Agrippina the Elder
Agrippina the Elder was the granddaughter of Augustus, the wife of Germanicus, the mother of Caligula and the grandmother of Nero, and the one member of the family who fought Tiberius in the open; she carried her husband's ashes up Italy in front of the whole country, accused the emperor of his murder without saying so, and was starved to death on an island for it. She was born about 14 BC, the daughter of Agrippa and of Augustus's daughter Julia, and was married about AD 5 to Germanicus, the nephew and adopted son of Tiberius whom Augustus had marked out as the heir after the heir. She went with him to the Rhine and to the East and bore nine children, six of whom lived, and the legions knew her. In the mutiny of AD 14 she was sent out of the camp pregnant with the boy the soldiers had dressed as one of them, and in 15, when a false report of disaster reached the bridge over the Rhine and the officers wanted to cut it, she stood on it in the general's place and held it until the army came back, which Tiberius, Tacitus says, did not forgive. In Syria in 19 Germanicus died at Antioch believing the governor Piso had poisoned him on the emperor's instructions. She sailed with the urn to Brundisium and walked with it and the children to Rome through crowds in mourning, and at Piso's trial the next year the city took her side. Piso killed himself and the question was never asked of Tiberius. For ten years she was the centre of everyone who preferred her sons to the emperor's minister Sejanus, and said things at dinner that were reported. In 29, after Livia's death, Tiberius had the Senate condemn her and her eldest son; she was flogged, lost an eye, and was exiled to Pandateria, where her mother had been, and starved herself or was starved in October 33, two years after Sejanus's fall had made it pointless. Two of her sons had already died in prison. The third became emperor in 37, brought her ashes to the mausoleum of Augustus, and struck coins with her face.
- Lived: 14 BCE – 33 CE
- Nationality: Roman
- Roles: noblewoman
