Agrippina

“Let him kill me, so long as he reigns” These are reportedly the words spoken by Agrippina when an astrologer told her that her son, Nero, would become the Roman emperor but he would also murder Agrippina. When making a list of the wickedest rulers, Nero is usually near the top. A bloody Roman emperor who burned Christians during parties. His mother Agrippina has often been blamed for the monstrous reign of her son. Her name has become synonymous with incest, murder, greed, and manipulation. In reality, very little is known about the woman behind the myth. As historian Emma Southon writes in her biography on Agrippina, “As a woman, Agrippina exists only when her actions impact on the lives or actions of men in the political or military sphere because in the ancient world, as a woman, she exists only through her relationship with men.” Agrippina was born into a world of wealth, privilege, and confines. There was no guarantee that she would be remembered by history, she just as easily could have become one of the many faceless and nameless women from Antiquity. However, Agrippina fought for her memory to live on. She was a woman who was trained in the confines and expectations of Roman womanhood and blatantly decided to disregard them. This fact secured her a place in the history books but often not a favorable one. To later historians, her assertiveness, ambition, ruthlessness, and political intelligence made her unnatural, more man than woman. 

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