The Nero Prediction by Humphry Knipe Read Free Book Online Page A

for long, rich men never are. Agrippina married him within a few months. She lost him about a year ago. I don’t expect she was too sorry to see him go because she kept most of his money. She needed it. Her previous husband didn’t leave her much.”
    Keeping in mind the murderous history of the imperial family, I wondered if she’d poisoned him. “He died? What of?”
    Euodus knew what I was thinking. He flashed me a quick warning glance. “Some kind of stomach complaint.”
    “How old is Agrippina?” 
    He kept his eyes fixed on the chariots doing practice laps. “Next month she’ll be thirty-three.”
    “Was she born here in Rome?”
    “No, in an army camp in Germany, she never lets anyone forget that. Her father was Germanicus Julius Caesar who was busy pacifying the Germans at the time. She was barely walking when he celebrated his German triumph in Rome and almost four when she watched him die – poisoned – in Antioch for visiting Egypt without permission.”
    “Germanicus needed permission to visit Egypt?”
    “All senators do. It’s a law laid down by Augustus, in case someone tries to be another Pompey and grab Rome’s breadbasket. Germanicus was arrogant enough to give it the finger. That sent Tiberius a very clear message.” Euodus grinned and flashed his mischievous green eyes at me. “Tiberius answered it.”
    “What about Agrippina’s mother?”
    “A she wolf also named Agrippina, Agrippina the Elder, Augustus’s granddaughter. Insisted on going on military campaigns with Germanicus so he could father her children. Ended up with nine of them including Caligula and our Agrippina. She wanted to found a dynasty.”
    “Nine children! What happened to all of them?”
    For the moment there were no chariots on the track. Euodus wiped his hands over his face as if he had to erase the present to reach back into the past. “All dead, killed, except for your mistress. The old she-wolf never forgave Tiberius for murdering her husband. When Tiberius’s son died, and her own sons were now directly in line for the succession, things between her and the emperor went downhill. Tiberius got the Senate to exile her to an island, nothing more than a rock in the sea, for what he called her ‘arrogant mouth’. When she insulted an officer there he beat her up so badly she lost an eye.”
    Euodus glanced at me to see how I took that. Then he went on, “Tiberius had already ordered the eldest of our Agrippina’s brothers to kill himself six years before. Now he set about eliminating the second. Drusus Julius Caesar, this was the youngsters name. Threw him into a cell right up there in the palace. Starved him to death. Agrippina, she was living in the palace at the time, managed to see him a few times. She spread the story that he was so hungry he was eating the straw in his mattress. His mother starved herself to death in sympathy. She must have thought it was the end of her dynasty.”
    “But Caligula was still alive.”
    “Yes, living with Tiberius on Capri. She despised Caligula for being a worthless pervert. Turned out she was right. Caligula was assassinated because of his insane behavior, leaving Agrippina and Julia Livilla.”
    “That makes eight. What happened to the other daughter?”
    “Drusilla. Caligula’s favorite. When she died, no one knows why, he declared her a goddess. She was only twenty-two.”
    “And Julia Livilla?”
    “She lasted four years longer. Messalina had her killed soon after Claudius became emperor. She managed to persuade him that Livilla was trying to stir up trouble with Seneca, the philosopher, of all people, just like she and Agrippina and Tigellinus had stirred up trouble during Caligula’s reign. The victim was twenty-four and the murderess was sixteen. It was Messalina’s first great crime.”
    “Why did she do it?”
    “She was afraid of Livilla.”
    “And she wasn’t afraid of Livilla’s sister Agrippina?”
    “Agrippina fawned on her, just as