Agrippina

Agrippina. (1) The daughter of M. Vipsanius Agrippa and Julia, daughter of Augustus. She married Germanicus, and accompanied him in his campaigns, and on his sudden and suspicious death in Asia, carried his ashes with dutiful affection to Rome. The esteem in which she was held by the people made her hateful to Tiberius, and in 30 A.D. he banished her to the island of Pandataria, where she died by voluntary starvation three years later. There are four fine portrait-busts of her at Dresden, and that in the museum of the Capitol at Rome is one of the masterpieces of Roman sculpture.—(2) Her daughter, AGRIPPINA, was one of the most detestable women that have lived. She was born at Cologne, hence called Colonia Agrippina. She first married Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus, by whom she had a son, afterwards the Emperor Nero. Her third husband was the Emperor Claudius, though her own uncle. She soon persuaded him to adopt as his successor her son Nero, to the exclusion of Britannicus, his own son by his former wife, Messalina. She then proceeded to remove by poison all his rivals and enemies, and finally the emperor himself. Her ascendancy proving intolerable, Nero caused her to be put to death in 59 A.D.