General Notes

Agrippina the Elder or Vipsania Agrippina (14 BCE - 33 CE) was the daughter of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa and Julia, daughter of Augustus

As a child, in 5 BCE, she was married to Germanicus, and they remained together until his death in 19 CE. She bore him nine children, including Gaius (Caligula) and Agrippina the Younger.

Agrippina followed Germanicus when he was stationed on the Rhine border and later when he held command in the East. Here Germanicus died, allegedly killed by the governor of Syria. Agrippina returned to Rome with her children where she remained until 29 CE. She tried to keep alive the memory of the very popular Germanicus to better any future changes of her children succeeding Tiberius, who in return was very suspicious of her.

In 26 CE he refused her request to leave Rome to remarry and in 29 CE she was arrested and sent in exile on the island of Pandatoria. Here she died of starvation in 33 CE.

Agrippina wasn't a very influential person in political terms, but she was very central in the Julio-Claudian dynasty. A grand-daughter of Augustus, of the gens julia, she married a grand-son of Livia, of the gens claudia, thus affirming the alliance of the two families. Her son Gaius (Caligula) followed Tiberius as emperor, to be succeeded by her brother-in-law Claudius, who married her daughter Agrippina the Younger, whose son Nero would become emperor after Claudius.

Agrippina the Elder (14 BC - AD 33)



Two women named Agrippina symbolize the stresses of the growing Roman Empire in the early first century AD. Tacitus' magnificent histories of the period are a primary source for our knowledge of the unfortunate Agrippina the Elder (daughter of Agrippa and granddaughter of Augustus) and her daughter, Agrippina the Younger. Both women have been studied in recent years as reflecting the particular political dangers, not only of the Julio-Claudian reign of Tiberius, but also the particular dangers for women who attempted to step out from the invisible protection of home and family into the political spotlight. Both women paid a bitter price for their involvement.

The story of the younger Agrippina has often been told as a cautionary tale, from her supposed murder of the Emperor husband, Claudius, to her eventual murder by her Emperor son, Nero. Yet the events and lessons of her mother's life, although less well known, are no less instructive in illustrating the early Empire.

Granddaughter of Augustus

Vipsania Agrippina was the daughter of Augustus' invaluable ally, Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, and of Julia, Augustus' only daughter. She was thus raised intimately within Rome's first imperial family under the stern eye of her step-grandmother, Livia. As a member of that family, Agrippina would have been expected to embody the same strict Roman virtues as her mother and grandmother; frugality, chastity, and domesticity. Insofar as the traditional values described above applied to her mother, Julia failed spectacularly at all three and was banished by the Emperor; yet to the end of her days, Agrippina arrogantly prized her descent from the divine Augustus.

In 11 BC, after Agrippa's death (by whom Julia had five children), Augustus forced Julia into a political marriage with her stepbrother, Tiberius, Livia's son. Agrippina was 3 years old when Augustus became her stepfather. The marriage, initially tranquil, became deeply dysfunctional. Tiberius left Rome for Rhodes, allegedly to avoid the scandal of his wife's sexually infidelities.

In 2 BC, when Agrippina was only 12, Augustus discovered that his daughter was whiling away her spare time by committing adulteries on a notorious scale. The fact that Julia had been forced into not one, but three, loveless political marriages at her father's behest was no excuse. Augustus had passed severe laws against adultery in his attempts at moral reform. Allegedly he learned of her behavior through her sons (and his adopted children), Gaius and Lucius, Agrippina's brothers, who protested that their mother's behavior was notorious.

Augustus banished Julia for life to the island of Pandateria off the western Italian coast, although she was later permitted to move to slightly easier house arrest at Rhegium. Agrippina never saw her mother again. It would be yet another source of friction between Agrippina and her former stepfather when, after Augustus' death, Tiberius effectively starved Julia to death by stopping her allowance. After Julia's exile, Agrippina and her remaining siblings were raised by Augustus and Livia. One wonders at the psychological impact on the daughter of her mother's passive fate. She could not have imagined that the same fate would befall her.

Life With Germanicus, 5-19 AD

At the age of 18 or 19, Agrippina was married to Nero Claudius Drusus "Germanicus", Livia's grandson, probably in 5 AD. It is important to understand that Germanicus, son of Livia's son Drusus (brother of Tiberius), was an attractive, educated general with genuine star-power popularity with the Roman people. She bore him nine children, half of whom would die in the imperial power-struggles following the death of Augustus. She was by all accounts a loyal and affectionate wife and supported her husband while on campaign in the approved manner.

Germanicus, adopted by Tiberius in 4 AD, earned his military reputation, as his father had before him, by conquests in Germania. Agrippina and the children followed him to the Rhine during his campaigns of 14-16 AD. Her son Gaius, nicknamed "Little Boots" for his infant copy of the Roman legionary uniform, spent his early years in the legionary camps there, although probably born in Italy where his mother came for her delivery. A charming and affectionate letter to Agrippina from Augustus describes sending the imperial physician to her together with baby Gaius for her return to her husband's command (Suetonius, Caligula).

Rome was still reeling from the disastrous massacre of three legions under Quinctilius Varus in the Tuetoberg Forest in 9 AD. Part of Germanicus' popularity came from his successes there and the frenzy of Rome to avenge former defeats. When legions on the Rhine mutinied near Cologne, Agrippina and her children featured prominently in its conclusion. As Tacitus relates, when Germanicus decided to send his pregnant wife and young Caligula away from the mutinous camp, "His wife scorned the proposal, reminding him that she was of the blood of the divine Augustus and would live up to it, whatever the danger." Annals, I.40. Persuaded to leave, Agrippina, her son, and her weeping women left for the safety of the Treveri tribe; the pathetic spectacle of Augustus' pregnant granddaughter and her son refugeeing to a barbarian tribe rather than trust the loyalty of her husband's legions is credited with having turned the mutiny around and saved Germanicus' position with his army. Obviously Agrippina knew how to stage a scene, as she would in a later crisis.

Strain was beginning to show between Germanicus and the dour Tiberius, who became Emperor when Augustus died in 14. Tiberius may have resented Germanicus' popularity with the people. While Germanicus publicly favored conquest of German lands outside the empire; Tiberius adhered to Augustus' recommendation that Rome not extend her current borders. It may be that the personable Germanicus' glamorous popularity also contrasted unfavorably with Tiberius' rather gloomy efficiency.

The Death of Germanicus, 19 AD

When Tiberius recalled them from Germania, Agrippina watched her husband triumph in Rome in 17 before going with him to his proconsular command in the east as governor of Syria. After successful actions in Cappadocia and Nicopolis, Germanicus fell out with Tiberius in 19 when, to tumultuous personal acclaim, he entered Egypt without permission. When Germanicus returned to Syria, he found Tiberius had installed Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso there. After ordering Piso to leave the province, Germanicus mysteriously fell ill near Antioch and died. Many, including Agrippina, believed he had been poisoned, presumably by Piso, either on the orders or with the knowledge of a jealous Tiberius.

Tacitus claims that, as Germanicus lay dying, "...he turned to his wife and begged her to shed her ferocity for his sake and for the sake of their children, and also to resign herself to cruel fate, and that once she had returned to Rome not to rile up those who were more powerful in a struggle for ascendancy." Tacitus, Annals, II.72.1 'Ferocity' is, in this context, an interesting and deliberately de-sexing choice of words. However traditionally she had behaved up to the death of her husband, Agrippina would aggressively step beyond approved behavior in the years of widowhood ahead.

"Wild with grief," Agrippina returned to Brundisium carrying her children, her own suspicions, and an urn containing Germanicus' ashes. Awaiting her there were thousands of ordinary Romans as well as her brother-in-law, the future Emperor Claudius. Here was another opportunity to stage an unforgettable scene and make a point. Tacitus paints a picture of grief-stricken mourners lining the road all the way from Brundisium to the public funeral at Augustus' mausoleum in Rome, from which both Tiberius and his mother, Livia, were conspicuously absent:


Benjamin West, "Agrippina Landing at Brundisium with the Ashes of Germanicus, 1768.

"The day on which the remains were consigned to the tomb of Augustus was now desolate in its silence, now distracted by lamentations. The streets of the city were crowded; torches were blazing throughout the Campus Martius. There the soldiers under arms, the magistrates without their symbols of office, the people in the tribes, were all incessantly exclaiming that the commonwealth was ruined, that not a hope remained, too boldly and openly to let one think that they remembered their rulers. But nothing impressed Tiberius more deeply than the enthusiasm kindled in favor of Agrippina, whom men spoke of as the glory of the country, the sole surviving offspring of Augustus, the solitary example of the old times, while looking up to heaven and the gods they prayed for the safety of her children and that they might outlive their oppressors." Annals, III, 4.

Tiberius and Sejanus, 19-33 AD

Agrippina lived uneasily in Rome from 19 to 29. She soon became the rallying point for senators opposing the growing power of L. Aelius Sejanus, sole prefect of the Praetorian Guard, during his rise to power in the '20's. Particularly after the suspicious death of Tiberius' only son, Drusus, in 23, Sejanus' power was largely unhindered. He insinuated himself within Tiberius by finding evidence through informers of supposed disloyalty to the current regime; this endeared him to an increasingly suspicious Emperor while increasing a police-state atmosphere in Rome.

Sejanus' agents soon placed Agrippina and her family under surveillance for her outspoken hints that Tiberius had been involved in her husband's death. Agrippina's hostility to Tiberius may have been natural, but was both dangerous and arrogant. She dared to confront him openly with her suspicions and reproaches. Suetonius writes that, "When Agrippina said more than was wise about her husband's death, Tiberius took her by the hand, quoting the Greek line: 'And if you are not queen, my dear, have I then done you wrong?' and this was the last question that he ever condescended to ask her." Life. Allegedly, invited to a banquet at the imperial palace, she publicly refused food offered her personally by the Emperor for fear of poison, an action which created a scandal.




" Agrippina was always truculent, but she was further roused at that time because of the danger to her kin. She went straight to Tiberius and by chance found him sacrificing to his father. She used this to begin her abuse of him and said it was inconsistent for the same man to offer sacrifices to the deified Augustus and to attack his descendants. Augustus' divine spirit had not been passed on to mute statues: she was the true likeness since she was born of heavenly blood...In vain was Pulchra being persecuted, who was being destroyed only because she foolishly cherished her friendship with Agrippina ...But Agrippina nursing her resentment and physically ill, when Tiberius paid a call to her sick bed, she poured forth tears for a while in silence, but later she began to insult him and entreat him: he should alleviate her loneliness and give her a husband...But Caesar...although she was pressing him, left without giving an answer. "
 


Tacitus, Annals, IV.52-53.
 






Once Tiberius abandoned Rome for Capri in 26, Sejanus pursued Agrippina and her children and friends without hindrance. Agrippina allegedly asked Tiberius for permission to remarry in 26 (perhaps seeking additional protection) but was refused. In 29, on Tiberius' orders, she was arrested by Sejanus and she and her oldest son, Nero Julius Caesar, were banished by a complaisant Senate to Pandateria, the selfsame island of her mother's exile. Her second son, Drusus, was imprisoned in a Palatine prison in 30 AD. and died (allegedly of starvation) shortly thereafter, pathetically trying to gnaw a mattress of moldy straw if Tacitus is to be believed.


Agrippina the Younger, daughter of Agrippina and mother of Nero.
She was murdered by her son in 59 AD

During the troubles Agrippina's son, Gaius "Caligula," apparently living with his grandmother and, later, his grandmother Antonia. He was also targeted by Sejanus: when Sejanus fell in 30, part of Tiberius' charge against him was that he was plotting against Caligula as well. The death of Sejanus was no reprieve for Agrippina; still on Pandateria, she starved to death in 33, either deliberately or by force. Suetonius states that the granddaughter of Augustus was actually flogged (on Tiberius' orders) so violently that she lost an eye. Only four of her nine children survived her; the future emperor, Gaius "Caligula" - who, as Emperor, would be assassinated in 41 - and three daughters, including Julia Agrippina the Younger.

Agrippina is significant not only by her active participation in her husband's career but by her willingness to assume a leading role after his death for those who opposed the political acts of Sejanus and Tiberius. Most of our information concerning her comes from Tacitus Annals in which he attempts to exalt Germanicus at the expense of Tiberius. Yet Tacitus himself speaks of Agrippina in guarded or hostile tones. She is praised for loyalty and puducitia, that combination of fertility and devoted motherhood so highly valued by Roman society; however, she is also described as self-willed, fiercely unfeminine, and too willing to thrust herself into her husband's life, at one point even encouraging his disheartened soldiers on campaign.

In later books of the Annals, Tacitus' disapproval becomes more evident. Modestly staying in the background of political life was an absolute requirement for a respectable Roman woman. The fact that Agrippina, instead, "... poorly concealed her hopes also hastened their (i.e. the house of Germanicus') destruction. ...the pudicitia of Agrippina was unassailable. Therefore, he (Sejanus) attacked her arrogance ... they (agents of Sejanus) alleged, in the presence of Tiberius, that she boasted of her fertility, and relying upon her popularity with the people, that her mouth was watering for supreme power." Annals,, IV.12.

Tacitus seems particularly offended that a woman should use her much-praised fertility to obtain political influence. From his disapproval, later historians also judged Agrippina harshly as a haughty troublemaker, obsessed with her descent from Augustus, attempting to interfere in male spheres. There is the sense she earned her just desserts. Less prejudiced history has not dealt kindly with Agrippina either - after all, she was the mother of the insufferable Caligula and Agrippina the Younger.

In the better-known career of Agrippina the Younger, the same criticisms would be even more sharply sounded so that her eventual murder would seem, if not justified, then at least not surprising. It is easy to imagine a traditional Roman commenting, "Like mother - like daughter."



Translations taken from an excellent discussion of Tacitus' treatment of Agrippina, found in T. Saavedra's article at Diotima, Agrippina the Elder: Vixen or Victim? Germanicus. Image courtesy of B. McManus, Augustus and Tiberius: Sources. From plaster cast, EUR, Rome.Upper images of Agrippina the Elder and Younger courtesy of B. McManus. Lower bust courtesy of Forum Romanum. Link to the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest courtesy of FalcoPhiles. Link to Sejanus courtesy of Rome of the Caesars.

This illustration is by Rubens, 1614; traditionally titled "Tiberius and Agrippina," it has recently been thought to be painted from a coin in Rubens possession of Agrippina and her husband, Germanicus. Image from the National Gallery of Art web site.