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The Women of the Caesars

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

H. G. Mullens
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Extract

Two scandalous passages in Tacitus and Suetonius seem to hint at a project for a marriage between Nero and his mother Agrippina. There seems reason, as will be seen, to suppose that there was policy rather than a much lower motive behind the manœuvres recorded in these passages, if indeed they actually occurred. But whereas Tacitus, quoting Cluvius as his authority, represents the overtures as coming from Agrippina, Suetonius, giving the story according to Fabius Rusticus, makes Nero responsible.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 11 , Issue 32 , February 1942 , pp. 59 - 67
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1942

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References

page 59 note 1 Tac. Ann. xiv. 5; Suet. Nero, 28.

page 61 note 1 I dismiss the etymological connexion with augeo.

page 61 note 2 For association with a divinity by community of attributes see Mattingly, , J.R.S. xiii, 1923, p. 105.Google Scholar

page 64 note 1 Her ‘most distinguished lineage and high position as queen in Epirus made all the successors turn their thoughts to her’ (Macurdy, , Hellenistic Queens, p. 36Google Scholar). The following pages show quite clearly that the strongest claim to the Macedonian throne was thought to be marriage with Cleopatra. A proud woman would see this as proof of her right to dispose of the throne. ‘After … Cleopatra II the throne remains for the queen who outlives her husband with the requirement that she must summon a male member of the family to share the government with her’ (Strack, , Dynastie, p. 75Google Scholar, quoted by Macurdy, , p. 232).Google Scholar

page 64 note 2 A strange confirmation of my theory is the reductio ad absurdum of this idea of succession attempted by Nymphidius Sabinus when to support his aspirations to the empire he treated Sporus as his consort with the name of Poppaea (Plutarch, , Galba, ix).Google Scholar

page 65 note 1 See Mattingly, , J.R.S. xiii, 1923, p. 106, note 1.Google Scholar