The Dark Side of Ambition: The Story of Agrippina
Julia Agrippina, or Agrippina the Younger, was a powerful influence on her son, the Roman Emperor Nero, and she wielded significant power herself during the early years of his reign (54-68 AD). She is described in the 1913 collection, Notable Women in History, by Willis J. Abbot. It is notable that this work was written by a man, and it will be evident in his description of Agrippina that we’ll share below.
Here is how Abbot describes her:
a wicked woman; a devoted mother
AGRIPPINA, Empress of Rome, is perhaps best-known as the mother of Nero, the woman who thrust that detestable tyrant upon the people of Rome, and who later suffered death at the hands of his hired assassins. "Strike me through the body that bore that monster Nero," she said, when she recognized the murderers as his emissaries.
The woman who died thus miserably in her forty-third year was endowed by fortune and by nature with every possible attribute which should bring success and enduring fame. She was the daughter of Germanicus, one of the really great Romans; was married to Claudius, who, if not great, was at least a harmless ruler; and gave birth to Nero, whose fiddling over burning Rome later historians deny, but whose cruelty and debauchery no whitewash can blot out from history. Nature gave her surpassing beauty, but denied her any sense of chastity. Her violations of that virtue were notorious, and assumed forms which in our days are heard of only in the most debased and vicious families. Rome at that time had a stringent statute against violations of the moral law–that is, in the case of women—but qualified it if such lapses were shown to have been due to an ambition to advance the interests of the state.
Of this qualification Agrippina took the fullest advantage, and it served to excuse her in the mind of the Roman populace when, after a riotous career as a girl and a marriage of which Nero was the fruit, she married her uncle, the Emperor Claudius. For the rest Agrippina was majestic in carriage, of most distinguished manners, with a lively and enterprising intellect capable of undertaking great things. But as her beauty was bartered to the ends of lust and ambition, so her really regal mind was marred by the passions of avarice, jealousy, and revenge. She was capable of acts of the most hideous cruelty, and whoever blocked the path to realization of her ambition suffered and disappeared.
Agrippina was a complex figure in Roman history, and a fascinating one for Edwardian women who were coming to terms with the complexity of their own femininity. Despite her noble birth and undeniable beauty, Agrippina was a woman of great ambition and moral ambiguity. She used her influence to secure power for herself and her son, often resorting to manipulation and deceit. As an historical figure, she embodied both masculine ambition and feminine seduction. Agrippina's life was marked by both great success and terrible tragedy, ultimately leading to her untimely demise at the hands of her own son.