The World

Knowing that Messalina could easily discredit him, Claudius’ loyal ex-slave Narcissus persuaded his master’s favourite prostitutes, Cleopatra and Calpurnia, to tell him the truth – unusual receptacles of integrity. While Claudius was inspecting his new port at Ostia, Messalina was celebrating a Dionysian wedding to Silius, which was the start of a coup backed by the city militia. When the prostitutes told the emperor, Narcissus confirmed their tales. Claudius panicked, but the praetorians were still loyal and Narcissus arrested the conspirators. Messalina hitched a lift in a rubbish cart and begged for her life by presenting her two children to Claudius, who was rushing back to Rome. He was rendered speechless, but Narcissus had the children taken home. Arresting Messalina, Claudius and Narcissus proceeded to Silius’ house, which was filled with treasures purloined from the palace. Claudius, enraged, had Silius, Mnester and other conspirators killed. Then, as he dithered, Narcissus had Messalina beheaded. Claudius said nothing and asked for another flask of wine.

Claudius now looked weak, and he must have doubted that Britannicus was really his son. That opened the door for Agrippina – and her son: Nero.

RULE OF THE FREEDMEN: AGRIPPINA’S MARRIAGE

Agrippina made a show of consulting her uncle on all matters and as a direct descendant of Augustus she would consolidate his principate. Narcissus promoted one of Claudius’ earlier wives, but Pallas, now secretly sleeping with Agrippina, backed her. In AD 50, Claudius married Agrippina, who was promoted to Augusta, and adopted her son Lucius, who assumed the Claudian name Nero. Agrippina appointed Seneca to tutor Nero, while accusing Narcissus of corruption. Nero was married to Claudius’ daughter, Claudia – and appointed joint heir with Britannicus.

Claudius, sixty-three and drunk most of the time, started to worry about the boy’s safety. He grew closer to Messalina’s mother Domitia, grandmother of his children, and reflected aloud that his fate was to marry women then punish them. Agrippina feared that Claudius would dispose of her and marry Domitia. She and Nero testified to Domitia’s disloyalty; Claudius acquiesced in her execution.

Then in October 54, sending Narcissus away to treat his gout, Agrippina procured the skills of a poisoner named Locusta, already in prison for murder, and – suborning Claudius’ trusted server-taster and doctor – she poisoned Claudius’ mushrooms. The princeps was sick, but survived, so she then had the doctor poison him, this time successfully.

Agrippina sent the seventeen-year-old Nero to promise the praetorians a bonus and executed Narcissus, while her lover Pallas remained secretary for financial affairs.

On Nero’s first day as princeps he gave the praetorians the cloying password ‘best of mothers’, but swiftly his surging adolescent ambition clashed with Agrippina’s auctoritas. Nero, preeningly overconfident, blond, bullnecked and fleshy, had achieved power far too easily to appreciate it. Instead, regarding himself as too talented for politics, he flaunted his skills as actor and charioteer, a surprisingly modern politician for whom politics was an extension of showbusiness.

Agrippina tried to refresh her fading maternal influence by becoming Nero’s lover. But he had fallen in love with the beautiful wife of his friend Otho, Sabina Poppaea. When Nero wanted to divorce his wife Claudia, Agrippina advised against it. Poppaea mocked his inability to overrule his mummy.

Poppaea dressed gorgeously in the material that was suddenly fashionable: women started wearing Chinese silk with nothing underneath. ‘I see clothes of silk,’ grumbled Seneca, ‘if materials that don’t hide the body nor even one’s decency can be called clothes. Wretched flocks of maids labour so that the adulteress may be visible through her thin dress – and her husband has not more acquaintance with his wife’s body than any stranger …’ The fashion required the shaving of pubic hair, which appalled the well-connected naturalist Pliny the Elder. The Senate several times banned the immoral wearing of silk – but fashion was stronger. As was money.^*

In the Central Country, the source of this silk, a brilliant family of Chinese writers and soldiers was experiencing the opportunities and perils of serving the other great dynasty of world power, the Han.

MOTHERS, BROTHERS AND SISTERS: NERO, AGRIPPINA AND THE BANS