Having poisoned two different husbands to reach her exalted position, Agrippina was unwilling to relinquish the hold that she had over her son, and was even portrayed face-to-face with him in his early coins. The day before Britannicus was due to come of age, he met a very suspicious death after drinking wine prepared for him at his celebratory banquet, leaving Nero – and his mother – in undisputed control of the world’s greatest empire. When Claudius was almost certainly poisoned by his wife Agrippina in 54 AD, her young son declared the dish of mushrooms that had done the deed to be “the food of the gods”.īy the time Claudius died, Britannicus was still younger than 14, the minimum legal age to rule, and therefore his step-brother, the 17-year-old Nero, took the throne. He became Emperor at the age of 17Īs Nero was older than Emperor Claudius’ natural son, Britannicus, he now had a superb claim to the imperial purple. Here are 10 fascinating facts about Rome’s iconic and abominable leader. Throughout most of his reign, he was associated with unrivalled extravagance, tyranny, debauchery and murder – to the extent that Roman citizens allegedly considered him to be the Antichrist. Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, better known as “Nero”, was Rome’s fifth and most infamous Emperor. Rome’s first Imperial dynasty – the heirs of Julius Caesar and Augustus – ended in 68 AD when its last ruler took his own life.
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