How Did Agrippina Influence Julius Caesar

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Agrippina the Elder was the granddaughter of the first Roman emperor, Caesar Augustus and child of the arranged union between Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa and Julia, the emperor’s only daughter (Gagarin 53). Since Augustus had no other children, succession to the throne was left to his grandchildren and, when Agrippina was of age, he arranged for her to marry Germanicus, grandson of his sister, Octavia, and a famous and respected Roman military commander (Salisbury 3). They had nine children together with six surviving to adulthood (Gagarin 53). Meanwhile, before Caesar Augustus passed, he decided to adopt his stepson, Tiberius, and persuaded him to adopt Germanicus as his son, so succession would go to Germanicus after Augustus’s death (Salisbury …show more content…

19 Germanicus mysteriously dies and on his death bed (Salisbury 3). On his deathbed, Germanicus urged Agrippina to remember her place in Roman society; she did the opposite and got involved in politics through her sons (Gagarin 53). Agrippina was confident that Tiberius had Germanicus’s killed out of jealousy, and she voiced her opinions to the public, which damaged Tiberius’s reputation (Salisbury 3). In response, Tiberius prevented Agrippina from remarrying again because she was still young enough to have children which would complicate Tiberius and his plans (Gagarin 53). Later, in A.D. 29, Agrippina was arrested and exiled to the island of Pandaeteria, and receives cruel punishment (Salisbury 3). In his work The Twelve Caesars, Roman Historian Suetonius wrote in Tiberius’s biography about the treatment Tiberius bestowed on Agrippina: “in punishment for her violent protests he ordered a centurion to give her a good flogging; in of course she lost an eye. Then she decided to starve herself and though he had her jaws pried open for forcible eating, succeeded” (Suetonius 136-137). After Agripinna’s death, Tiberius tried to erase her memory by claiming her birthday to be an ill omen, but was unsuccessful in doing so (Suetonius