Opinionsyareah’s Blog

This short article intends to examine some issues relating to the emperor Claudius’ apparently strange decision in AD 49 to marry his niece Agrippina, and subsequently to advance her son Nero towards the imperial throne, at the expense of his own son Britannicus.  

The first thing to note is the intrinsic bias in the sources against Claudius.  In essence, most sources represent the senatorial tradition.  This tradition was hostile to the very idea of the principate, though reluctantly accepting its necessity (the debate in the Senate following the death of Gaius Caligula considered not just the restoration of the Republic, but also, more realistically, the elevation of one of their number to the purple).  It was also hostile to Claudius in particular, for two reasons.  First, Claudius’ physical disability (sometimes thought to be cerebral palsy) meant that he was believed to be a fool, and senators were unwilling to accept that they had been wrong.  Secondly, he took away much of what had previously been the Senate’s responsibility in the running of the empire; like Tiberius, he attempted to co-operate with the Senate, and like Tiberius, often faced stalemate in trying to get them to do what he needed them to do.  But where Tiberius had given up in despair, Claudius took the Senate out of the equation.  Finally, the tradition was hostile to Claudius’ niece and wife Agrippina, because it was intrinsically hostile to powerful women.
But however appalling [Nero’s] reputation, it paled into insignificance in comparison with the reputation of Nero’s mother, Agrippina.  She was universally regarded as the wickedest woman in Rome – a very hotly contested title, but Agrippina won it.  There wasn’t any immorality that she hadn’t been involved in, and there was no crime that she hesitated to commit.  She’d been born into the imperial family and, to be fair, that might have warped anybody.  Her father, Germanicus, was poisoned.  Her mother was murdered – so were two of her brothers.  Her third brother became the insane emperor, Caligula, who threatened her life.  She survived, but I suppose her lack of caution and good sense was down to her background.

Read more:

http://www.yareah.com/magazine/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=251:claudius-nero-and-the-imperial-succession&catid=77:6-myths-mitos&Itemid=83