ASSASSINATIONS AND CONSPIRACIES (True Crime) by Rodney Castleden Read Free Book Online

have soured the relationship between senate and emperor. The relationship was further worsened by Claudius’s promotion to positions of high office freedmen like Callistus, Narcissus and Polybius. The senate resented the promotion of these low-born men.
    Perhaps inevitably, Claudius eventually fell victim to one of the many assassination plots. He died in the early hours of October 13, in 54. He was murdered by poison, possibly contained in mushrooms. According to some accounts, Halotus, his taster, was the poisoner; according to others it was Xenophon, his doctor. Some say he died following a single dose at dinner, and some say he recovered only to be poisoned again. All the accounts agree that his wife Agrippina was behind the murder, not the senate. Agrippina came into the marriage with Nero, a son from a previous marriage and she wanted him to follow Claudius as emperor. Agrippina persuaded him to adopt her son so that Nero would be in line to become emperor. Although Claudius had a son of his own, Brittanicus, who should have succeeded him as emperor, Claudius at first shielded him from responsibility as heir to the throne, probably with the idea of keeping him safe, and promoted the older Nero as his successor. But Britannicus was approaching the age of majority, and when he reached it there would be no need to have Nero as heir. Claudius had also unwisely begun to talk of divorce. Agrippina most likely acted to ensure the succession of Nero before Claudius could divorce her and disinherit her son.
    Claudius’s favourite mushroom, considered a delicacy by Roman aristocrats in general, was Amanita caesarea . Claudius’s trusted servant Locusta laced the dish with the juice of another mushroom, Amanita phalloides . Amanita phalloides contains chemicals that produce degenerative changes in the liver, kidney and cardiac muscles. The next day Claudius fell seriously ill and called Xenophon, who was his personal physician and seems to have been another conspirator in the crime. Xenophon used a large dose of colocynth, an extract obtained from the bitter apple. This poison was administered as an enema so that Claudius would not detect its bitter taste. The enema and mushroom poisoning, together, ensured the death of Claudius.
    That at any rate is one version of how Claudius died. A few modern commentators doubt that Claudius was murdered at all: given his age he could have died of old age or illness. On the other hand, those family members who were allowed to survive seem to have been constitutionally long-lived: Livia died at 85 or 86, Tiberius died at 77, Antonia committed suicide at 72. Claudius was only 64.
    Claudius was deified by the senate almost immediately. His will was suppressed and never read. Claudius had changed it shortly before his death to recommend either Nero and Britannicus jointly or just Britannicus, who would be considered a man in a few months.
    Agrippina did not trust Claudius’s secretary Narcissus and sent him away to Campania, ostensibly to take advantage of the warm baths there to relieve his gout, shortly before Claudius’s death. Immediately after the assassination Narcissus returned to Rome, where Agrippina had him imprisoned. Within weeks she had him executed. The last act of Narcissus was to burn all of Claudius’s letters, probably to stop them from being used against him in what was going to be a hostile new regime. Most of Claudius’s laws were annulled, on the grounds that he was too stupid and senile to have meant them. This view of Claudius, that he was an old idiot, remained the official one for the duration of Nero’s reign – and for many centuries to come.

Nero 
    68

     
    The death of Claudius while he was still married to Agrippina cleared the way for her son to become emperor. Nero (Domitius Ahenobarbus, known as Nero Claudius Caesar) was still only 16 years old, but with the help of the prefect of the Praetorian Guard, Sextus Afranius Burrus, Agrippina was able to rule