In the fallout from Messalina’s death, a conundrum of another kind now occupied the imperial household: who should succeed her as Claudius’s wife? The question was settled, according to Tacitus, in a political beauty contest judged by a panel of Claudius’s freedmen, a comic charade that served to underscore the emperor’s impotency in the face of his own courtiers.52 Petitions were heard in support of various candidates, including Narcissus’s proposal of Claudius’s former wife Aelia Paetina and Callistus’s suggestion of Caligula’s wealthy ex-wife Lollia Paulina, but the choice eventually fell upon Pallas’s nomination of the thirty-two-year-old Agrippina Minor. Recently widowed by the death of Passienus Crispus, the daughter of the great Germanicus and the mother of Nero – who had recently been hailed with such enthusiasm by the audience at the Saecular Games – her credentials were impeccable, better even than Messalina’s, and she was endowed with wealth and beauty to boot. There was just one problem. Agrippina was Claudius’s niece, and Roman law clearly prohibited incestuous unions. Nevertheless, the marriage was seen as too good a chance to unify the family and the Senate was persuaded by Claudius’s fixer Vitellius to waive the restrictions forbidding a man to marry his brother’s child. On 1 January 48, less than three months after the death of Messalina, Agrippina became Claudius’s fourth wife.53
Given the legal manoeuvring that had been required to sanction the marriage and the fact that even as the wedding took place, the name and portrait of Claudius’s last wife were still being hastily scrubbed away from public view, careful thought went into the question of how to sell this new empress to the Roman public. As usual, coinage was the primary medium, and Agrippina became the latest imperial woman to set a new precedent here, with both hers and her husband’s head featured together on the same coin.54 Under her brother Caligula’s aegis, Agrippina’s coin images had been too small-scale to give any sense of her appearance but these new official issues allowed her profile to be seen in greater close-up. They showed a woman with the strong facial features that often characterised portraits of her Claudian relatives, including a slight overbite and heavy jaw, an orthodontic contour that might be connected with a rumour that she had an extra canine tooth on the right-hand side of her mouth, thought to be a sign of good luck.
Provincial mints in cities across the empire played along with the new mood, showing the newly married couple in ‘jugate’ or ‘joined’ pose, their overlapping profiles juxtaposed side by side. Claudius was wreathed in laurel as befitted the successful military ruler and Agrippina wore the corn-ear crown associated with the goddess of fecundity and maternal love, Ceres. As attributes seen previously on portraits of Augustus and Livia, the message was forced home that here were the inheritors of that perfect imperial partnership.55 Other items donated by private patrons helped to reinforce the message of dynastic continuity and bountiful promise, seen to de luxe effect in a piece known as the Gemma Claudia, a sardonyx cameo about the size of an ostrich egg which is thought to have been a wedding gift to the couple. It shows the laurelled jugate heads of Claudius and Agrippina Minor facing mirror images of the bride’s parents Germanicus and Agrippina Maior. Each pair of busts billows out from the opposite ends of two fruit-laden cornucopias, while an eagle carved in between stares up at the new figureheads of the Julio-Claudian dynasty.56
By giving Agrippina more honours than either his previous wife or any Roman woman before her had been afforded, Claudius and his acolytes had a clear strategy. They wanted to underline the idea that both this marriage and the regime were starting afresh – people’s memories of Messalina’s downfall could not be erased by damnatio memoriae alone. Yet elevating Agrippina in this way came with attendant risks. For in visual terms, it placed the emperor’s wife on a form approaching equality with the emperor. As in Livia’s case, the spectre of Agrippina sharing the spotlight with the ruling emperor was to become a particularly touchy subject over the next decade.
In providing a departure from the memory of Messalina at least, the strategy worked. From the very start, both supporters and enemies of Claudius’s regime could agree on one thing, namely that Agrippina was a fundamentally different character to Messalina. Where Messalina was savage, passionate and profligate, Agrippina was hard-headed, analytical and, like her great-grandmother Livia, self-disciplined. No sooner was her marriage to Claudius consecrated than the seeds of her longing to exercise political power on her own behalf began to germinate:
From this moment the country was transformed. Complete obedience was accorded to a woman – and not a woman like Messalina who toyed with national affairs to satisfy her appetites. This was a rigorous, almost masculine despotism. In public, Agrippina was austere and often arrogant. Her private life was chaste – unless power was to be gained. Her passion to acquire money was unbounded. She wanted it as a stepping-stone to supremacy.57
No one doubted that Agrippina was deeply ambitious for her adolescent son Nero from the start. Hers was the hand behind the recall from Corsica of her sister Julia Livilla’s exiled paramour Seneca, who was promptly given the prestigious rank of praetor and placed in charge of the young Nero’s education, a key role in the coaching set-up of any emperor-in-the-making and traditionally the appointment of the boy’s mother. On 25 February 50, Agrippina’s hopes were given a boost when Claudius adopted Nero as his own son and changed the boy’s name from Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus to the more Julio-Claudian denomination of Nero Claudius Drusus Germanicus Caesar. This effectively put the emperor’s natural and adopted sons in head-to-head competition in the succession stakes and within three years of his mother’s marriage, Nero had been fast-tracked ahead of his younger rival, depicted alongside his mother on imperial coins while Britannicus remained completely invisible in the dynastic portraiture of his father’s principate. In 53, the marriage of fifteen-year-old Nero and the only other child of Claudius’s ill-fated union with Messalina, thirteen-year-old Claudia Octavia, made his coronation look inevitable.
As Nero’s star rose, so too did his mother’s. She was endowed with the usual seating privileges at the theatre, the right to ride in her own mule-drawn carriage and other distinctions that had by now become fairly commonplace for leading imperial women, but the coup de grâce was the conferral upon her in 50 of Livia’s old cognomen Augusta, the title that Claudius had vetoed for Messalina. Although Livia had been called Augusta after her husband’s death and Antonia had been awarded the title posthumously, no woman before Agrippina had received it while she was the consort of the reigning emperor, and, for good measure, the mother of the likely emperor-in-waiting. It marked the start of a sea-change in how the title of Augusta would be awarded in future. Instead of its just being the honorific privilege of mature women whose husbands were dead and whose childbearing years were behind them, regimes increasingly bestowed it on younger women of the imperial family, sometimes not even the wives of the ruling emperor but those who nonetheless might be able to provide the dynasty with future heirs. In addition, it sent out a clear message that Britannicus’s hopes of succeeding to the throne now were slim at best.58
That same year, all across the empire, the memory of her illustrious parents and the growing fame of her son earned Agrippina glowing endorsements from the provinces. A veterans’ colony for retired soldiers was established in her name on the site of her birthplace in Germany and named Colonia Agrippinensis (now the city of Cologne). Its residents would henceforth call themselves Agrippinenses.59 Like her role model Livia, she had political and personal ties to a number of other provincial client-cities. Their subjects could appeal to her as a benefactor, and preserved inscriptions prove that she gave her financial backing to games in the Asian provinces of Adalia and Mytilene.60 Statues of her proliferated throughout the empire, portraying her with a strong facial likeness to her father Germanicus and with a curly hairstyle similar to her mother, though the younger Agrippina’s locks were crimped closer around her head. All in all, it was an auspicious beginning.61
Yet some o
f Agrippina Minor’s actions soon began to court controversy. In 51, at an audience to mark the public unveiling of a triumphal arch celebrating Claudius’s victory over the Britons eight years previously, eyebrows were raised when the defeated and captured leader of the British resistance, Caratacus, was paraded with his family in front of Claudius and Agrippina and then led in chains to ask for mercy first of the emperor, and then his wife, seated on her own platform nearby. The sight of an empress sitting in state before the military standards of the Roman army and personally receiving the homage of foreign captives was a novelty, and Agrippina’s habit of attending this and other public functions at Claudius’s side was remarked on by some who saw it as proof of her desire to be an equal partner in the running of the empire.62 It insidiously conjured up the controversial spectres of other women who had breached the cordon surrounding the male sphere of the military – Plancina, who had attended cavalry drills while her husband Piso was governor of Syria; Fulvia, who had marshalled troops on the plains of Perusia on her husband Antony’s behalf; and Caesonia, whom Caligula was said to have taken with him when he rode out to inspect the troops, clothing her in a helmet, cloak and shield.63 Even Agrippina’s own respected mother had provoked the ire of Tiberius when she routed the German army at the bridge over the Rhine. For some ancient observers, such women epitomised an aberrant category of female described in Roman literature as a dux femina (a ‘woman general’), an oxymoron of a title that implied an unnatural combination of male and female characteristics. Agrippina Minor’s reception of Caratacus was just the first of many incidents that tarred her with the reputation of acting too much the man.64
Over the next three years, between 51 and 54, a haze of discontent settled over the metropolis and its outposts. For all the fanfare of the emperor’s remarriage and the drawn-out celebrations of the victory over Britain, the streets of the capital were hit by demonstrations against corn shortages, and on one occasion Claudius himself was attacked in the forum by an angry bread-throwing mob. Rumours flew about a row within the imperial household between the two stepbrothers, sparked by Britannicus’s provocative refusal to call Nero by his new Julio-Claudian name. Britannicus’s future certainly looked bleak. Nero was getting much more positive publicity and Agrippina’s manoeuvring even went as far as removing old household retainers and installing individuals who would be loyal to herself and her son. One such appointment was the new prefect of the praetorian guard Afranius Burrus, a one-time procurator on Livia’s estates and a stolid individual who would have a key supporting role to play in events to come.65
Plunging on in the face of public disgruntlement, Claudius tried to claw back popular ground in 52 by staging a spectacular mock naval battle on the Fucine Lake 50 miles (80 km) outside Rome, to celebrate the eleven-year culmination of an ambitious public works project to dig a drainage tunnel that would prevent the surrounding region from flooding. The event attracted an audience of thousands from the city and the provinces and involved the participation of 19,000 player-combatants, navigating about the 12-mile-long (19-km-long) lake in two teams of fifty ships a side.66 One of those present in the wooden viewing stands that day was the great Roman writer Pliny the Elder, who described the dazzling sight of Agrippina dressed in a golden chlamys, a Greek version of the Roman military cape that her husband was wearing. The chlamys was a foreign warrior’s garment, hardly the typical uniform of a Roman woman, though tellingly it was the dress of Virgil’s tragic heroine of the Aeneid, Queen Dido of Carthage, who like Agrippina had taken on traditionally male responsibilities, attempting to found a new kingdom for her people.67
Then, what should have been a spectacular public-relations coup for Claudius fizzled into a damp squib. The grand opening of the drainage tunnel failed to lower the level of the lake, an engineering blunder that reportedly provoked a behind-the-scenes spat between Agrippina and the agent of the works, Narcissus, drawing complaints from the disgruntled freedman about the Augusta’s ‘dictatorial feminine excess of ambition’.68 Narcissus, agent of Messalina’s destruction, now found himself increasingly sidelined at court in favour of Pallas, the freedman who had championed Agrippina as Claudius’s new bride and with whom, people whispered, the Augusta was sharing her bed.
Agrippina’s use of sex was another of the key differences between Claudius’s old wife and his new one, according to her ancient appraisers. Like Messalina, she was said to have used murderous force to eliminate her enemies and sexual favours to keep her supporters close. But if Messalina, portrayed as a born whore, had traded politics to gratify her love of sex, Agrippina traded sex to gratify her love of politics.69 In other words, she had sex ‘like a man’, using it purely as a means to an end just as her great-grandfather Augustus was said to have done during his campaign against the profligate Antony, tapping up the wives of his enemies to secure information against them.
Like Messalina, Agrippina chalked up a long list of victims during Claudius’s reign, but the latter’s motives were usually seen to have been pragmatic rather than sexual. Those whose downfall was attributed to her included Caligula’s former wife Lollia Paulina, once considered a candidate to replace Messalina as Claudius’s bride, who was accused of involvement with magicians and astrologers; her vast fortune was confiscated and she was sent into exile, where according to one account she was forced to commit suicide, and in another, decapitated, her severed head later brought for inspection and identification to the Augusta.70
The influence accumulated over Nero by Domitia Lepida, the elder sister of Agrippina’s first husband who had taken guardianship of the boy while Agrippina was in exile under Caligula, was also resented, and a death sentence was passed against Lepida for sedition and trying to curse the emperor’s wife. In 53, Agrippina was accused of bringing about the false prosecution of the senator Statilius Taurus, on the grounds that she coveted his gardens. That this was exactly the same reason given for Messalina’s decision to frame Valerius Asiaticus surely hints that at least some of the accusations against Agrippina Minor were just recycled fiction. Such duplications of plotline recur frequently throughout the history of Roman imperial women – and indeed men – reflecting a tendency to adopt a one-size-fits-all approach to the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ wives of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ emperors. Another of the ancient historian’s favourite recurring characters was the emperor’s wife who poisoned her husband to pave the way for her own choice of successor. In this respect, Agrippina was to prove herself the true successor to the historical legacy of her great-grandmother Livia.71
Accounts of Claudius’s last years describe him as afflicted by poor health and a dissatisfaction with his choice of wife that saw him take to the bottle, reportedly slurring one day that it was his lot in life to marry outrageous wives and then punish them. This ominous remark, coupled with other dropped hints that he regretted having adopted Nero and now wanted Britannicus to succeed him after all, apparently spurred Agrippina to take action. Although most later reports were convinced that the sixty-three-year-old emperor met his death at his wife’s hand, wildly differing accounts of how she managed it were in circulation. One line of thought had it that she had employed Claudius’s official taster Halotus to slip a drug into his master’s dinner at an official banquet. Another said that Agrippina herself had spiked Claudius’s favourite dish of mushrooms at a family dinner, mimicking Livia’s supposed trick with Augustus’s snack of green figs. Yet another claimed that Agrippina had enlisted the services of notorious professional poisoner Locusta, but that when Claudius did not seem to be succumbing to his toxin-laced mushrooms as hoped, a panicking Agrippina threw caution to the wind and called in the family doctor Xenophon to baste Claudius’s throat with the poison which eventually had the required effect.
Whichever version one chooses to accept, the end result was the same. On 13 October 54, Claudius’s death was announced. In an almost identical replay of events involving Livia following the death of Augustus, news of the emperor’s demise had been conc
ealed until the Senate could be convened and all arrangements for a succession confirmed. Once Agrippina was satisfied that everything was in place, the doors of the imperial palace were flung open, and sixteen-year-old Nero emerged, flanked by his praetorian prefect Burrus, to be dutifully hailed by his troops as emperor.72
In 1979, archaeologists working on the eastern side of the ancient city centre of Aphrodisias in Roman Asia Minor, made a remarkable discovery. During the first century, Aphrodisias, a small but prosperous provincial city with a population of around 50,000, enjoyed a special relationship with the Roman imperial family, thanks in large part to the Julio-Claudian family’s long-standing claim to be descendants of the city’s patron goddess Aphrodite. In tribute to the connection, not long after Tiberius’s accession, the people of Aphrodisias had spent several decades constructing an elaborate religious complex consisting of a 100-metre-long (330-foot-long) walkway flanked by three-storeyed porticoes of relief panels carved from single blocks of native white medium-grained marble, dedicating the monument to the worship of the Julio-Claudian emperors.
When the remains of this complex, known as a Sebasteion (after the Greek word Sebastos, meaning ‘Augustus’) were found, only around half of the original sculptural relief panels survived, but several preserved images of a stellar line-up of the key Julio-Claudian players, including one, pieced together from eleven fragments of varying size, showing Agrippina Minor standing next to Claudius whilst he was crowned with an oak wreath by a representative of either the Roman Senate or the people. In keeping with their semi-divine personae here, Claudius appears naked but for a military cloak hanging off his right shoulder, while Agrippina wears the flowing chiton gown typical of female deities, and, by the sheaf of corn-ears in her left hand, is clearly intended to be associated with Demeter, Greek patron goddess of the harvest. Husband and wife are shown clasping hands, a gesture that signified marital or political concord rather than affection in Roman portraiture, though it seems ironic now given the alleged nature of Claudius’s demise.
The First Ladies of Rome Page 19