Agrippina

by Emma Southon

Overview

In her own time, she was recognized as a woman of unparalleled power. Beautiful and intelligent, she was portrayed as alternately a ruthless murderer and helpless victim, the most loving mother and the most powerful woman of the Roman empire, using sex, motherhood, manipulation, and violence to get her way, and single-minded in her pursuit of power for herself and her son, Nero.This book follows Agrippina as a daughter, born in Cologne, to the expected heir to Augustus’s throne; as a sister to Caligula who raped his sisters and showered them with honors until they attempted rebellion against him and were exiled; as a seductive niece and then wife to Claudius who gave her access to near unlimited power; and then as a mother to Nero—who adored her until he had her assassinated.Through senatorial political intrigue, assassination attempts, and exile to a small island, to the heights of imperial power, thrones, and golden cloaks and games and adoration, Agrippina scaled the absolute limits of female power in Rome. Her biography is also the story of the first Roman imperial family—the Julio-Claudians—and of the glory and corruption of the empire itself.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781643131825
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	08/06/2019
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	383,508
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Emma Southon has a PhD in Ancient History from the University of Birmingham and researches subjects of sex, the family, gender, and religion. She holds a long running obsession with the bad guys of the Roman empire, blogs at Agrippinilla.com, and tweets at @NuclearTeeth.
Emma Southon has a PhD in Ancient History from the University of Birmingham and researches subjects of sex, the family, gender, and religion. She holds a long running obsession with the bad guys of the Roman empire, blogs at Agrippinilla.com, and tweets at @NuclearTeeth. She lives in England.

Table of Contents

Introduction: History and Fiction xv

A Very Brief History of Rome xxiii

Chapter 1 Daughter 1

Julia Agrippina Minor 3

Return to Rome 15

Agrippina the Elder 21

The First Husband 29

Chapter 2 Sister 39

Gaius Caligula 41

Gaius Caesar Augustus and his Sisters 45

Agrippina Mater 53

The Incest 59

The Plot 63

The Exile 75

Chapter 3 Niece 79

The Return to Rome 81

The Situation in Rome 85

The Second Marriage 89

The Emperor's Niece 99

Messalina and Agrippina 109

The Aftermath 115

Chapter 4 Wife 125

A Masculine Tyranny 127

Agrippina Augusta 135

Empress of Rome 147

Mother and Stepmother 153

Ruling the Empire 169

The Murderer 185

Chapter 5 Mother 193

The Empress Regent 195

The First Crisis 207

The Second Crisis 217

The Disappearance 231

The Murder 237

Afterwards 247

Extra Bits 251

Dramatis Personae 253

Timeline 259

Glossary 263

Further Reading 269

Acknowledgements 273

Patrons 275

Editorial Reviews

05/13/2019

This remarkable biography from historian Southon (Marriage, Sex, and Death) follows Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE), who, “as the daughter of an Imperator, the sister, niece, wife and mother of emperors... was never paralleled.” Her father was the admired Germanicus, her brother the emperor Caligula, her uncle and second husband Claudius, her son Nero. She was the first woman to assume the role of empress when she married Claudius, and she broke all customs: though she could not enter the senate or speak in public, she sat beside Claudius, negotiated diplomatically, appeared on coins, wrote her memoirs (a thing not done by women in those days), and donned the symbolic gold cape. She was possibly murdered (perhaps by her son Nero) at 43. Southon points out that “there is no objective, capital T truth about Agrippina,” because of the “glaring, crippling problems” with the source material on Agrippina’s life: the historical record is not “truthful in the way that you or I might conceive of truth” as it was recorded dismissively by sexist historians of the time and was written at least 50 years after Agrippina died. Southon delivers her research and speculations with enormous wit, a feminist outlook, and charming vulgarity. This sassy biography will rope in even those who think they’re not interested in ancient Rome. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

A lively and intermittently potty-mouthed biography of Nero's remarkable mother contains fascinating vignettes of Roman life, and explores why Roman authors wrote about women in the way that they did.

The New Statesman (A Best Book of the Year)

Southon tells a saucy story about one woman against a very angry male world that threw every imaginable accusation against her when she stepped out of line in Roman society. It’s also a triumphant story about her rising above and bending that world to her will. As with most stories about those who toy with absolute power, it doesn’t end well. But before the inevitable, Southon is determined to make this a rollicking tour of Agrippina and her world.

Open Letters Monthly