In a real game of thrones, the Julio-Claudian family jostled for power throughout their century-long dynasty. The Roman Empire’s first hundred years featured stabbings, poisonings, beatings, and suicides. No one was safe and everything was fair game in a family that would do anything to win --and keep-- their power. And at the heart of this family of intrigue and betrayal, a woman. The most powerful woman in Roman history.

Sources:

Barrett, Anthony A., Agrippina: Sex, Power, and Politics in the Early Empire. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996).

Beard, Mary. SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome. (New York: Liveright Publishing Company, 2015).

Dio, Cassius. Rome: An Historical Narrative. Trans. Herbert Baldwin Foster, A.B. and Ph.D. (Troy: Pafraets Book Company, 1905)

Levine, Joshua. “The New, Nicer Nero.” Smithsonian Magazine, October 2020.

Mellor, Ronald, ed. From Augustus to Nero: The First Dynasty of Imperial Rome. (Michigan State University Press, 1990). 

Seutonius, Gaius Tranquillus. The Lives of the Twelve Caesars. trans. Alexander Thomson (London: George Bell and Sons, 1909).

Southon, Emma. A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: Murder in Ancient Rome. (New York: Abrams Press, 2021).

Tacitus, Gaius Cornelius. The Histories: Volumes I and II. trans. Henry Frowde (London: Clarendon Press, 1912).

Music: Dellasera by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

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