Claudius’s mushrooms: murder or dinner?

October AD 54: Emperor Claudius eats his favorite mushrooms. Tacitus sees poison in them; some historians see the ordinary death of an old man.

Transcript

October, AD fifty-four.

Emperor Claudius is sixty-three and in poor health.

His favorite mushrooms are served for dinner.

According to Tacitus, someone hid poison in them.

It was ordered, Tacitus claims, by the emperor’s wife, Agrippina.

She wants to secure the throne for her son, sixteen-year-old Nero.

But some historians think the ailing emperor may have died a natural death.

Either way, this dinner is his last.