Agrippina: Sex, Power, and Politics in the Early Empire by Anthony A. Barrett - Sister, Wife, Mother: A Freudian Quagmire

Agrippina the Younger attained a level of power in first-century Rome unprecedented for a woman. According to ancient sources, she achieved her success by plotting against her brother, the emperor Caligula, murdering her husband, the emperor Claudius, and controlling her son, the emperor Nero, by sleeping with him. Drawing on the latest archaeological, numismatic and historical evidence, Barrett argues that Agrippina has been misjudged. Although she was ambitious, she made her way through ability and determination rather than by sexual allure, and her political contributions to her time seem to have been positive. After Agrippinas marriage to Claudius there was a marked decline in the number of judicial executions and there was close co-operation between the Senate and the Emperor. The settlement of Cologne, founded under her aegis, was a model of social harmony. The first five years of Neros reign, while she was still alive, were the most enlightened of his rule. According to Barrett, Agrippinas one failing was her relationship with her son, the monster of her own making, who had her murdered in horrific and violent circumstances. In this provocative and stimulating biography - the first on Agrippina in English - Anthony Barrett paints a startling new picture of this influential woman.

Sister, Wife, Mother: A Freudian Quagmire
Agrippina was the sister of Caligula, the wife of Claudius and the mother of Nero. She survived the first two but was murdered by the latter in spectacular style: after surviving an elaborately engineered attempt to kill her aboard her sailboat she swam to shore only to be stabbed to death by Nero's henchmen. Like Agrippina, Barrett proves adept at keeping afloat: despite the many competing and unreliable sources, he avoids turning the book into a set-piece, overly-footnoted plethora of quotes and counter-quotes (or worse still, an extended book on coins). He explains, in terms a modern reader can easily understand, how Agrippina used her considerable powers of tact and persuasion to win influence in a patriarchal system. He also displays a keen sense of humor, not least in dispelling some of the many myths about Agrippina. Which is not hard: the Roman historians Tacticus and Suetonius accused her of cheating on all her husbands, sleeping with Caligula, murdering Claudius and then sleeping with the newly-installed Caesar, her son Nero, and if you don't immediately chuckle at the sheer implausibility of these charges, you'll at least find some amusement in the Freudian implications.

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