Agrippina the Elder (lived c. 14 BC–AD 33)

Agrippina did not rule but was a central figure of the “party of Germanicus”: wife of a popular general and mother of three sons and three daughters. Tacitus describes how in AD 15 she calmed the army at the bridge on the Rhine, and he praises her as a model of a woman’s courage.

After her husband’s death in AD 19 she brought his ashes to Rome; crowds met them with mourning. Tacitus writes that her “ambition, not sufficiently concealed” hastened the fall of her family. After the fall of Sejanus she did not regain favor.

In AD 29 she was exiled to the island of Pandateria, where she died in AD 33. Tacitus notes the uncertainty about the circumstances of her death.