Who is Julia Agrippina (Agrippina the Younger)?

Roman Empress. Caligula's sister was Nero's mother. Just like him, she had a cruel and unpredictable personality.

She first married a Roman aristocrat, with whom she had a child named Nero. Her third husband was Claudius. From the very beginning of the marriage, she always humiliated him and tried to have her son Nero become heir to the throne. She always snored Claudius' own son, Britannicus. Claudius is believed to have been poisoned by Agrippina in 54.

Julia Agrippina, also called Agrippina the Younger, (born AD 15—died 59), mother of the Roman emperor Nero and a powerful influence on him during the early years of his reign (54–68).

After Nero became emperor, he showed that he had little intention of listening to his mother. He killed her in 59.

Details of her life story

Probably the most extraordinary woman in ancient Rome, Julia Agrippina, or Agrippina the Younger, who was the sister, wife, and mother of Roman Emperors from the Julio-Claudian dynasty, is remembered by many simply as Nero's cruel mother. Powerful family members made Agrippina a force to be reckoned with for emperors who wanted to retain power, but the empress's controversial life ended with her scandalous death.

Orphaned before the age of 16, with all her five siblings murdered, Agrippina succeeded in persuading Claudius to accept her son, who changed his name to Nero, as her son and legal heir, a year after her marriage to her third and last husband, the emperor Claudius. He hired one of his girlfriends, Seneca, as a tutor to Nero. The decision of Claudius, who betrayed his other son and daughter Octavia, was a fatal mistake for him, as historians claim that Agrippina poisoned 64-year-old Claudius with a deadly mushroom.

While Claudius' death led to Nero's young accession on October 13, 54, Julia Agrippina thought she would fully seize power as regent. In the early days of Nero, the empress would enter the senate through the back door during meetings and watch the deliberations through a thick curtain. Contrary to what Agrippina had expected, however, under Nero's reign, Agrippina's influence on the Roman Empire soon waned. Although Agrippina tried to rule on her behalf because her son was young, events did not happen as planned. The first conflict between mother and son emerged in the same year, while Nero settled on the podium to listen to the Armenian embassy delegation that came to Rome, but he did not sit with his mother, who came to sit on the podium, with Seneca's advice. Complaining about her son's extravagance, Agrippina piled up the same amount of money in front of her to show how big this money was when she ordered her son's secretary Doryphoros to be given 10 million sestertii, according to a possibly fictional narrative. donated the floor. According to Tacitus, especially in 55, the relationship between mother and son was widened, and Agrippina criticizes the emperor at every opportunity and never made him forget that he made him emperor. Nero wanted to get rid of his mother, who had become a burden to him.

Agrippina objected to Nero's relationship with a former slave woman named Acte, and then his friend's wife Poppaea Sabina, whose marriage to Octavia did not go well, and his involvement in his love life probably led the emperor to consider getting rid of his mother completely. When Agrippina was removed from power, she also challenged Nero's right to rule, this time arguing that her stepson Brittanicus was the true heir to the throne. After Nero eliminated Brittanicus, who was used as leverage against him, he then expelled Agrippina from the palace. Not content with this, the young emperor also planned to kill his mother by putting her on a pleasure boat that was planned to sink, but Agrippina, who was a good swimmer, managed to return to the shore safely. Nero then ordered his mother to assassinate him at home. A group of soldiers stabbed Agrippa to death after beating him with sticks at his home.

Capricious, ruthless, and cruel enough to have his own mother killed, Emperor Nero ruled Rome for 14 years until his suicide in AD 68, eliminating everyone who upset him, starting with his own family. Nero, who was unhappy while his mother was alive, got worse after Agrippina's death, rumored to have often seen his mother's ghost and rarely slept well at night.