Agrippina the Younger

31 Mar, 2016 930 History of the Ancient World

Agrippina the Younger was one of the most notorious and influential of the Roman empresses in the 1st century AD. She was the sister of the Emperor Caligula, a wife of the Emperor Claudius and mother of the Emperor Nero. Through careful political manoeuvres, she acquired a dominant position for herself in Rome. In 39 AD she was exiled for allegedly participating in a plot against Caligula and later it was widely thought that she killed Claudius with poison. When Nero came to the throne, he was only 16 so Agrippina took on the role of regent until he began to exert his authority. After relations between Agrippina and Nero soured, he had her murdered.

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Guests

  • Catharine Edwards 9 episodes
    Professor of Classics and Ancient History at Birkbeck, University of London
  • Alice Konig 2 episodes
    Lecturer in Latin and Classical Studies at the University of St Andrews
  • Matthew Nicholls 5 episodes
    Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Reading

Reading list

  • Catharine Edwards at Birkbeck, University of London
  • Alice Konig at the University of St Andrews
  • Matthew Nicholls at the University of Reading
  • Agrippina the Younger - Wikipedia
  • Agrippina: Sex, Power and Politics in the Early Roman Empire
    Anthony A. Barrett (Routledge, 1999) Google Books →
  • Nero
    Edward Champlin (Harvard University Press, 2005) Google Books →
  • Complete Works
    Cassius Dio (trans. Herbert Baldwin Foster) (Delphi Classics, 2014) Google Books →
  • The Roman Mother
    Suzanne Dixon (Routledge, 2013) Google Books →
  • The First Ladies of Rome: The Women Behind the Caesars
    Annalise Freisenbruch (Jonathan Cape, 2010) Google Books →
  • Representing Agrippina: Constructions of Female Power in the Early Roman Empire
    Judith Ginsburg (Oxford University Press, 2005) Google Books →
  • I, Claudius
    Robert Graves (Penguin Modern Classics, 2006) Google Books →
  • Claudius the God
    Robert Graves (Penguin Modern Classics, 2006) Google Books →
  • The Twelve Caesars
    Suetonius (trans. Robert Graves) (Penguin Classics, 2007) Google Books →
  • The Annals of Imperial Rome
    Tacitus (trans. Michael Grant) (Penguin Classics, 2003) Google Books →

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Programme ID: b074yzwk

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b074yzwk

Auto-category: 937.07 (Roman emperors and empresses)

Hello (First sentence from this episode) Hello. Agrippina the Younger was for a time one of the most powerful women in the Roman world.