ABSTRACT
In 59 Nero decided to kill Agrippina. Why he should have reached this momentous decision, and why he should have reached it at this particular time, remains something of a mystery. Agrippina’s disappearance from the narrative of the previous four years is particularly frustrating, and means that we are given no proper background to Nero’s thinking. Suetonius speaks of his being driven by his mother’s ‘threats and violence’ (minis…ac violentia), but he provides no specific examples of such behaviour, and the claim may be no more than speculation. Tacitus does offer an explanation, one so unconvincing that it was probably offered out of desperation and suggests that he was as puzzled we are. He claims that the clash between Nero and his mother in 59 had origins similar to the dispute of 55, that is, Nero’s infatuation with a woman. In this later affair the object of his passion was no freedwoman but a married woman of a prominent family, Poppaea Sabina. 1
