“When Tiberius died and Gaius succeeded in March of 37, Agrippina’s fortunes underwent a complete change.”
– Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars
He caused the names of his sisters to be included in all oaths: "And I will not hold myself and my children dearer than I do Gaius and his sisters"; as well as in the propositions of the consuls: "Favour and good fortune attend Gaius Caesar and his sisters."
Suetonius The Twelve Caesars ‘Life of Gaius’
The motive behind Caligula’s public emphasis on his sisters was certainly to honour what was left of the family of Agrippina and Germanicus, and probably also to prepare the public to accept a child born to any of the four siblings as the heir to the principate...Had Drusilla outlived her brother and become his heir, as he intended at the time of his severe illness in 37, it would surely have been her husband M. Aemilius Lepidus, who ruled the empire...Caligula probably wished his immediate successor to be Marcus Lepidus rather than Agrippina’s first husband Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus...
Susan Wood
He lived in habitual incest with all his sisters, and at a large banquet he placed each of them in turn below him, while his wife reclined above.
Suetonius The Twelve Caesars ‘Life of Gaius’
Accusations of incest between Caligula and his sisters are probably fuelled by the fact that they played the sort of public ceremonial role normally reserved for a wife.
Susan Wood
The rest of his sisters (Livilla & Agrippina) he did not love with so great affection, nor honour so highly, but often prostituted them to his favourites; so that he was the readier at the trial of Aemilius Lepidus to condemn them, as adulteresses and privy to the conspiracies against him; and he not only made public letters in the handwriting of all of them, procured by fraud and seduction, but also dedicated to Mars the Avenger, with an explanatory inscription, three swords designed to take his life.
Suetonius The Twelve Caesars ‘Life of Gaius’
The charges are likely to have had some basis, Lepidus, having come very close to imperial power only to lose his connection with the imperial family when Drusilla died, would surely have wished to marry one of the emperors other sisters, who in turn would naturally have vied to become Drusillas’ successor.
Susan Wood
The involvement of Agrippina in this endeavour to re-craft a faction is significant. It indicates her total commitment to power. For her, Caligula’s folly was not a tragedy but an opportunity. Her relationship with Lepidus is important. Lepidus was close to the imperial family. In some temples his image was included with other members of the imperial family. Furthermore, Agrippina needed a male sponsor. A liaison between the two was inevitable. As Tacitus noted, her affair with Lepidus was grounded on the mutual need for power, and it was upon that rock that it shattered.
Bill Leadbetter, 1997, The Ambition of Agrippina the Younger
Then his mother was banished too, and he was brought up at the house of his aunt Lepida almost in actual want, under two tutors, a dancer and a barber.
Suetonius The Twelve Caesars
Thus Agrippina’s first attempt at seizing power long predated her marriage to Claudius.
Bill Leadbetter, 1997, The Ambition of Agrippina the Younger
“…wit was combined with a lively sense of humour that could sometimes be outlandishly eccentric…much of his humour was dangerously directed against his imperial masters”
- “It is likely that Agrippina’s family background would have made her feel at home in a setting of literate sophistication, although Passienus’ great wealth would have also been a considerable inducement”
“Passienus’ desire to conclude a political marriage for his own career advancement”
- Barrett
That Agrippina survived the years of Messalina’s dominance in Rome ways much for her political sagacity. She knew when to take a low profile...Agrippina not only survived this period, but prospered...Her strategy was to seek a safe marriage; one to a nobleman who was prominent enough to be worthy, but not worthy enough to be dangerous.... she settled on her own brother in law, C. Sallustus Passienus Crispus, the husband of Domitia Lepida and Nero’s foster father.
Bill Leadbetter, 1997, The Ambition of Agrippina the Younger
Little more is heard of her over the next 5 years, an educated guess inviting us to presume she may have accompanied her new husband (Crispus) to his proconsulship in Asia in 42. Annelise Freisenbruch The first ladies of Rome.
But when Claudius became emperor, Nero not only recovered his father's property, but was also enriched by an inheritance from his step-father, Passienus Crispus. When his mother was recalled from banishment and reinstated, he became so prominent through her influence that it leaked out that Messalina, wife of Claudius, had sent emissaries to strangle him as he was taking his noonday nap, regarding him as a rival of Britannicus. An addition to this bit of gossip is, that the would-be assassins were frightened away by a snake which darted out from under his pillow. The only foundation for this tale was, that there was found in his bed near the pillow the slough of a serpent; but nevertheless at his mother's desire he had the skin enclosed in a golden bracelet, and wore it for a long time on his left arm. But when at last the memory of his mother grew hateful to him, he threw it away, and afterwards in the time of his extremity sought it again in vain.
Suetonius The Twelve Caesars
The death of Messalina opened a new chapter in Agrippina’s career. There is no suggestion that she had anything to do with her rival’s destruction, but the beneficial effect on her fortunes is clear. Not yet in quite the top rank as a politician, the eldest daughter of Agrippina and Germanicus would now come into her own, dominating the politics of her time as no member of the Domus, not even Livia, had ever done. In some respects she would be a worthy successor to Messalina, eliminating those who stood in her way with the same ruthless efficiency. She also shared Messalina’s indifference to conventional morality, except that she kept a tight rein on her passions. As Tacitus puts it, ‘She held honour, modesty, her body, everything, cheaper than sovereignty’. A strong tradition, which Tacitus finds it difficult to reject, has her offer herself to her son in order to retain her grip on power. She had one supreme ambition, to place her son Nero on the throne: ‘Let him kill me, but let him rule.’ But not far behind that was her determination to secure a position of unprecedented eminence for herself. She proposed coming as close as it was possible for a woman to come to a partnership in power; she would be, in fact though not in law, a socia imperii. The story of Agrippina in Claudius’ reign is the story of her successful realisation of both her objectives.
Richard Bauman, Women and Politics in Ancient Rome
...After a little he married his niece Agrippina, the mother of Domitius, who was surnamed Nero. For she was beautiful and was in the habit of consulting him constantly; and she was much in his company unattended, seeing that he was her uncle, and in fact she was rather more familiar in her conduct toward him than became a niece.
Cassius Dio
The destruction of Messalina shook the imperial house; for a strife arose among the freedmen, who should choose a wife for Claudius, impatient as he was of a single life and submissive to the rule of wives. The ladies were fired with no less jealousy. Each insisted on her rank, beauty, and fortune, and pointed to her claims to such a marriage. But the keenest competition was between Lollia Paulina, the daughter of Marcus Lollius, an ex-consul, and Julia Agrippina, the daughter of Germanicus. Callistus favoured the first, Pallas the second. Aelia Paetina however, of the family of the Tuberones, had the support of Narcissus. The emperor, who inclined now one way, now another, as he listened to this or that adviser, summoned the disputants to a conference and bade them express their opinions and give their reasons.
Narcissus dwelt on the marriage of years gone by, on the ties of offspring, for Paetina was the mother of Antonia, and on the advantage of excluding a new element from his household, by the return of a wife to whom he was accustomed, and who would assuredly not look with a stepmother's animosity on Britannicus and Octavia, who were next in her affections to her own children. Callistus argued that she was compromised by her long separation, and that were she to be taken back, she would be supercilious on the strength of it. It would be far better to introduce Lollia, for, as she had no children of her own, she would be free from jealousy, and would take the place of a mother towards her stepchildren.
Pallas again selected Agrippina for special commendation because she would bring with her Germanicus's grandson, who was thoroughly worthy of imperial rank, the scion of a noble house and a link to unite the descendants of the Claudian family. He hoped that a woman, who was the mother of many children and still in the freshness of youth, would not carry off the grandeur of the Caesars to some other house… But no difficulty seemed to be presented by the temper of a sovereign who had neither partialities nor dislikes, but such as were suggested and dictated to him.
Tacitus Annals ‘the Mother of Nero’
‘To Claudius, not only did she represent the Julian wing of the dynasty, but he can hardly have been unaware of her political talents or for that matter, her ambitions...But Claudius’ choice of Agrippina was policy, not whimsy...It was good politics.’
Bill Leadbetter, 1997, The Ambition of Agrippina the Younger
‘Agrippina’s presence seems to have transformed the regime of her husband’.
Anthony A Barrett
‘No sooner was her marriage to Claudius consecrated than the seeds of her longing to exercise her political power on her own behalf began to germinate’
Annelise Freisenbruch
Agrippina’s marriage to Claudius marks her ascendancy to real power in Rome...Agrippina then set about cementing her position, ensuring Nero’s, and enjoying her new status. Her most immediate requirement was powerful supporters... Her position was strengthened by the elimination of rivals. The political nature of her marriage was plain.
Bill Leadbetter, 1997, The Ambition of Agrippina the Younger
…within two or three years of her marriage, Agrippina had virtually ousted Britannicus from the succession. She had forced an emperor whom she dominated completely to bypass his son in favour of an outsider.
Richard Bauman, Women and Politics in Ancient Rome
Equally vital and equally difficult was the task of persuading the public to accept the legitimacy of the new marriage to his own niece; these motives, presumably, prompted the swift conferral on Agrippina of the title of ‘Augusta’, the advancement of her son over his own son Brittanicus, and the aggressive emphasis in the public artistic media, such as coinage, on the new status of both Nero and Agrippina. The reappearance of the empress's mother and namesake in the bronze coinage of the same period may constitute one of the earliest invocations of her memory to legitimise the honours now conferred on her daughter.
Susan Wood
As usual, coinage was the primary medium, and Agrippina became the latest imperial woman to set a new precedent here, with both hers and her husbands head featured together on the same coin.
Annelise Freisenbruch The first ladies of Rome.
As soon as Agrippina had come to live in the palace she gained complete control over Claudius. Indeed, she was very clever in making the most of opportunities, and, partly by fear and partly by favours, she won the devotion of all those who were at all friendly toward him. At length she caused his son Britannicus to be brought up as if he were a mere nobody. She made Domitius (Nero) the son-inlaw of Claudius at this time and later brought about his adoption also. She accomplished these ends partly by getting the freedmen to persuade Claudius and partly by arranging beforehand that the senate, the populace, and the soldiers would join together in shouting their approval of her demands on every occasion. Agrippina was training her son for the throne and was entrusting his education to Seneca. She was amassing untold wealth for him, overlooking no possible source of revenue, not even the most humble or despised, but paying court to everyone who was in the least degree well-to-do and murdering many for this very reason.
Cassius Dio
Still Agrippina did not yet dare to attempt her greatest scheme, unless Lusius Geta and Rufius Crispinus were removed from the command of the praetorian cohorts; for she thought that they cherished Messalina's memory and were devoted to her children. Accordingly, as the emperor's wife persistently affirmed that faction was rife among these cohorts through the rivalry of the two officers and that there would be stricter discipline under one commander, the appointment was transferred to Burrus Afranius, who had a brilliant reputation as a soldier, but knew well to whose wish he owed his promotion. Agrippina, too, continued to exalt her own dignity; she would enter the Capitol in a chariot, a practice, which being allowed of old only to the priests and sacred images, increased the popular reverence for a woman who up to this time was the only recorded instance of one who, an emperor's daughter, was sister, wife, and mother of a sovereign.
Tacitus Annals ‘The Mother Of Nero’
No one attempted in any way to hinder Agrippina; indeed, she had more power than Claudius himself and used to greet in public all who desired it, a fact that was entered in the records. She possessed all power, since she dominated Claudius and had won over Pallas…
Cassius Dio
However, the emperor received formal thanks, and still more elaborate flattery was paid to Domitius. A law was passed, adopting him into the Claudian family with the name of Nero. Agrippina too was honoured with the title of Augusta. When this had been done, there was not a person so void of pity as not to feel keen sorrow at the position of Britannicus. Gradually forsaken by the very slaves who waited on him, he turned into ridicule the ill-timed attentions of his stepmother, perceiving their insincerity. For he is said to have had by no means a dull understanding; and this is either a fact, or perhaps his perils won him sympathy, and so he possessed the credit of it, without actual evidence.
Tacitus
For Agrippina was leaving no stone unturned in order to make Nero popular with the masses and to cause him to be regarded as the only successor to the imperial power. In consequence of this he became a person of importance and his name was on everybody's lips, whereas in the case of Britannicus many did not know even whether he was living, and the rest regarded him as insane and an epileptic; for this was the report that Agrippina gave out. And he (Nero) married Octavia at this time — another circumstance that caused him to be regarded as having at length come to manhood.
Cassius Dio
Nor was the principate yet hereditary: the Senate was free to choose whoever it wished. True, so far it had chosen members of the Augustan family, but only because it was easier to find there persons who were known and respected, who had the admiration of the soldiers in distant regions, and who had received preparation for the difficult duties of their office. This was why Augustus and Tiberius had always prepared more than one youth for the principate, so that the Senate might have some choice, and so that there might be one reserve. So for Agrippina to persuade Claudius to adopt Nero does not mean that she wanted Britannicus set aside. It merely proves that she did not want the family of Augustus to lose power, so she prepared two possible successors to Claudius, just as Augustus had for a long time trained both Drusus and Tiberius. When Claudius adopted Nero in AD 50, Claudius was already 60. Britannicus was 9. Nero was 14. It would have been most imprudent to designate a 9-year-old boy as Claudius' only successor. Octavia, daughter of Claudius and Messalina, was chaste, modest, patient, gentle and unselfish - all the virtues which the ancient Roman nobility had valued. By betrothing her to Nero, Agrippina had tried to make a couple to serve as an example.
Guglielmo Ferrero
Of Agrippina's many contributions to the history of the reign [of Claudius] one that is often neglected is her abandonment of that Julian article of faith, the divine blood of Augustus. Once Nero became a Claudian by adoption, Agrippina threw herself wholeheartedly into promoting the new link, and redoubled her efforts when she herself was given the title of Augustus'. Although technically this did not make her a Claudian – she was not adopted as Livia had been by Augustus (in his will) – it did strengthen the bond. In a certain sense she was simply returning to her origins, since her father had been a Claudian until his adoption by Tiberius and the latter’s interlocking adoption by Augustus. Having forged a Claudian link to her son’s advantage, Agrippina reinforced his position (and also her own) after his accession by springing to the defence of Divus Claudius, the god who was now Nero's father… In spite of her many unpleasant qualities, one cannot help feeling a certain admiration for Julia Agrippina, the last of the really great Julio-Claudian matrons.
Richard Baumann
No one doubted that Agrippina was deeply ambitious for her adolescent son, Nero from the start.
As Nero’s’ start rose so too did his mothers. She was endowed with the usual seating privileges at the theatre, the right to ride in her own mule drawn carriage, and other distinctions that had by now become fairly common place for leading imperial women, but the coup de grace was the conferral upon her in 50AD of Livia’s old cognomen ‘Augusta’ the title that Claudius had vetoed for Messalina. …No woman before Agrippina had received it (Augusta) while she was the consort of the reigning emperor…
Annelise Freisenbruch
That Claudius was poisoned is the general belief, but when it was done and by whom is disputed. Some say that it was his taster, the eunuch Halotus, as he was banqueting on the Citadel with the priests; others that at a family dinner Agrippina served the drug to him with her own hand in mushrooms, a dish of which he was extravagantly fond.
Suetonius
Thereupon, Agrippina, who had long decided on the crime and eagerly grasped at the opportunity thus offered, and did not lack instruments, deliberated on the nature of the poison to be used. The deed would be betrayed by one that was sudden and instantaneous, while if she chose a slow and lingering poison, there was a fear that Claudius, when near his end, might, on detecting the treachery, return to his love for his son.
Tacitus
He would not endure her behaviour, but was preparing to put an end to her power, to cause his son to assume the toga virilis, and to declare him heir to the throne. Agrippina, learning of this, became alarmed and made haste to forestall anything of the sort by poisoning Claudius.
Cassius Dio
It has been alleged that he (Claudius) was poisoned by Agrippina’s own hand, avoiding the many elaborate security measures. Most such accusations rest on fairly flimsy evidence. In this case, the evidence is persuasive. His death was remarkably convenient. The sources are remarkably precise. Nero is said to have quipped that mushrooms were surely the food of the gods since his father became a god through a mushroom.
Agrippina had planned Nero’s accession with care, and it seems likely that it was the mere possibility that Nero might have a rival that brought a sudden end to Claudius’ life.
Richard Alston
The charge of poisoning is frequently levelled during the Julio Claudian period especially against women.
Anthony A Barrett
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The inability to reconcile maternal and political instincts was her one crucial failing.
-Barrett
At first Agrippina managed for him all the business of the empire; and she and her son went forth together, often reclining in the same litter, though more commonly she would be carried and he would walk beside her. She also received the various embassies and sent letters to peoples and governors and kings.
-Cassius Dio
Still every honour was openly heaped on Agrippina, and to a tribune who according to military custom asked the watchword, Nero gave "the best of mothers." The Senate also decreed her two Lictors, with the office of priestess to Claudius, and voted to the late emperor a censor's funeral, which was soon followed by deification.
-Tacitus The Annals
Agrippina's memory seems to have been invoked by her daughter, the younger Agrippina, as a precedent for her own political ambitions. Agrippina the Younger is known to have sought not only to exercise the powers of a regent in the early years of the reign of Nero, but to have her role officially recognized. Her mother's images thus played a role in one of the very rare efforts, perhaps the only one, by a Roman woman to establish herself as a head of state.
-Susan Wood
Agrippina’s privilege would have served to elevate her in the public mind to the status of a woman who had a quasi-official share in the administration of the principate
-Barrett.
The ascendancy she enjoyed after her sons Nero’s accession coincided with the finest period of his administration, and her final departure from the scene seems to have removed the restraining check to his descent into erratic tyranny.
-Anthony A Barrett
When this had been going on for some time, it aroused the displeasure of Seneca and Burrus, who were at once the most sensible and the most influential of the men at Nero's court. They seized the following occasion to put a stop to it: an embassy of Armenians had arrived and Agrippina wished to mount the tribunal from which Nero was talking with them. The two men, seeing her approach, persuaded the young man to descend and meet his mother before she could get there, as if to extend some special greeting to her. Then, having brought this about, they did not re-ascend the tribunal, but made some excuse, so that the weakness in the empire should not become apparent to foreigners; and thereafter they laboured to prevent any public business from again being committed to her hands…
-Cassius Dio
He kept his promise and many matters were decided by the senate. No one was to be paid a fee or given a present for pleading a case; there was to be no requirement for the quaestors-elect to put on gladiatorial shows. Agrippina opposed this, on the grounds that it overturned a law of Claudius; however, the proposal was passed by the senators who used to be called to the palace, so that she might stand near a door built behind them, where she was hidden behind a curtain which stopped her being seen, but did not stop her hearing what was said. When envoys from Armenia were having an audience with Nero, she was getting ready to walk up onto the raised area and sit next to him. She would have done so, if Seneca, while everyone stood there amazed, had not told Nero to go down and greet his mother as she came up. This display of a son’s concern prevented the scandal.
- Tacitus
This, it is asserted, was a masterpiece in tact. It was nothing of the sort. It was a public demotion.
-Bill Leadbetter
That he even desired illicit relations with his own mother, and was kept from it by her enemies, who feared that such a help might give the reckless and insolent woman too great influence, was notorious, especially after he added to his concubines a courtesan who was said to look very like Agrippina. Even before that, so they say, whenever he rode in a litter with his mother, he had incestuous relations with her, which were betrayed by the stains on his clothing.
-Suetonius
Fabius Rusticus tells us that it was not Agrippina, but Nero, who lusted for the crime, and that it was frustrated by the adroitness of that same freed-girl. Cluvius's account, however, is also that of all other authors, and popular belief inclines to it, whether it was that Agrippina really conceived such a monstrous wickedness in her heart, or perhaps because the thought of a strange passion seemed comparatively credible in a woman, who in her girlish years had allowed herself to be seduced by Lepidus in the hope of winning power, had stooped with a like ambition to the lust of Pallas, and had trained herself for every infamy by her marriage with her uncle.
-Tacitus
Agrippina could only have risked the moral condemnation of society if she had felt sure of gaining political power by her unnatural union. Official recognition as her son's partner in Imperial power was, infact, the sum total of her desires.
-H. G. Mullens
And when Nero had thus obtained the government, he got Britannicus to be so poisoned, that the multitude should not perceive it: although he publicly put his own mother to death, not long afterward. Making her this requital, not only for being born of her, but for bringing it so about by her contrivances, that he obtained the Roman Empire. He also slew Octavia, his own wife, and many other illustrious persons, under this pretence, that they plotted against him.
-Josephus Antiquities of the Jews, Book XX, Chapter 8
Agrippina gradually began to lose her influence for a number of reasons. Firstly, Seneca and Burrus, perhaps resenting such power in the hands of a woman and wanting more themselves, began to undermine her control by removing her main supporter Pallas.
-Cassius Dio
He certainly came to conceive the liveliest hatred for her so that he determined to put an end to her ambitions forever.
-Edward Togo Salmon
The Romans…saw the elevation of women like Agrippina as an inversion of the natural order, and the preoccupation of the ancient writers with the evils of female ambition all but blinded them to any admirable qualities they might have possessed.
-Anthony A Barret
She seemed to be looking round for a party and a leader for it.‘I will take Britannicus to the Praetorians’ camp. Let them listen to Germanicus’ daughter pitted against the men who claim to rule the whole human race…Burrus and Seneca!’ (At this point, Tacitus tells us that a former intimate friend, Junia Silana, saw a chance of exacting revenge on Agrippina. She put up two of her dependents. They…) …. hinted that it was her (Agrippina’s) purpose to encourage in revolutionary designs Rubellius Plautus, who his mother's side was as nearly connected as Nero with the Divine Augustus; and then, by marrying him and making him emperor, again seize the control of the State.
-Tacitus
He put to death Antonia, daughter of Claudius, for refusing to marry him after Poppaea's death, charging her with an attempt at revolution; and he treated in the same way all others who were in any way connected with him by blood or by marriage. Among these was the young Aulus Plautius, whom he forcibly defiled before his death, saying "Let my mother come now and kiss my successor," openly charging that Agrippina had loved Plautius and that this had roused him to hopes of the throne.
-Suetonius
But when she found herself accomplishing nothing she took it greatly to heart and said to him ‘it was I who made you emperor’ just as if she had the power to take away sovereignty from him again. To the Praetorians he gave money, evidently to inspire in them the hope that many such crimes would be committed; and to the senate he sent a letter in which he enumerated the offences of which he knew she was guilty, and charged also that she had plotted against him and on being detected had committed suicide....Sabina on learning of this persuaded Nero to get rid of his mother, alleging that she was plotting against him.
-Cassius Dio
The over-watchful, over-critical eye that Agrippina kept on whatever Nero said or did proved more than he could stand.
-Suetonius
So she (Poppaea) nagged and mocked him incessantly. He was under the guardian’s thumb, she said - master neither of the empire nor of himself....
“If Agrippina can only tolerate daughters-in-law who hate her son, let me be Otho’s wife again!”
- Tacitus
Poppaea Sabina was destined to achieve what the professional politicians of two reigns had not been able to do, namely the complete and final destruction of Agrippina.
-Anthony A Barrett
In 59 Nero decided to kill his mother. We know too little about Nero’s psychological state to explain adequately the motivation for such a momentous act (which surely demands a psychological rather than a political explanation). It was a crisis, perhaps a turning point for the regime. One can only speculate that Nero was finding his mother an embarrassment: he could not restrain her political activities, nor fend off her interference and perhaps he feared her disapproval of his relationships.
-Richard Alston
At last terrified by her violence and threats, he determined to have her life, and after thrice attempting it by poison and finding that she had made herself immune by antidotes, he tampered with the ceiling of her bedroom, contriving a mechanical device for loosening its panels and dropping them upon her while she slept. When this leaked out through some of those connected with the plot, he devised a collapsible boat, to destroy her by shipwreck or by the falling in of its cabin. Then he pretended a reconciliation and invited her in a most cordial letter to come to Baiae and celebrate the feast of Minerva with him. On her arrival, instructing his captains to wreck the galley in which she had come, by running into it as if by accident, he detained her at a banquet, and when she would return to Bauli, offered her his contrivance in place of the craft which had been damaged, escorting her to it in high spirits and even kissing her breasts as they parted.
The rest of the night he passed sleepless in intense anxiety, awaiting the outcome of his design. On learning that everything had gone wrong and that she had escaped by swimming, driven to desperation he secretly had a dagger thrown down beside her freedman Lucius Agermus, when he joyfully brought word that she was safe and sound, and then ordered that the freedman be seized and bound, on the charge of being hired to kill the emperor; that his mother be put to death, and the pretence made that she had escaped the consequences of her detected guilt by suicide.
Trustworthy authorities add still more gruesome details: that he hurried off to view the corpse, handled her limbs, criticizing some and commending others, and that becoming thirsty meanwhile, he took a drink. Yet he could not either then or ever afterwards endure the stings of conscience, though soldiers, senate and people tried to hearten him with their congratulations; for he often owned that he was hounded by his mother's ghost and by the whips and blazing torches of the Furies.
-Suetonius
Anicetus then surrounded the house with a guard, and having burst open the gates, dragged off the slaves who met him, till he came to the door of her chamber, where a few still stood, after the rest had fled in terror at the attack. A small lamp was in the room, and one slave-girl with Agrippina, who grew more and more anxious, as no messenger came from her son, not even Agerinus, while the appearance of the shore was changed, a solitude one moment, then sudden bustle and tokens of the worst catastrophe. As the girl rose to depart, she exclaimed, ‘Do you too forsake me?’ and looking round saw Anicetus, who had with him the captain of the trireme, Herculeius, and Obaritus, a centurion of marines. ‘If’, said she, ‘you have come to see me, take back word that I have recovered, but if you are here to do a crime, I believe nothing about my son; he has not ordered his mother's murder’. The assassins closed in round her couch, and the captain of the trireme first struck her head violently with a club. Then, as the centurion bared his sword for the fatal deed, presenting her person, she exclaimed, ‘Smite my womb’, and with many wounds she was slain.
So far our accounts agree. That Nero gazed on his mother after her death and praised her beauty, some have related, while others deny it. Her body was burnt that same night on a dining couch, with a mean funeral; nor, as long as Nero was in power, was the earth raised into a mound, or even decently closed. Subsequently, she received from her slaves, a humble sepulchre on the road to Misenum, near the country house of Caesar the dictator, which from a great height commands a view of the bay beneath. As soon as the funeral pyre was lighted, one of her freedmen, surnamed Mnester, ran himself through with a sword, either from love of his mistress or from the fear of destruction. Many years before Agrippina had anticipated this end for herself and had spurned the thought. For when she consulted the astrologers about Nero, they replied that he would be emperor and kill his mother. ‘Let him kill her’, she said, ‘provided he is emperor’
He even revived the charges of a period long past, how she had aimed at a share of empire, and at inducing the praetorian cohorts to swear obedience to a woman, to the disgrace of the Senate and people; how, when she was disappointed, in her fury with the soldiers, the Senate, and the populace, she opposed the usual donative and largess, and organised perilous prosecutions against distinguished citizens. What efforts had it cost him to hinder her from bursting into the Senate-house and giving answers to foreign nations! He glanced too with indirect censure at the days of Claudius, and ascribed all the abominations of that reign to his mother, thus seeking to show that it was the State's good fortune which had destroyed her. For he actually told the story of the ship wreck; but who could be so stupid as to believe that it was accidental, or that a shipwrecked woman had sent one man with a weapon to break through an emperor's guards and fleets?
-Tacitus
When she died she was still powerful and the writ of her patronage ran far and wide...This was the ultimate legacy of her death. In the end Nero could neither rule with her nor without her.
-Bill Leadbetter, 1997, The Ambition of Agrippina the Younger