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Agrippina the Younger

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Roman empress Agrippina the Younger, one of the most notorious and influential of the Roman empresses in the 1st century AD.

Agrippina the Younger was one of the most notorious and influential of the Roman empresses in the 1st century AD. She was the sister of the Emperor Caligula, a wife of the Emperor Claudius and mother of the Emperor Nero. Through careful political manoeuvres, she acquired a dominant position for herself in Rome. In 39 AD she was exiled for allegedly participating in a plot against Caligula and later it was widely thought that she killed Claudius with poison. When Nero came to the throne, he was only 16 so Agrippina took on the role of regent until he began to exert his authority. After relations between Agrippina and Nero soured, he had her murdered.

With:

Catharine Edwards
Professor of Classics and Ancient History at Birkbeck, University of London

Alice König
Lecturer in Latin and Classical Studies at the University of St Andrews

Matthew Nicholls
Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Reading

Producer: Victoria Brignell.

Available now

46 minutes

Last on

Thu 31 Mar 2016 21:30
±«Óãtv Radio 4

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LINKS AND FURTHER READING

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READING LIST:

Anthony A. Barrett, Agrippina: Sex, Power and Politics in the Early Roman Empire (Routledge, 1999)

Edward Champlin, Nero (Harvard University Press, 2005)

Cassius Dio (trans. Herbert Baldwin Foster), Complete Works (Delphi Classics, 2014), especially books 59-62

Suzanne Dixon, The Roman Mother (first published 1988; Routledge, 2013)

Annalise Freisenbruch, The First Ladies of Rome: The Women Behind the Caesars (Jonathan Cape, 2010)

Judith Ginsburg, Representing Agrippina: Constructions of Female Power in the Early Roman Empire (Oxford University Press, 2005)

Robert Graves, I, Claudius (Penguin Modern Classics, 2006)

Robert Graves, Claudius the God (Penguin Modern Classics, 2006)

Suetonius (trans. Robert Graves), The Twelve Caesars (Penguin Classics, 2007)

Tacitus (trans. Michael Grant), The Annals of Imperial Rome (Penguin Classics, 2003), especially books 12, 13 and 14

Credits

Presenter Melvyn Bragg
Interviewed Guest Catharine Edwards
Interviewed Guest Alice Konig
Interviewed Guest Matthew Nicholls
Producer Victoria Brignell

Broadcasts

  • Thu 31 Mar 2016 09:00
    ±«Óãtv Radio 4
  • Thu 31 Mar 2016 21:30
    ±«Óãtv Radio 4

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