Thirteenth Generation (Continued)
Family of Germanicus Caesar (15) & Agrippina Major (16)

18. Agrippina Minor, 55G Grandmother, F. Born in 0015. Agrippina died in 0059, she was 44.

Agrippina the younger was one of three daughters of Germanicus and Agrippina the Elder. She was thirty - four years old when the Roman emperor Claudius married her in A. D. 49.

By this time, Claudius had had three wives and his marriages to them had not been very good ones. His previous wife, Messalina, had been not only unfaithful to him but had actually married another man in full public view while Claudius was away visiting the new port of Ostia at the mouth of the Tiber. Claudius was so affectionately disposed towards her that he was not moved to action until his private secretary gave the order for her execution. Messalina had been married to Claudius for seven years and had lived a full and very debauched life by the time of her death at the age of twenty - three.

By this time, Claudius was nearing the end of his life. Agrippina, being an ambitious and intelligent woman married to an emperor considered a weakling and somewhat of a dunce by those around him, naturally took the reins of power into her own hands. During the last five years of Claudius’ reign, she grew more and more powerful. At the time of their marriage, Agrippina had a teenage son named Nero who was to become the future Roman emperor of that name. She immediately secured his future by having Claudius adopt him. Claudius also had a son by Messalina named Brittanicus.

In A.D. 54, Claudius died after eating a dish of poison mushrooms. The early historians perpetuate the rumor that Agrippina had murdered him, but she really didn’t have a motive. She already controlled much of imperial policy and had seen to it that her son would be heir to the throne. Even today, people die after gathering and eating poison mushrooms gathered in Italy as they are easily mistaken for the edible kind.

When Nero ascended the throne, he was only seventeen and could not legally rule in his own name. Agrippina acted as his regent and was a powerful controlling influence on him even after he had reached the age of eighteen and could govern in his own right. For the first time in Roman history, a woman was given the title of AVGVSTA, meaning "empress", and her portrait appeared on coins with that of her son. Up until that time, women of the imperial household had only been portrayed on coins after they had died.

Nero grew to resent his mother’s strong hand in controlling his life. Agrippina had been raised in an upright and conservative Roman home, and was not tolerant of Nero’s frivolous behavior. After about a year, Nero moved her out of the imperial palace and into a residence of her own. With the help of his two closest advisors, Seneca and Burrus, Nero began to undermine her power until she could do little more than complain. She began to denounce her son more and more in public, and soon made a nuisance of herself. After the tension between mother and son grew to a critical level, Nero determined to be rid of her. He was aided in making this decision by the counsel given him by Seneca and Burrus.

Tacitus tells us the story how Nero sent his mother out on the Bay of Naples in a ship. An accident was to be staged in which part of the ship would collapse and pitch her into the sea. The accident was bungled and she escaped with only a hurt shoulder. A woman friend who had been with her was also thrown into the water. The woman began crying out that she was the emperor’s mother, hoping that she would be rescued. When Agrippina saw some of the ship’s crew clubbing her to death in the water instead, the tough old mother of Nero swam to safety in spite of her wounded shoulder. She returned home, believing that Nero would not dare to murder her now that so many people knew about the plot. Agrippina played it cool until the very end. Nero sent an ex-slave and a group of naval officers whom he could trust to complete the foul deed to finish her off with clubs and swords in her bed, to which she had retired to recuperate from her injury.

Agrippina the Younger was hated and feared by many of the Roman nobility amongst whom she lived and, no doubt, many of them were secretly glad to have her out of the way. But the crime of matricide was perhaps the most despicable one in the eyes of the ancient Romans. Today, our society looks upon child molestation as one of the most horrible crimes imaginable and holds the innocence of childhood to be inviolable. The Romans believed the home, hearth, and motherhood to be the very foundation of their society and honoring and protecting his mother were a Roman man’s most sacred duties. The Romans would tolerate Nero’s drunken revels and the wide range of his perversions and sexual appetites. They would even tolerate his brutality in dealing with his enemies, but they would never forgive a man who murdered his mother. Our society remembers Nero as a persecutor of Christians and a degenerate ruler, but it was the crime of murdering his mother that made it inevitable that he should one day be brought down. In A. D. 68, the Romans had finally had enough of him and the Senate declared him a public enemy. Nero finally paid the ultimate price for his crimes by taking his own life while hiding in an ex-slave’s house as soldiers were at the point of arresting him.









In 0049 when Agrippina was 34, she married Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero (14) , 55G Grandfather, M, son of Nero Claudius Drusus, M (0038 BC-0009 BC) & Antonia Minor (12), F (0036 BC-0038). Born on 1 Aug 0010 in Lugundum(Lyons). Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero died on 13 Oct 0054, he was 44.

Claudius was found hiding behind some balcony curtains in the palace by soldiers in the palace after the murder of Caligula by the Praetorian Guard Instead of seizing and killing him, as Claudius was almost sure they would do, they raised him up on their shoulders and made him emperor! Many writers have depicted Claudius as kind of a befuddled, harmless old man who had been made Emperor so that Romans would have someone in high places to make fun of. In truth, he was an able administrator and ruled well, making many improvements in the government. He gave orders for the conquest of Britain, which the famous Julius Caesar had only invaded and left. The invasion was well planned and carried out. After some of the early battles had been won, he came to Britain to lead the troops in person. Most historians, including Tacitus agree that Claudius desperately needed a few military victories to boost his image amongst the Roman people, and the conquest of Britain made him quite popular in Rome.

Much of what contemporary historians wrote about the Roman emperors and their families at that time showed them in an extremely bad light. The passages in Suetonois’ Lives of the Caesars read like a modern soap opera. Tacitus deliberately painted the worst picture he could of the imperial families. He longed for the values and government of the old Roman Republic. His attitude was that the only thing good that could be said about the Empire with its overly powerful and autocratic rulers was that it was better than the constant civil wars of the Republican era.

Claudius was never very lucky in love. One lady he was to have married died on their wedding day. His last wife, the infamous Messalina, continuously cheated on him, even giving many of their household treasures to her lovers. Claudius was very much in love with her and tried to ignore what was going on. Messalina finally exhausted even Claudius' patience when she married one of her lovers while still married to Claudius. Told by his advisors that this was a direct threat to him as emperor, he sadly signed the order for her execution so eagerly prepared by the men close to him. According to Tacitus, a centurion found her distraught and begging for her life. He offered her a dagger so she could kill herself, a death considered honorable by the Roman aristocracy. When she attempted but couldn't bring herself to commit suicide, he ran her through with his short sword. Claudius finally ended up marrying Agrippina the Younger, mother of the future emperor Nero. Claudius may have died from an illness but the historians of the period have charged Agrippina with his murder. She supposedly fed him a dish of poisoned mushrooms.








They had the following children:
17 i. Genuissa\Venessa Claudia of, F
ii. Nero, 55G Uncle, M. Nero died in 0068.

History has remembered the Roman emperor Nero as an evil man who sent many Christians to horrible deaths and sat idly by composing music while fire destroyed Rome. There is some evidence, though, that he was liked and respected by the army.

Nero started his reign with good intentions. He promised to govern "In the manner of Augustus," and ruled with compassion and responsibility. In fact, he said that he cursed the day he learned to write when he had to sign an order condemning a criminal to death. For the first ten years of his reign he ruled with the help of his two able tutors, Burrus and the Stoic philosopher Seneca. Unfortunately for the Roman people, his good intentions did not last. He soon became more interested in his own self-seeking life of pleasure than in governing the most powerful empire in the world. Nero loved to put on extravagant games in the arena and would throw tokens to the crowds that could be exchanged for valuable art and other fine presents. Some of these even included houses and ships.

He would rather compose music and poetry than personally take charge of affairs in the army and the provinces. Nero was extremely conceited and thought that the music and poetry he composed were of the finest artistic quality and he sorely resented anyone found napping or yawning during his performances. People were even hired to applaud his concerts! He arranged the murder of his mother, Agrippina the Younger, by sending her on a voyage in a decrepit old ship that fell apart after it left the harbor. When the tough old Agrippina attempted to swim for her life and was rescued by a boat, Nero sent two naval officers to murder her in her bed.

It was during Nero's reign that the bloody revolt of Boudicca, Queen of the Iceni took place in Britain. Britain had been invaded by Julius Caesar in 55 B.C. but had only recently been actually subdued by the Emperor Claudius in A.D. 43. London (Roman Londinium) had only been in existence for fourteen years at the time of Boudicca's revolt. Nero's able general and governor of Britain, Suetonius Paulinus, handled the dangerous job of keeping the province of Britain a part of the Roman Empire by defeating Boudicca's forces. Though large districts of Rome were regularly destroyed by fire, one of the most disastrous occurred in A.D. 68. Since Nero made no secret of the fact that he believed he was a talented singer, the rumor started that he set the fires to provide inspiration for a new ballad he was writing about the burning of Troy. To remove suspicion from himself, he blamed the Christians for setting the fire. They were not well liked anyway because they refused to sacrifice to the Roman gods or participate in holidays or patriotic festivals, most of which involved worship of Roman gods. Tacitus considered them haters of humankind and other Romans considered them unpatriotic. Most Romans were suspicious of them because of the secrecy of early Christian worship. Nero had many of them crucified or covered with pitch and burned alive. The more merciful deaths he ordered for Christians were at the claws of wild beasts in the arena.

Nero continued to live a life of luxury and sensual pleasure while he neglected the affairs of the government. He built a magnificent palace, called The Golden House, and declared that "Finally, I have a dwelling fit for a human being!" He married a faithful, upright woman of the family of Augustus named Octavia but later had her murdered. Then, he had a woman's husband murdered so that he could marry her. Finally, he stole Poppaea Sabina from Otho, a future Roman Emperor. Nero sent poor Otho to govern the province of Lusitania (Modern Portugal and Western Spain) when he found that Otho still loved Poppaea. Poppaea was as wild and immoral as Nero. He wound up kicking her to death during an argument at one of their drunken parties.

When rebellion broke out in Gaul and other urgent affairs needed to be tended to in the empire, Nero responded by taking an artistic tour of Greece, leaving the responsibilities of government to underlings. Finally fed up with Nero's misrule, first Vindex in Gaul and then Galba in Spain rose in rebellion. Nero panicked and attempted to flee, even when he might have led an army to put down the rebellions. He was still liked by many of the soldiers in the army because he had always treated them well. The Senate declared Nero a public enemy and condemned him to death by flogging with rods "In the ancient manner" at the urging of Nymphidius Sabinus, Nero's Praetorian Prefect. Upon hearing this, Nero fled and hid in the house of an ex-slave. He begged to have someone take a dagger and put an end to his life because he lacked the nerve to do so himself. Finally, when he heard the clatter of horses’ hooves announcing the arrival of Roman cavalry troops coming to arrest him, he clumsily stabbed himself in the throat. As he slowly bled to death, he lamented "What an artist the world is losing!" What the Roman world really lost was an inept tyrant and what it gained was a year of bloody civil war as five men ravaged the countryside with their armies in their quest for the throne. Four of them would be dead before that year was up.









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