Agrippina << `ag` ruh PY nuh or `ag` ruh PEE nuh >> the Younger (A.D. 15-59) was one of the most powerful women in ancient Rome , partly because of her family relationships with Rome’s first five emperors. Agrippina’s parents were Agrippina the Elder and the celebrated military commander Germanicus. On her mother’s side, Agrippina the Younger was the great-granddaughter of the emperor Augustus . She also was the great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of the emperor Tiberius , Germanicus’s uncle and adoptive father. The emperor Caligula was Agrippina’s brother. Agrippina greatly influenced two other Roman emperors— Claudius and Nero . Claudius was Agrippina’s uncle and, later, her second husband. Nero was her son from her first marriage, to Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus.
Caligula became emperor in A.D. 37. In A.D. 39, he banished Agrippina from Rome for her part in a plot against him. Agrippina returned from exile after her uncle Claudius became emperor in A.D. 41. She married Claudius in A.D. 49. The following year, she was honored by the founding of a Roman colony, Colonia Agrippinensis, at her birthplace in what is now Cologne , Germany. Agrippina persuaded Claudius to adopt Nero as his son and to name Nero as guardian of Britannicus, Claudius’s son from an earlier marriage. Nero was only four years older than Britannicus.
Claudius died in A.D. 54, and Nero became emperor at the age of 17. Many Romans believed Agrippina had poisoned Claudius so that Nero could succeed to the throne. In the first year of Nero’s reign, Agrippina held great political power. She received the honorary title of Augusta, the feminine form of Augustus, meaning the revered. She retired from the imperial court after Britannicus died, probably by poison at Nero’s order, in A.D. 55. Nero had Agrippina murdered four years later, in A.D. 59. She wrote an autobiography that was quoted by ancient authors, but has not survived.
