Ancient Rome: An Introductory History (49 page)

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However beneficent Claudius' reign was, it was marred by his falling under the control of his wives and his ex-slaves. His second wife, Messalina, used her position to kill or exile her personal and political enemies; later, while still married to Claudius, she married another man, apparently intending to supplant the emperor with her new husband. She was caught and executed. Claudius then married Agrippina, his niece (she was the daughter of his brother Germanicus); she then forced him to adopt her son Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus (Nero, after the adoption) who, being three years older than Claudius' own son Britannicus, became the heir to the throne. To satisfy her own personal grudges and to increase her power, she heightened Claudius' fears of conspiracies and implicated her personal enemies in plots, whether real or imagined, for which they were executed or exiled. Claudius' freedmen Callistus, Pallas, and Narcissus became part of the imperial staff and controlled access to the emperor. They exerted a power over the empire that the members of the Senate did not enjoy, and they profited from their power, dying wealthier than Crassus, although they had been born penniless. The last years of his reign saw Claudius slipping in his mental abilities, while his wife and his freedmen ruled the empire. Rome then saw a reign of terror worse than that under Tiberius.

Claudius finally began to reassert himself and to favor his own son Britannicus as his successor, instead of Nero. Agrippina sprang into action. A famous poisoner named Locusta cooked up a strong poison for Agrippina, who then spread it onto mushrooms, Claudius' favorite food. At the banquet Claudius took and ate the choicest, juiciest mushroom, which his loving wife had reserved for him. He died soon after, and Nero, at the age of seventeen, became emperor. After Claudius was deified by the Senate, Nero joked that the food of the gods was mushrooms (fungus, deorum cibus), for by them Claudius became a god.

Nero (5468 A.D.): "Qualis Artifex Pereo"

Imagine that before you are old enough to vote you find yourself the master of an empire that encompasses Italy, France, parts of Germany, Spain, northern Africa, Syria, Palestine, Greece, Egypt,

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Turkey, Albania, Yugoslavia, Austria, and Hungary. At age seventeen when he became emperor (or, more accurately, when his mother Agrippina took the throne from Claudius for him), Nero found himself possessing the power of life and death over millions of subjects and having the wealth of the empire at his disposal.

Nero was already married to Octavia, Claudius' daughter, but he was a young man and still needed guidance. He had as tutors Burrus, the commander of the Praetorian Guard, and Seneca, the foremost orator and intellectual of the day, known as a philosopher of Stoicism. The person who had the most influence on Nero, however, was his mother Agrippina, who attended meetings of the Senate and conducted the business of the empire, even receiving embassies from foreign countries and kings. Agrippina had long been determined to make Nero emperor. Once, when Nero was quite young, she heard someone predict that one day he would be emperor and kill his mother. She responded, "Let him kill me, so long as he becomes emperor!" Apparently she had known that her control over her son would make her, in effect, empress.

Burrus and Seneca feared Agrippina's power over her son, and both of them tried to make Nero assert himself and show more independence. As part of this policy to diminish Agrippina's influence over him, they allowed Nero to indulge in even more vices than he was already engaged in (which included adulterous affairs with slave girls) and also in socially unacceptable hobbies, such as singing, lyre playing, and chariot racing. Nero did show more independence from his mother; now he allowed Burrus and Seneca to run the empire, while he blithely engaged in his various hobbies, which soon came to include sculpting and painting. Burrus and Seneca governed the empire fairly and justly.

Agrippina sensed that she was losing her power over Nero. She then threatened to supplant him with his younger stepbrother, Britannicus. "I made you emperor!" she said to him, and Nero understood that the woman who had placed him on the throne had the power and influence to replace him. Nero had to do something about Britannicus. He could not think of a good charge to level against him, nor could he simply order his death; perhaps at this point Nero still cared about popular opinion.

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Nero therefore sought assistance from the tried and proven Locusta. So powerful was the poison that she concocted on this occasion, however, that Britannicus immediately evacuated it and survived, thinking he had only had a short illness. Nero, desperate, got Locusta to cook up another poison. Tacitus gives a vivid description of Britannicus' death:

They had the custom that the children of the princes would sit with other noble children of the same age while eating their dinner, in the sight of their relatives, but with their own, less lavish table. Britannicus ate his dinners there. Since one of the servants had been chosen to give his foods and drinks the taste test, the following stratagem was invented, so the customary taste test would not be omitted, and so the plot would not be betrayed by the deaths of both.


An exceedingly hot and (so far) harmless drink, which had already been tasted, was given to Britannicus. After he rejected it because it was too hot, cold water containing the poison was poured in, which immediately spread through his body so violently that his breath and voice were immediately and abruptly snatched away.


Among those sitting at the banquet there was agitation and confusion. The foolish ones ran away, while those with a clearer understanding of the situation sat there unmoving, watching Nero. He, lying on his back, nonchalantly said that it was nothing unusual, just epilepsy, which Britannicus had been afflicted with since infancy, and soon his sight and consciousness would return.

But Agrippina's fear and panic, as if pressed onto her face, shone outit was clear that she and Britannicus' sister [Octavia] had not known. She certainly knew that her last help had been taken away, and that the example of murdering a relation had been set. Octavia too, despite her youthful inexperience, had learned to hide all feelings, like grief or affection. Consequently, after a short silence, the gaiety of the banquet was resumed. (Tacitus,
Annales
XIII. 16)

Britannicus was cremated the same night. His funeral had been arranged before his death.

Nero's violence did not end with his family. Disguised as a slave, he would wander the streets of Rome with his friends, stealing

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