Wedding of Claudius and Agrippina (AD 49)

After Messalina’s death the freedmen quarreled over who would be the emperor’s new wife. Agrippina, Germanicus’s daughter, won (Tacitus, Annals 12.1–3). Lucius Vitellius persuaded the Senate to change the law (12.5–7). On the wedding day Lucius Silanus, Octavia’s former fiancé, took his own life (12.8). Seneca returned from exile as tutor of Agrippina’s son.