I apologise now to any scholars of the Classics or indeed anyone who has more than a passing interest in that great period of civilisation for my interpretation and dramatisation of the following.
I have been listening to a great radio broadcast series by the multi-talented and swotty Natalie Haynes in which she gives a very individual account of the great and the good, or usually the not so good based on their murderous behaviour, from Ancient Greece and Rome.
One such character is that of Agrippina who was around from AD 15 to AD 59.
Hers was a very privileged upbringing in the highest echelons of the Roman Empire. You could not, in that era, get a better pedigree than being the sister of Emperor Caligula, the niece and fourth wife of Emperor Claudius and the mother of the infamous Nero.
If you enjoyed the rise of a certain Dynasty in Roman Times then you had to accept the very real possibility of a rapid fall from power, grace and favour with best expectations for impoverishment, disgrace or exile as a consequence.
Even amongst close family members the level of politics , intrigue and allegiances made for a precarious daily existence. This was very much the experience of Agrippina in her time. Apart from being very vigilant and cautious during a normal daily routine such as travelling about and meeting others in the interests of maintaining a certain position in the pecking order of the ruling class the most fraught events were associated with having a meal or a drink.
The Romans were particular officianados of the art of poisoning.
The job description of Food Taster amongst slaves and servants was not likely to be of dream role status in that any participation at mealtimes could herald a rapid and traumatic death.
Although the use of poison was a well known form of assassination and murder you could never be truly assured of an uneventful breakfast, elevenses, lunch, afternoon tea or dinner.
There was evidently a good selection of toxic substances in the market which could be easily procured or concocted. The natural world was a source of belladonna, hemlock and extract of Yew. The ancients appear to have had a difficulty in distinguishing edible from toxic mushrooms and so actual intentional poisonings could be concealed within occurrences of unwitting consumption of the dangerous fungi types.
Given a fairly poor life expectancy anyway it could be possible to bump off a thirty something adversary by poisoning and attribute it to the natural death of their senior status.
Agrippina, in living to the age of 44 did quite well as this was close to double the normal lifespan in her era. She was quite wise and wily and is known to have survived at least three poisoning attempts by her son Nero who was keen to wrestle himself away from her maternal influence.
This will have involved her taking the antidote in advance of sitting down to share a meal with her son and his sycophantic entourage.
A thwarted Nero began to display a bit of ingenuity in killing off his mother and one such ploy was to design a ceiling above Agrippina's rooms so that it fell down and caused her demise amongst the rubble. As an obvious interim measure he exiled his mother to the Pontine Islands off the west coast of Italy but ensured that even out of his sight she was still subject to taunts, pestering and jeers by way of intimidation and as a constant reminder that she was out of favour with his Imperial self.
The mere existence of Agrippina seems to have played on the unstable mind of Nero to quite an unhealthy extent.
A further plan placed him firmly in the category of psychopath and master villain.
In a seemingly friendly gesture Agrippina was invited to sail from her place of exile to spend time with her family. The outward journey was uneventful save for an innocuous little accident whereby her vessel was in collision with another and was not in a seaworthy state for the return to the Pontines.
Nero generously lent her a ship but it was not just an ordinary craft.
Historians of the era suggest that Nero himself had devised a system whereby the hull opened up causing an intentional catastrophic sinking. Other learned sources say that the superstructure was designed to collapse with the sole aim of killing the passengers, ie his mother and her attendants. Other and somewhat conflicting historical accounts say that those crew members implicitly involved sought to capsize the ship by all congregating on one side but the remainder who were not in on the plot made for the opposite side and balanced the vessel.
Agrippina survived one or more of the foregoing assassination methods.
This was attributed to the protection from a collapsing structure afforded by her sitting on a sturdy, high sided couch and an ability to stay afloat and swim to safety.
The sinking being a deliberate attempt at murder may not have been initially apparent but when one of Agrippina's servants was mistaken for her and brutally killed by some of the crew the penny will have dropped.
Nero could not be called half-hearted in his intention to do away with his mother and he sent a contingent of soldiers to the refuge of the newly shipwrecked Agrippina to carry out the assassination by more conventional sword strokes.
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