‘Guess Who's coming to Dinner’: The Murder of Nero's ... · of the emperor’s mother Agrippina...

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‘Guess Who's coming to Dinner’: The Murder of Nero's Mother Agrippina in its Topographical Setting

LAWRENCE KEPPIE

Greece & Rome / Volume 58 / Issue 01 / April 2011, pp 33 47DOI: 10.1017/S0017383510000513, Published online: 15 April 2011

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0017383510000513

How to cite this article:LAWRENCE KEPPIE (2011). ‘Guess Who's coming to Dinner’: The Murder of Nero's Mother Agrippina in its Topographical Setting. Greece & Rome, 58, pp 3347 doi:10.1017/S0017383510000513

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Greece & Rome, Vol. 58, No. 1, © The Classical Association, 2011. All rights reserveddoi:10.1017/S0017383510000513

THE MURDER OF NERO’S MOTHER

‘GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER’: THE MURDER OF NERO’S MOTHER AGRIPPINA IN ITS

TOPOGRAPHICAL SETTING*

One of the most abhorrent events of Nero’s reign, as viewed at the time and by commentators thereafter, was the premeditated murder of the emperor’s mother Agrippina in March AD 59, which some have felt marked the end of the ‘fi ve good years’ of Nero’s reign, the quinquennium Neronis.1 The murder took place, not in Rome as many others that disfi gured the Julio-Claudian dynasty, but on the Bay of Naples, more particularly on the Gulf of Pozzuoli at or near the resort of Baiae, modern Baia (see fi gure 1).

Apart from contemporary allusions reported later,2 our earliest references to the event occur in Josephus and Martial,3 together with a dramatization in the Pseudo-Senecan Octavia, which is likely to date to the reign of Domitian, if not much earlier,4 all these predating the accounts of Tacitus, Suetonius, and Dio Cassius.5 Regrettably, we learn nothing specifi cally about it in the writings of Seneca, who had a leading role in the events, or of the Elder Pliny, who saw Agrippina in a golden pallium at the Fucine Lake in AD 52.6

Tacitus’ extended narrative is generally, and rightly, considered the most authoritative account, and it will be used as the basis of discussion here; additional or divergent details offered by Suetonius and Dio Cassius are highlighted in the footnotes. Some modern

* A draft text was read, with much care and valuable comment, by Dr Miriam Griffi n, Prof. Denis Saddington, Prof. Alastair Small, and, latterly, by Prof. Michael H. Crawford. Dottoressa Francesca Morandini kindly sent information on the fragmentary glass fl ask recently found at Brescia.

1 F. A. Lepper, ‘Some Refl ections on the “Quinquennium Neronis”’, JRS 47 (1957), 95–103; O. Murray, ‘The “Quinquennium Neronis” and the Stoics’, Historia 14 (1965), 41–61; T. E. J. Wiedemann, ‘Tiberius to Nero’, in A. Bowman, E. Champlin, and A. Lintott (eds.), Cambridge Ancient History, second edition, x, The Augustan Empire, 43 B.C.–A.D. 69 (Cambridge, 1996), 243 f.

2 Suet. Ner. 39.2; Dio Cass. 62.16.3 Joseph. BJ 2.250; Mart. Ep. 4.63. Cf. Philostr. V A 4.38.4 Pseudo-Sen. Oct. 309.5 Tac. Ann. 14.1–9. Suet. Ner. 4.2–4; Dio Cass. 62.11–14 (in Xiphilinus’ epitome). On the

historians’ sources for these events, see R. Krappe, ‘La fi n d’Agrippine’, REA 42 (1940), 466–72; G. D’Anna, ‘Osservazioni sulle fonti della morte di Agrippina Minore’, Athenaeum 41 (1963), 111–17; A. Barrett, Agrippina: Mother of Nero (London, 1996), 196 ff.

6 Plin. HN 33.63; cf. Tac. Ann. 12.56.

34 THE MURDER OF NERO’S MOTHER

assessments endeavour to accommodate all the diverse information offered by the historians; others highlight the inconsistencies.

Agrippina had arrived on the Bay of Naples by sea after a voyage down the west coast of Italy, joining the emperor on the occasion of the Quinquatrus, a festival that we know began on 19 March.7 Nero greeted her on the shore, and escorted her to nearby Bauli (see below, p. 41). Subsequently, she travelled on by litter to Baiae for dinner.8 Nero was fulsome in his attentions and praise and, at the end of the evening, saw her onto a boat waiting to take her to ‘her own villa’. The boat itself had been designed to disassemble during the voyage, but it malfunctioned. A leaden canopy crashed down, killing her escort, Crepereius Gallus,9 but Agrippina was saved by the strongly built high sides of the couch on which she was seated, as was her

7 H. H. Scullard, Festivals and Ceremonies of the Roman Republic (London, 1981), 92. In AD 68, Nero heard news of Vindex’s revolt on the anniversary of his mother’s death (Suet. Ner. 40.4).

8 Tac. Ann. 14.4.7. The MSS read Baulos here, generally emended to Baias: see P. J. Bicknell, ‘Agrippina’s villa at Bauli’, CR n.s. 13 (1963), 261–2; K. Wellesley, Cornelius Tacitus 1.2 (Annals xi–xvi) (Leipzig, 1986), 72. Bauli is mentioned earlier in the same chapter.

9 PIR ed. 2, C no. 1570. On his family background, see B. M. Levick and S. Jameson, ‘C. Crepereius Gallus and his Gens’, JRS 54 (1964), 98–106.

Figure 1. The Gulf of Pozzuoli, showing the modern coastline. Drawn by L. Keppie.

THE MURDER OF NERO’S MOTHER 35

companion Acerronia, reclining at her feet.10 Next, complicit crew members endeavoured to capsize the boat. Agrippina, thrown into the water but only slightly hurt in the shoulder by an oar wielded by the crew,11 swam away, to be physically and mentally buoyed up by other swimmers in the water.12 She was subsequently rescued by sailors in a small boat and taken into the Lucrine Lake, from where she made her way to her villa.

Upon receipt of the unwelcome news that she had survived against the odds, Nero summoned his chief advisers, the philosopher Seneca and the praetorian prefect Burrus, who had perhaps also attended the banquet. A plan of action was agreed. Agermus, a freedman of Agrippina who had arrived from her villa with a personal message,13 found a sword dropped at his feet, so that he was promptly arrested and soon executed.14 Nero then authorized the freedman Anicetus, a former tutor and now prefect of the fl eet at nearby Misenum, who had devised the scheme, to complete the deed.15 Anicetus was clearly a man of fi rm purpose and quick reaction, if not of ship-breaking skills. Another participant in the events of March 59, who goes unmentioned in many modern accounts, was Volusius Proculus, a navarchus (squadron commander) in the Misene fl eet at the time of the Pisonian conspiracy of 65, who was then resentful at poor promotion for his unspecifi ed role in Agrippina’s death.16 Did he design the boat in which she travelled homewards, its poor performance sullying his name in Nero’s or certainly Anicetus’ eyes? Or did he captain it on the fateful night, and was he the ultimate source for events on board?17

The malfunctioning boat has attracted much attention; it may easily have been constructed, or adapted, in dockyards at nearby Misenum,

10 Acerronia Polla, according to Dio Cass. 61.13.3.11 Tac. Ann. 14.5.7, 14.5.12, with Pseudo-Sen. Oct. 954.12 According to Pseudo-Sen. Oct. 352 ff.13 Suet. Ner. 34.3; cf. Tac. Ann. 14.7; PIR ed. 2, A 456.14 Dio Cass. 62.13.4.15 PIR ed. 2, A 589; see C. G. Starr, The Roman Imperial Navy, 31 B.C.–A.D. 324 (Ithaca, NY,

1941), 210; D. Kienast, Untersuchungen zu den Kriegsfl otten der römischen Kaiserzeit (Bonn, 1966), 56; D. B. Saddington, ‘Praefecti classis, orae maritimae and ripae’, JRGZ 35 (1998), 303, 309 no. 58; R. Piecha, ‘Wenn Frauen baden gehen…’, in M. Schauer and G. Thome (eds.), Altera Ratio. Klassische Philologie zwischen Subjectivität und Wissenschaft (Stuttgart, 2003), 125.

16 Tac. Ann. 15.51, 15.57.17 Tacitus has precise details, even though Agrippina, Acerronia, and Crepereius were all

casualties.


where technical expertise was presumably available.18 It was not very large, since the crew endeavoured to tip it over. The use of a small boat also restricted the number of her servants and any guards accompanying her. It was roofed over with a canopy, presumably designed to look normal, though in reality extremely heavy.19

The events of AD 59 have been discussed many times, without general agreement on the location of the banquet or the shipwreck, or the site of Agrippina’s villa.20 The smallest details have been invested with deep signifi cance. At times almost all the ancient testimony is dismissed as spurious, or claimed as concealing a quite different sequence of events, in which Nero was the intended victim of his scheming mother, rather than vice versa.21 From beginning to end, the story is distinguished by its theatricality.22 The purpose of this article is to place greater emphasis on the topographical framework and the bearing upon it of archaeological investigations on land and beneath the waters of the Gulf of Pozzuoli.

Baiae was the Bay of Naples’ premier resort, renowned for its health-giving hot springs and consequently much favoured by wealthy senators, and later by the emperors, who had luxurious villas there.23 It could be considered, in Horace’s famous words, ‘the loveliest bay in the world’.24 The hillsides were densely packed with bath complexes, whose continued use into the Middle Ages and after undoubtedly

18 L. Herrmann, ‘A propos du navire d’Agrippina’, REA 29 (1927), 68–70; C. Ferone, ‘Suet. Nero 34 e la nave di Agrippina’, RhM 147 (2004), 80–7.

19 Suet. Ner. 34; cf. Tac. Ann. 14.5.20 See especially W. B. McDaniel, ‘Bauli, the scene of the murder of Agrippina’, CQ 4

(1910), 96–102; J. D. Bishop, ‘Dating in Tacitus by Moonless Nights’, CPh 55 (1960), 164–70; Bicknell (n. 8); A. Dawson, ‘Whatever Happened to Lady Agrippina?’, CJ 64 (1968), 253–67; E. Koestermann, Cornelius Tacitus. Annalen, Buch 14–16 (Heidelberg, 1968); R. Katzoff, ‘Where as Agrippina Murdered?’, Historia 22 (1973), 72–8; R. D. Scott, ‘The Death of Nero’s Mother (Tacitus, Annals, xiv, 1–13)’, Latomus 33 (1974), 105–15; M. T. Griffi n, Nero. The End of a Dynasty (London, 1984), 75 f; Barrett (n. 5), 181 ff, 244 ff; J. Ginsburg, Representing Agrippina. Constructions of Female Power in the Early Roman Empire (Oxford, 2006), 46 ff.

21 Dawson (n. 20); C. Murison, Suetonius. Galba, Otho, Vitellius (Bristol, 1992), 99.22 Dio Cass. 62.12.2. See Krappe (n. 5); Dawson (n. 20), 261; K. Quinn, Latin Explorations

(London, 1963), 114 ff; J. G. Hind, ‘The Death of Agrippina and the Finale of the “Oedipus” of Seneca’, AUMLA 38 (1972), 204–11; B. Baldwin, ‘Nero and his Mother’s Corpse’, Mnemosyne 32 (1979), 380–1. In the alleged ‘screw plot’ of 1708 against Queen Anne, Whig conspirators aimed to remove bolts securing the roof of St Paul’s Cathedral, which was to collapse on top of the queen and her ministers, during a thanksgiving service for one of Marlborough’s victories.

23 J. Beloch, Campanien, Geschichte und Topographie des antiken Neapel und seiner Umgebung (Breslau, 1890), second edition, 180–9; J. H. D’Arms, Romans on the Bay of Naples (Cambridge, MA, 1970), 116 ff.

24 Hor. Epist. 1.1.83. Cf. Mart.11.80.


contributed to their exceptional state of preservation.25 The observer in Roman times was struck by steaming cupolas and strong sulphur smells.26 Strabo marvelled that a whole new city had sprung up at Baiae, with ‘royal palaces’ set cheek by jowl, a place as large as nearby Puteoli (modern Pozzuoli).27 We could easily picture Baiae as a refi ned, upmarket resort, but Cicero mentions beachfront revels, pleasure craft with on-board dining parties, and raucous music, a picture with which Seneca later concurs in similar language, as does Symmachus in the late fourth century.28

However, to understand Baiae’s topography and the sequence of events in March AD 59, it is important to realize that the shoreline along this stretch of coast was markedly different from what we see today, the result of bradyseism – land movement over the centuries in this archetypal volcanic zone – which impacted on Roman sites and structures in ancient times, as it has continued to do down to the present day. The ancient shoreline has been repeatedly investigated by underwater archaeology, fi rst in 1959–60, again in the 1980s, and from 1998 onwards.29 To a distance of 400 metres offshore, between the twin headlands of Punta di Castello and Punta dell’Epitaffi o (see fi gure 2), buildings were ranged round an oval harbour, clearly the lacus Baianus or portus Baianus of our sources,30 probably in origin the crater of an extinct volcano, one of many in the vicinity. In contrast to the nearby Lucrine Lake, which in antiquity was only separated from the open sea by a narrow strip of land, at Baiae a broad swathe on the seaward side was available for construction of villas, extended

25 F. Yegül, ‘The Thermo-mineral Complex at Baiae and the De Balneis Puteolanis’, Art Bulletin 78 (1996), 137–61.

26 Prop. 3.18.2; Strabo Geog. 5.4.6; Mart. 3.20.19–20, 4.57.6; Dio Cass. 48.51.27 Strabo Geog. 5.4.7; cf. Joseph. AJ 18.249.28 Cic. Cael. 35; Sen. Ep. 51.3–4; Symmachus Ep. 8.23.3. For a broadly similar picture of

Baiae in the fourteenth century, see V. Branca, Boccaccio. The Man and his Works (London, 1976), 21.

29 F. Zevi. and B. Andreae, ‘Gli scavi sottomarini di Baia’, PP 37 (1982), 114–56; G. Di Fraia, N. Lombardo, and E. Scognamiglio, ‘Contributi all topografi a di Baia sommersa’, Puteoli 9 (1985), 211–99; F. Maniscalco, Ninfei ed edifi ci marittimi severiani del palatium imperiale di Baia (Naples, 1997); F. Maniscalco and N. Severino, ‘Recenti ipotesi sulla conformazione del Lacus Baianus’, Ostraka 11 (2002), 167–76; E. Scognamiglio, ‘Nuovi dati su Baia sommersa’, Archeologia Subacquea 3 (2002), 47–56; V. Paoletti, M. Secomandi, M. Piromallo, F. Giordano, M. Fedi, and A. Rapolla, ‘Magnetic Survey at the Submerged Archaeological Site of Baia, Naples, Southern Italy’, Archaeological Prospection 12 (2005), 51–9.

30 Plin. HN 3.61; Mart. 4.30.1; Plin. Pan. 82.1; Tac. Ann.14.4.4. Earlier commentators equated the lacus with the visible harbour at Baiae, or even with the Lucrine Lake.


Figure 2. Baiae and vicinity, showing the ancient coastline. 1 = Claudian nymphaeum; 2 = Villa of the Pisones; 3 = bath complexes; 4 = Monumental Park; 5 = Castello di Baia; 6 = Cento Camerelle. Drawn by L. Keppie.


by concrete piers built out into the sea, in the manner described by Roman authors31 and portrayed in wall-paintings.32

Occupying a forward position on the northern fl ank of the lacus Baianus was a villa (fi gure 2, no. 2) whose dominant feature, as we now see it, was a large courtyard, perhaps serving as a pleasure garden (viridarium).33 A length of inscribed lead piping found here in situ bore the name L. Pisonis, in lettering suggesting a construction date in the earliest decades of the fi rst century AD.34 The building, it can be concluded, was then in the possession of the Calpurnii Pisones, whom we know to have possessed a property at Baiae.35 Nero was a frequent visitor to it and its baths, and it was here that it was later proposed he be assassinated by the plotters in AD 65.36 Other villas were ranged along the sea frontage to either side of the access channel.37 That we are able to say this much is a tribute to a succession of scuba-equipped investigators.38 Nevertheless we remain inevitably restricted in our knowledge as to which structures were standing at particular dates, what purposes they had, and to whom they belonged.

To the north-east, beyond the Punta dell’Epitaffi o, the modern coastline curves in the direction of Pozzuoli, past the Lucrine Lake. Before its extent was dramatically curtailed in 1538 by the emergent Monte Nuovo, the Lucrine was a substantial lake, much larger than Avernus lying inland from it. Both lakes are clearly the craters of long dormant volcanoes. It was along this foreshore that Vipsanius Agrippa constructed warehouses in the mid-30s BC, as part of the Portus Julius project,39 linking the Lucrine to Avernus by a canal to create a safe

31 Hor. Carm. 2.18.19–22; Verg. Aen. 9. 710–16; Ov. Ars Am. 3.126; Sen. Controv. 2.1.13; Sen. Ep. 89.21; Plin. Ep. 9.7; Plut. Vit. Luc. 39.3.

32 C. Picard, ‘Pouzzoles et le paysage portuaire’, Latomus 18 (1959), 23–51; D’Arms (n. 23), pl. 13–15. The length of the channel linking the lacus Baianus to the sea suggests the width of the coastal strip (see Fig. 2).

33 Promptly published by Di Fraia et al. (n. 29), an account valuably supplemented by G. Di Fraia, ‘Baia sommersa, nuove evidenze topografi che e monumentali’, Archeologia Subacquea 1 (1993), 21–48. See also Yegül (n. 25), 160.

34 N. Lombardo, ‘Un documento epigrafi co della “Villa dei Pisoni” a Baia’, Archeologia Subacquea 1 (1993), 49–57.

35 D’Arms (n. 23), 205 f.36 Tac. Ann. 15.52. Large baths built in the Neronian or Flavian period have been found

upslope from the villa: see Di Fraia et al. (n. 29), 214 ff; Di Fraia (n. 33); P. Miniero, Baia. The Castle, Museum and Archaeological Sites (Naples, 2003), 21.

37 X. Lafon, Villa maritima. Recherches sur les villas littorales de l’Italie romaine (Rome, 2001 = BEFAR no. 307), nos. BAI 34, 40, 41, fi g. 133.

38 Photographs in G. T. Sciarelli (ed.), Baia. Il ninfeo imperiale sommerso di Punta Epitaffi o (Naples, 1983); Di Fraia et al. (n. 29); and Di Fraia (n. 33) show them at work underwater.

39 Dio Cass. 48.50–1. See G. Schmiedt (ed.), Atlante aereofotografi co delle sedi umane in Italia. II, le sedi umane scomparse (Florence, 1970), pl. 135–6; P. Amalfi tano, G. Camodeca, and M.


inner harbour. To ensure easy access from the open sea, a double mole was built near the eastern end of the Lucrine, fl anking a broad channel easily passed by large vessels.40

The emperors acquired, by inheritance, confi scation, or purchase, a number of properties on the Bay of Baiae, and their holdings expanded as the generations passed.41 Modern opinion is divided as to whether or not the visible complex on the hillside at Baiae was itself the imperial residence (the praetorium or palatium of our sources),42 where, for example, in March AD 46, Claudius signed the famous Edict granting citizenship to the Anauni of the Trentino region, and where Hadrian died in AD 138.43 What we see now on the hillside at Baia seems more easily understood as a group of competing commercial establishments. The emperors’ property is likely to have encompassed the higher ground clear of the resort centre, including one or both of the lofty headlands north and south of the main complex.

According to Tacitus, Agrippina’s long sea journey from Antium was followed by the fateful meal on the same evening. In contrast, Dio Cassius mentions several days of feasting,44 which could help to explain Suetonius’ surprising statement, not in his Life of Nero but in the much briefer Life of Otho,45 that the banquet on the ill-fated night was held at an otherwise unknown villa belonging to Otho. Perhaps there were several evening events, culminating in a great banquet on the fi nal day of the festival. Had Agrippina already used the same craft previously to return safely to her villa?

On her arrival in March 59, Nero escorted Agrippina to a villa that Tacitus tells us went by the name of Bauli, which, to aid the reader, he describes as lying on a curving shore between Misenum and the Baian lake (quae promunturium Misenum inter et Baianum lacum fl exo mari adluitur).46 The name Bauli occurs many times in the ancient literary

Medri, I Campi Flegrei. Un itinerario archeologico (Venice, 1990), 162 ff; F. Giordano, and F. Maniscalco, ‘Prospezioni e sperimentazioni magnetometriche nel vicus Lartidianus a Puteoli’, Archeologia Subacquea 3 (2002), 57–62.

40 M. Pagano, ‘Il lago Lucrino: Ricerche storiche e archeologiche’, Puteoli 7–8 (1983–4), 129 ff.

41 D’Arms (n. 23), 73 ff. For the villa of Nero’s aunt Domitia at Baiae, ownership of which he secured on her assisted death sometime during AD 59 and on which he built a gymnasium, see Tac. Ann. 13.21.6; Suet. Ner. 34.5; Dio Cass. 62.17.

42 Yegül (n. 25), 155 ff records the confl icting views of De Franciscis and others.43 ILS 206; SHA Hadr. 25.5–7.44 Dio Cass. 62.13.1.45 Suet. Otho 3.1.46 Tac. Ann. 14.4. Most commentators see the place name Bauli as the ancient equivalent of

modern Bacoli, just to the north of Misenum (fi gure 2). The alternative view, following the Elder


sources,47 and is attested epigraphically.48 According to Dio Cassius, it was from Bauli that Caligula’s bridge of boats stretched across the Gulf to the harbour mole at Puteoli.49 Bauli clearly encompassed a longer stretch of coastline than the grounds of a single villa, however extensive they might have been, and the locality is likely to have reached from the Punta di Castello to the Punta di Pennata close to Misenum, with corresponding hinterland. Symmachus possessed a property at Bauli, which offered him scope for repose, in contrast to his villa at Baiae: the latter was in unfortunate proximity to the noisy charms of the resort with its proletarian throngs.50

A series of small coves along the shore south of Baia, backed by high volcanic cliffs, include the Marina di Bacoli, the Marina del Poggio, and fi nally the Marinella di Pennata leading to the Punta di Pennata, now a narrow island strip, but attached to the mainland before storms in 1967 severed the link.51 This was an area much favoured for aristocratic villas. The best known is the Cento Camerelle (‘the hundred roomlets’) on the headland between the Marina di Bacoli and the Marina del Poggio.52 Aerial survey offshore revealed an oblong platform likely to have supported a colonnaded façade of the type depicted on frescoes from Stabiae and Pompeii;53 underwater prospection identifi ed thermae including a circular, possibly domed chamber; the complex was linked to the mainland by a bridge.54 Cento Camerelle is generally identifi ed as the villa of Cicero’s rival Q. Hortensius, which came into the possession of Antonia, daughter of Mark Antony and Octavia, and so presumably into imperial ownership. Commentators see this as the likeliest candidate for the villa of Agrippina.

Pliny – who sets Bauli between the portus Baiarum and the lacus Lucrinus (HN 3.61) – that it was the Roman name for the headland between Baiae and the Lucrine Lake, the present-day Punta dell’Epitaffi o, is now discounted.

47 C. Hülsen, ‘Bauli’, RE 3 (1899), 154–5; A. Maiuri, ‘Note di topografi a campana, 1: Bauli’, Atti Reale Accad. Lincei, Rendiconti Class. Sc. Mor. e Stor. 2 (1941), 249–60.

48 CIL X 1746 (in a collection at Pozzuoli), 1747 (found at Bacoli).49 Dio Cass. 59.17.50 Symmachus Ep. 1.1.2, 1.8.51 A. Maiuri, ‘La specola misenate’, RAAN 24–5 (1949–50), 258–85 with fi g. 1.52 M. R. Borriello and A. D’Ambrosio, Baiae-Misenum, Forma Italiae, 1.14 (Florence, 1979),

153, no. 160; S. De Caro and A. Greco, Campania, Guide Archeologiche Laterza (Bari, 1981), 64 ff; Amalfi tano et al. (n. 39), 250; Barrett (n. 5), 186.

53 Schmiedt (n. 39), pl. 135, fi gs. 2, 4.54 A. Benini, ‘Una villa marittima nelle acque di Bacoli. Note preliminari’, in Atti convegno

naz. di arch. subacquea (Bari, 1997), 193–202. For references to hot springs erupting out at sea in the Gulf of Pozzuoli, see Plin. HN 31.5; Paus. 8.7.3.


Sailing on the Bay of Naples between one’s villas was a natural mode of travel, even for relatively brief journeys. Several of the villae maritimae had their own jetties, confi rmed by frescoes from Pompeii and Stabiae.55 The rounding of the Capo di Miseno and indeed sailing in the Bay of Naples was not without its hazards, from winter and equinoctial storms, perhaps a contributory factor in the hatching of the scheme and the timing of it. In March AD 37, the ailing emperor Tiberius, heading one last time for Capri, was delayed by bad weather in a villa atop the Capo di Miseno, where he died.56 Seneca recounts how he once set off in a small boat from Puteoli in calm conditions, heading for Neapolis, but a storm suddenly got up, he was seasick, and he scrambled indecorously ashore short of his destination.57 An otherwise unknown Caerellia was drowned when sailing from Bauli to Baiae, a service that Martial notes was refused by the sea to Nero.58

We can now look again at the events of March 59 from a more focused topographical perspective. Agrippina arrived by sea from Antium, sailing most probably into the outer harbour at Misenum,59 the naval base on Italy’s western coast, or into the lacus Baianus. She was met by Nero, who conducted her to Bauli, which would have been close enough for ships in the harbours at Misenum to be visible from her villa.60 In the evening she travelled another short distance northwards to Baiae for dinner, by litter. After the meal was over, she was seen off in the specially prepared boat. The sky was clear, and there was no wind. Keeping close to the shore, the boat had made no great progress when the scheme to sink it was implemented (see above, p. 35). Swimming away, Agrippina luckily fell in with some vessels, described by Tacitus as lenunculi – usually interpreted as fi shing boats,61 which we must suppose were out in the Gulf at night; nevertheless a more plausible translation may be ‘lighters’, their crews (lenuncularii) many times attested epigraphically at Ostia,62 where lenunculi served for transferring loads from seagoing merchantmen, and which here we might naturally link to the nearby port of Puteoli.

55 Picard (n. 32); D’Arms (n. 23), pl. 13–16.56 Phaedrus 2.6.7–10; Tac. Ann. 6.50; Suet. Tib. 73; Dio Cass. 58.28. Part of the Misene

fl eet was wrecked off Cumae when attempting to round the Capo di Miseno at the end of AD 64 (Tac. Ann. 15.46).

57 Sen. Ep. 53.1–5.58 Mart. 4.63.59 Maiuri (n. 47), 255.60 Tac. Ann.14.4.4.61 For lenunculi piscatorii, see Amm. Marc. 14.2.10.62 ILS 6144, 6146, 6149, 6173–6, with R. Meiggs, Roman Ostia (Oxford, 1960), 296 f.


After being picked up, Agrippina was taken into the Lucrine Lake,63 presumably through the broad channel near its eastern end (see fi gure 2), so that the journey is generally understood as having been north-eastwards, away from Baiae. From there, as Tacitus records, she made her way to her villa.

As news of the shipwreck spread, crowds fl ocked to the shore, some equipped with lamps and fl aming torches. Hi molium obiectus, hi proximas scaphas scandere, alii quantum corpus sinebat vadere in mare (‘Some climbed up on to projecting moles, some boarded nearby skiffs, others again waded into the sea as far as their physique allowed’).64 Precisely where is unfortunately not specifi ed.65 At this time, presumably, they did not know that Agrippina had already been picked up in a small boat, and had landed, if that is the true sequence of events. The molium obiectus are easily equated with, or surely included, the raised causeway that defi ned the southern edge of the Lucrine Lake (along the narrow lip of the old volcanic crater), an embankment that we know to have been heightened by Agrippa, and further repaired by Claudius, to prevent the sea washing over it, the result of localized bradyseism.66

On learning of Agrippina’s survival, some part of the crowd headed for her villa, but they dispersed at the approach of Anicetus and his armed column of naval personnel.67 After surrounding the villa with his men, Anicetus broke in and reached Agrippina’s bedroom in the company of Herculeius, a trierarchus (ship’s captain of a trireme), who hit her on the head with a wooden truncheon,68 and Obaritus, a centurio classiarius (the centurion commanding a ship’s marines), who stabbed her in the stomach.69

Bauli is the only place name common to the narratives of Tacitus, Suetonius, and Dio Cassius, and is linked to the shipwreck by Martial.70 This was surely the setting of the murder, which became embedded in the public consciousness, wherever the banquet itself had taken place.

63 Not just ‘to’ the Lucrine Lake but ‘into’ it (Tac. Ann. 14.5.7).64 Tac. Ann. 14.8.1. For scapharii at Ostia, see Meiggs (n. 62), 325; cf. Strabo Geog. 5.3.5.

Among distinguishable boat types that Aulus Gellius listed to pass the time on a tedious carriage ride were lenunculi, scaphae, and camarae (Gell. NA 10.25.5).

65 Tacitus mentions omnis ora, the whole shoreline (Ann. 14.8.2).66 Strabo Geog. 5.4.6; Plin. HN 36.125.67 Tac. Ann. 14.8.2; Dio Cass. 63.3, 4.68 A fustis, for which see M. P. Speidel, ‘The Fustis as a Soldier’s Weapon’, AntAfr 29 (1993),

137–49.69 Tac. Ann. 14.8.5. Dio Cassius has Anicetus himself strike the fatal blow (61.13.5).70 Tac. Ann. 14.4.3; Suet. Ner. 34.2; Dio Cass. 62.13.1; cf. Mart. 4.6.3.


As Tacitus felt the need, early in his narrative, to explain the location of Bauli, it was evidently a place of more than transient signifi cance in his story. Moreover, this was clearly the location of Agrippina’s own villa with a complement of slaves, whom Nero at the time was concerned she might arm against him.71

A hurried cremation followed, presumably within the grounds of her villa. After Nero’s death a low mound was erected above a grave that Tacitus locates viam Miseni propter et villam Caesaris dictatoris, quae subiectos sinus editissima prospectat (‘close by the road to Misenum and the villa of the dictator Caesar, which looks out from a very great height onto the bays lying below’).72 At fi rst reading we could suppose that the mound was on the site of the cremation, but Tacitus introduces her grave as a separate item and provides a pointer to its location.

The ground rises steeply behind the lacus Baianus, and there is no shortage of high ground on which villas were, or could have been, conspicuously sited, for example on the edges of the two large craters now called the Fondi di Baia. The traditional setting for Caesar’s villa (which evidently retained its association with the dictator into the Julio-Claudian period and later) is on the headland occupied by the dramatically positioned Castello di Baia, which overlooks the undulating coastline southwards towards the Capo di Miseno.73 Rooms of a Roman villa have been excavated below the Castello during renovation of the overlying medieval structures.74 An alternative siting for Caesar’s villa has found recent favour, in the so-called Monumental Park, on higher ground inland along a north–south ridge now followed by the suitably named Via Bellavista, where a long sea-facing portico and associated residential area have been revealed.75 This location has

71 Tac. Ann. 14.7.2.72 Tac. Ann. 14.9.3.73 Yegül (n. 25), 157. Sen. Ep. 51.11 observes that the villas of Marius, Caesar, and Pompey

in the area around Baiae were set on the tops of hills.74 Miniero (n. 36), 45 ff; eadem, ‘Baia: The Archaeological Area of the Monumental Park’,

in C. Gialanella, Nova Antiqua Phlegraea. New Archaeological Treasures from the Phlegraean Fields (Naples, 2003), 109–11.

75 Miniero (n. 36), 41; eadem (n. 74); M. D’Agostino, Campi Flegrei. Guide of Discovery to the Lands of Fire (Naples, 2003), 160 f. The identifi cation was fi rst made by Beloch (n. 23), 185.


views both over the Bay of Baiae and, westwards, to the Tyrrhenian Sea;76 but it accords less well in my view with Tacitus’ phraseology.77

The place of burial was, we are told, close to the road leading (presumably from Baiae) to Misenum, but because of changes to the shoreline we cannot be sure of the latter’s course; the likeliest route, on relatively level ground between the Castello di Baia and the Fondi di Baia, is mirrored in the modern road system.78

The mention by Tacitus of the Lucrine Lake (see above, p. 36), into which Agrippina was conveyed by her rescuers, is a surprising detail, presumably present in his source. At the point when Agrippina should have travelled south by sea to reach her villa at Bauli, it moves the focus of activity north-eastwards. Some commentators have therefore placed Agrippina’s villa (and the scene of the murder), wrongly in my opinion, near or on the Lucrine Lake. However, the subsequent close-set sequence of events is much more comprehensible if set in proximity to Misenum: the prompt arrival of Anicetus with naval personnel and the location of the subsequent burial.

Mention of the Lucrine may rather constitute a valuable guide to the location of the banquet. Above the present-day Punta dell’Epitaffo, behind the villa of the Pisones at the north-eastern end of the Bay of Baia, underwater investigation in the early 1980s revealed a lavishly decorated rectangular hall, whose walls stood on discovery up to 2.5 metres high (fi gure 2, no. 1).79 It was soon recognized as a dining room, presumably part of a villa, in the form of an artifi cial grotto – that is, a nymphaeum-triclinium. There were settings for ten guests facing a central pool. At the landward end was an apse, set against the natural rocky hillside, decorated with a statuary group of Odysseus in the cave of the Cyclops Polyphemus.80 The statue of Polyphemus himself is lost; the surviving fi gures are Odysseus and his mythical companion Baios, from whom it was traditionally supposed that Baiae

76 Cf. Phaedrus’ accurate geographical description (2.6.7–10) of Lucullus’ villa set atop the Capo di Miseno (quae monte summa posita Luculli manu prospectat Siculum et respicit Tuscum mare, ‘which, set by Lucullus on the mountain top, looks out over the Sicilian sea in front and the Tuscan sea behind’).

77 Prof. Roger Green kindly advised on the meaning of subiectos sinus.78 Borriello and D’Ambrosio (n. 52), 32, suggest possible routes.79 Zevi and Andreae (n. 29); Sciarelli (n. 38), pl. I and II; Amalfi tano et al. (n. 39), 193 ff.80 B. Andreae, ‘Le sculture’, in Sciarelli (n. 38), 49–66; F. Zevi, ‘Claudio e Nerone: Ulisse

a Baia e nella domus aurea’, in Ulisse. Il mito e la memoria (Roma, 1996), 316–31; S. Carey, ‘A Tradition of Adventures in the Imperial Grotto’, G&R 49 (2002), 44–61; eadem, Pliny’s Catalogue of Culture. Art and Empire in the Natural History (Oxford, 2003), 114 ff; M. Squire, ‘Giant Questions: Dining with Polyphemus at Sperlonga and Baiae’, Apollo 158 (2003), 29–37.


took its name. This group formed a backdrop to the twin couches at the north end of the room. The diners could, it has been suggested, select dishes from fl oating platters or even from miniature galleys that cruised the central pool in front of them.81 Set into the longer, north–south walls, behind the reclining diners, were eight niches housing marble statues, of which several remained where they had later fallen, beside their plinths. The statues that survived comprised a tall female fi gure, a much smaller statue of a girl, and two of the god Dionysus. The immediate and authoritative identifi cation of the tall female as Antonia Minor, the mother of Claudius, in the guise of Venus Genetrix, the founder of the Julio-Claudian line, prompted an attractive scenario that the statuary depicted various members of the Claudian royal house.82 The four statues now missing could, it has been suggested, have included Augustus, Livia, and Britannicus. It is very tempting to conclude that the nymphaeum-triclinium was a part of an imperial property at Baiae, and indeed the location of the banquet in March AD 59, with Nero and Agrippina occupying the twin sea-facing couches of honour.83 If the hall was built under Claudius as is suggested, perhaps the latter had earlier dined there with Agrippina, in happier times.84

The nymphaeum-triclinium must have remained a well-known, even notorious landmark, since it is depicted on a recently published fragment from Brescia of a fourth-century glass fl ask, one of the tourist ‘souvenirs’ engraved with sea-facing façades of buildings in Puteoli and Baiae.85 The fragment shows Odysseus extending a goblet to Polyphemus within a cave-like setting.86

A location for the banquet in March 59 in a property at the northern edge of Baiae would have been at a suffi cient distance to make a late-evening sea journey for Agrippina back to Bauli, rather than use of a litter, a sensible method of transport. She might even have embarked

81 Amalfi tano et al. (n. 39), 193, drawing on Plin. Ep. 5.6.36–38. Cf. Yegül (n. 25), 159.82 Zevi and Andreae (n. 29); Andreae (n. 80); Amalfi tano et al. (n. 39), 193; Miniero (n. 36),

59. For a welcome note of caution, see Squire (n. 80), 35.83 Nero gave his mother ‘the seat above him’ (Tac. Ann. 14.4.7). Material recovered from the

site included parts of two massive marble couches: see Sciarelli (n. 38), fi gs. 182 ff.84 The pleasure that Nero took in visiting Piso’s villa and using his baths (Tac. Ann. 15.52.1)

might be explained if they were in effect only ‘through the wall’ from one of his own properties.85 S. E. Ostrow, ‘The Topography of Puteoli and Baiae on the Eight Glass Flasks’, Puteoli 3

(1979), 77–140.86 E. Roffi a, ‘Alcuni vetri incisi’, in F. Rossi (ed.), Nuovi ricerche sul Capitolium di Brescia.

Scavi, studi e restauri (Milan, 2002), 413–34.


inside the Lucrine Lake or from an adjacent jetty to begin her journey southwards to her villa at Bauli.

LAWRENCE [email protected]

‘Guess Who's coming to Dinner’: The Murder of Nero's ... · of the emperor’s mother Agrippina...

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