Valeria Messalina

Not to be confused with Statilia Messalina, third wife of Nero

Agrippina or Agrippina the Younger (AD16-AD59) was the daughter of Claudius' heroic brother Germanicus and his wife, Agrippina the Elder who was the step-daughter of Tiberius. It is clear that she came from a powerful and well connected family so she would have been part of the Claudian-Julian circle.

There were rumors that this embarked on an incestuous relationship with her brother Caligula Gossips suggested that he often had sex with Drusilla and occasionally with his other sisters. These rumors would follow her throughout her life and it is hinted that she made sexual overtones to her son, the Emperor Nero. Whether this is true and whether the advances were accepted one can never know. See Caligula - Sex and Sexual Perversions for more discussion

Her first marriage at the age of thirteen was arranged marriage to Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus and they bore a son; the future Emperor Nero. Ominously, Lucius is quoted to have said. I don't think anything produced by me and Agrippina could possibly be good for the state or the people.

After her sister, Drusilla's death and Caligula's increasing madness, she was exiled after being implicated in plot to overthrow Caligula called the Plot of the three daggers. Livilia and Agrippina were accused of a lesbian relationship and exiled to Pontine Islands. At this point it looked like here life was on the same trajectory as her mother's who had similarly being exiled during Tiberius' reign, was beaten and tortured and eventually starved herself to death. However, Caligula was satisfied just to get them out of his sight and after his death they were rehabilitated back in to the emperor's circle. Initially she tried to woo the married and future emperor Galba. However he was too devoted to his wife (or man servant) to be attracted to Agrippina. Nevertheless, she is said to have kept a low profile during Messalina's ascendancy and it is known that the two were less than close.

After the execution of Messalina, Claudius had vowed never to remarry, but less than a year later he was ensnared by Agrippina. As she had been part of the Emperor's circle she had access to both Claudius and powerful clique that ran the Empire. She began with an affair with freedman Marcus Antonius Pallas. She used her influence to get Pallas to persuade the senators to back a marriage between herself and Claudius, even though the law considered incestuous for an uncle to marry his niece.

There are two views you can take on the reasons for the marriage between Claudius and Agrippina. On the one hand you can look for a political reason. The marriage would have ended the fued between the Claudian and Julian wings on the family. Alternatively, you can take a tabloid approach and assume that a seductress was easily able to ensnare a weak emperor and use that marriage to ensure that her son Nero would become emperor ahead of Claudius' first born son Britannicus.

Suetonios assumes the latter. [Agrippina] took advantage of the kisses and endearments which their near relationship admitted, to inflame his desires, he got some one to propose at the next meeting of the senate, that they should oblige the emperor to marry Agrippina, as a measure highly conducive to the public interest .

The queasy feeling of marrying one's young niece was not lost on Claudius when he said of Agrippina "My daughter, my nursling, born and brought up upon my lap." .

What Claudius wanted from this marriage will never be known. Stability of his reign?, affection and companionship or just to be left alone to get on with his writings. What ever it was, Suetonius suggests he began to have second thoughts.

he gave some manifest indications that he repented of his marriage with Agrippina. "It has been my misfortune to have wives who have been unfaithful to my bed; but they did not escape punishment."

Agrippina playes on Claudius' fears of being owerthrown by agreeing to adopt Nero and make his heir apparent ahead of his own son Britannicus even though he was just two years older. She used her affair with Pallas to urge him to persuade Claudius that the Emperor would be strenghened by adopting a grandson of Germanicus as well as protect the younger Britannicus.

Claudius also would do well to strengthen himself with a young prince who could share his cares with him.

Agrippina futher strenghtened her power by demanding that Claudius execute or banish Britannicus' closest teachers on the pretext that Britannicus has greeted Nero under his old pre-adoption name of Domitius and that his advisors may be posioning his mind. Subsequenting education of Britannicus became the responsibility of Agrippina.

Claudius may have wised up to the fact that he had been taken for a fool and a cuckold all his married life but it was too late.Tacitus implies that Agrippina may have been in ear-shot when an intoxicated Claudius blurted out that his adulterous wives often would push the envelope too far and, given enough rope would hang themselves! Wasting no time she set about her final objective of getting Nero on the throne. The poison of choice was mushrooms but she deliberated long and hard on the dose. Should she give a massive and painful overdose that caused instant death and risk that she would be fingered as the perpetrator. Or should she provide a smaller dose that would cause a slow lingering death but which might give enough time for Claudius to declare Brittanicus again as his heir. She hit upon a middle course

She decided on some rare compound which might derange his mind and delay death. A person skilled in such matters was selected, Locusta by name, who had lately been condemned for poisoning

Mushrooms, a favorite of Caludius was chosen as the method of delivery.

Some authors say that it was given him as he was feasting with the priests in the Capitol, by the eunuch Halotus, his taster. Others say by Agrippina, at his own table, in mushrooms, a dish of which he was very fond .

Needless to say poisioning was an inexact science and a combination of diarrhea and vomiting may have expurgated the worst of the posion as he lay in his sick bed. Nothing ventured, nothing gained she knew that she would have to follow through with her crime and had her doctor administer a further dose in the guise of medicine.

for he knew that the greatest crimes are perilous in their inception, but well rewarded after their consummation.

She ensured that the funeral of Claudius was to be of the same scale that Livia gave to Augustus. The irony of Livia's rumoured poisoning of Augustus was probably not lost on those in the inner circle

Divine honours were decreed to Claudius, and his funeral rites were solemnized on the same scale as those of Augustus; for Agrippina strove to emulate the magnificence of her great-grandmother, Livia.