howard's portraits at the National Portrait Gallery in London. I also

01:19:35.320 got to hang out with some alpacas. I got my Anne de Arousso on. Anyway, so I want to share that with

01:19:43.000 everybody. So I've been posting like a couple of pictures on my Instagram, which again is

01:19:46.760 vulgar history pot. But if you want to read all my travel blogs, which I think just wrapped up

01:19:50.340 today, when listening to this, you can go to my Patreon, which you can join for free to see

01:19:56.380 these sorts of blogs. So all my exciting adventures, my travel blogs are at patreon.com

01:20:01.900 slash and foster writer. And yeah, so you can see just pictures and kind of my commentary about what

01:20:06.700 i saw and what i hoped to have seen but did not see and anyway but so that's what you get if you

01:20:13.660 can go to patreon and just become a free member if you want to support the podcast on patreon you

01:20:20.000 can become a paid member which means you can see the travel blogs which everybody can anyway you

01:20:24.660 just have to be a free member but if you join as a paid member you can pay a one dollar a month

01:20:29.700 and you get early ad-free access to all episodes of this podcast as well as to an ad-free version

01:20:34.860 of all the old episodes. And for $5 a month, you get all of the above, plus also bonus episodes of

01:20:41.720 Vulgar Peace Theater, which is where I talk about costume dramas with friends of the podcast,

01:20:46.120 Alison Epstein and Lana Wood Johnson. We've been on hiatus for a bit because it's summer and I was

01:20:50.880 traveling and lots is going on. Alison's got a book that is coming out soon that we'll be talking

01:20:56.200 about more. But anyway, I think we're going to get back into Vulgar Peace Theater probably in

01:21:00.460 the next little bit. But in the meantime, you can join the Patreon for the $5 a month and listen

01:21:04.820 to our back catalog. We talk about Newsies. We talk about the Les Miserables movie with

01:21:11.120 Russell Crowe. We also talk about Bananas movies like Queen Margot. It's always a good time when

01:21:19.620 every episode is like three hours long. So if you're looking for that, that's where you can

01:21:22.960 find that. And we also have Vulgar History merch. I do want to say I appreciate. I was wearing a

01:21:29.620 t-shirt from the Vulgar History merch collection. I was wearing the Peg Plunkett's pub design by

01:21:35.260 Karen Moynihan when I was doing my trip because I did host to the first ever Vulgar History meetups

01:21:41.320 in London and in Edinburgh. And I wore that shirt just so people would recognize me. And so I think

01:21:46.620 having now experienced this, I think if you get or if you own Vulgar History merch and you're

01:21:52.680 wearing one of these shirts and when someone recognizes this year, it'll be a cool feeling

01:21:56.120 because you'll know you're in the tits brigade and you'll know that you'll be friends now.

01:21:59.920 You can get this merch at vulgarhistory.com slash store, which is great if you're in the US. If

01:22:05.760 you're outside the US, I would recommend going to our alternate store, which is vulgarhistory.redbubble.com

01:22:12.420 and peruse the stuff there. And I don't know, pins, mugs, lots of things. And as I mentioned,

01:22:20.860 i'm on instagram and vulgar history pod i'm also on threads same name vulgar history pod and yeah

01:22:27.920 next week bodica just reconsidering that again do do we like her score do we not like her score

01:22:34.420 you know what let me know what you think about that and anyway i mean my friends we're back at 0.99

01:22:41.080 it and i'll talk to you next week so until then keep your pants on and your tits out 0.97

01:22:45.440 vulgar history is research written and hosted by ann foster that's me the editor is christina 0.99

01:22:53.660 lumagi theme music is by the severn duo the vulgar history show image is by deborah wong

01:22:59.980 transcripts are written by avilene malik find transcripts of recent episodes at vulgarhistory.com

01:23:06.160 To be continued...

01:23:36.160 chaos of cyborg fall in love with our core cast or be awed by our incredible guests 0.78

01:23:46.540 from familiar shows like oxventure three black halflings and no roles bard

01:23:53.100 ignite your imagination and discover the realms of peril and glory today go to realmspod.com

01:24:02.140 or search Realms of Peril and Glory wherever you listen to podcasts.

01:24:07.520 Two, one, you win!

01:24:10.700 There are vampires out there.

01:24:12.980 They walk among you, shoulder to shoulder, in the dark.

01:24:15.980 Heading to work, heading home, going to the bar.

01:24:18.520 It's a life just like anyone else's, and I have grown used to it.

01:24:22.760 To the darkness, to the moon, to the taste of blood on my tongue.

01:24:26.480 But vampires are dying out.

01:24:28.580 We are a fading kind, and I am the first one created in so long, and that is a dangerous thing to be.

01:24:35.580 Those who came before me, elders of all stripes, they do not want to see our kind gone,

01:24:40.080 and they will do anything to keep their power.

01:24:43.000 And for myself, and for Grace, who created me, that is a sword that hangs above our heads.

01:24:48.400 And the worst person of all carries our secret, and he will use it however he sees fit.

01:24:54.840 Who do you look to when things are at their darkest?

01:24:57.120 From the creators of Parkdale Haunt comes Woodbine, a podcast about monsters, dreams, and changes.

01:25:03.840 Those you want, and those you never saw coming.

01:25:07.080 Season 2 arrives September 24th, distributed by Realm.

01:25:10.960 Do you ever watch a TV show set in a historical time period and think, how accurate is this really?

01:25:16.840 But also, does it matter if it's accurate or not?

01:25:20.060 Net4TV is a new podcast about shows set in ancient times.

01:25:24.020 this season we're recapping every episode of the show spartacus blood and sand i'm anne foster and

01:25:32.780 i have never seen this show before and i'm gina berry and i have watched this show maybe too many

01:25:38.480 times join us every other monday on the nefer tv podcast as we discuss the real history behind

01:25:44.740 spartacus blood and sand follow nefer tv that's n-e-f-e-r-t-v wherever you get your podcasts

01:25:54.020 Thank you.

Vulgar History - September 11, 2024

Women Leaders, part 2： Ancient Rome's Most Murderous Woman (Rerelease)

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Transcript