The Last Supper — Claudius: Found Behind a Curtain, Poisoned With Mushrooms?
In AD 53 Nero marries Octavia, the emperor’s daughter. Tacitus writes that he is sixteen (Annals 12.58). The family is arranged. And Claudius begins to regret it.
Suetonius describes the signs of regret. When the freedmen praise a sentence the emperor had passed the day before on a woman for adultery, Claudius says it is his fate to have unfaithful wives, but not unpunished ones. He embraces Britannicus and asks him to grow up and give his father an account of everything. He adds in Greek: he who dealt the wound will heal it. He wants to give him the toga of manhood, since his height allows it despite his youth. Let Rome at last have a true Caesar (Claudius 43).
Tacitus tells a similar scene from another angle. Claudius, drunk, says it is his fate to endure his wives’ infidelity and, in the end, to punish it. Agrippina hears this and resolves to act without delay (12.64). Dio writes that the emperor was looking for Britannicus, whom Agrippina kept away from him, and intended to recognize him as heir (60.34).
Narcissus sees what is brewing. Tacitus writes that Narcissus reportedly told his friends: whoever rules, Britannicus or Nero, ruin threatens him. But the freedman owes Claudius so much that he would give his life for him. He embraces Britannicus, wishes him a swift coming of age, and asks him to avenge his mother and drive off his father’s enemies (12.65). Then Narcissus falls ill and leaves for the waters at Sinuessa (12.66). Dio says otherwise: it is Agrippina who sends him to Campania to treat his gout, to get him away from court (60.34).
It is autumn of AD 54. Claudius is sixty-three. Suetonius writes that he had already drawn up his will and sealed it with the seals of all the magistrates. Before he could do anything more, Agrippina forestalled him (Claudius 44). Tacitus describes earlier omens: lightning sets the standards and tents on fire, and in the city magistrates of every rank die (12.64).
Evening. Claudius sits down to dinner. Step into his shoes for a moment.
Suetonius writes: it is widely believed that Claudius was poisoned. They disagree only on who did it and when. Some point to the eunuch Halotus, his taster, during a banquet with the priests on the Capitol. Others say Agrippina administered the poison with her own hand in mushrooms, of which the emperor was exceptionally fond (Claudius 44).
Tacitus adds details. Agrippina had long since resolved on the crime and was only weighing the poison. A sudden one would betray the deed, while a slow one would give the emperor time to discover the treachery and return to his love for his son. So she chose a rare mixture that was meant to cloud the mind and delay death. It was prepared by Locusta, a poisoner recently convicted, and Halotus was to administer it. Writers of that time claim the poison was in the mushrooms. But the emperor was in a stupor or drunk and did not react at once. So Agrippina also summons the physician Xenophon to finish the job (12.66–67).
Dio records that Agrippina herself ate the remaining mushrooms and gave her husband the largest and best one, which held the poison. The emperor was carried out of the feast, seemingly drunk, as had happened many times. In the night he died. It was October 13, he was sixty-three, and he had ruled for thirteen years, eight months and twenty days (60.34). Dio writes later than Tacitus and Suetonius, yet he gives the most detail.
And the scholars? Fagan, author of a biography on the website De Imperatoribus Romanis, calls the accounts in the sources confused. Scramuzza and Barrett lean toward a natural death, because the accounts exclude one another. Levick considers the death too well timed to be natural. Villalba Álvarez sides with the ancient version, that is, poisoned mushrooms, while Grimm-Samuel allows an accidental poisoning, with no plot at all. Cilliers and Retief remind us that the Romans had no means of proving poisoning, and suspicions of poison often arose in the Julio-Claudian dynasty. The conclusion: poisoning is possible, but unconfirmed.
Whatever the cause, the emperor’s death is concealed. Suetonius writes that the news was kept secret until everything about the successor had been settled. Vows were offered for his health as if he were ill, and comic actors were brought in, on the pretext that he had asked for them himself (Claudius 45). Agrippina embraces Britannicus, calls him the living image of his father, and does not let him leave his chamber. She also detains his sisters and seals the palace with guards. She waits for the moment the astrologers had named (Tacitus 12.68).
October thirteenth, noon. The palace gates suddenly open. Nero comes out with Burrus to the cohort on guard duty. A few soldiers hesitate. They look around and ask where Britannicus is. When no one leads any resistance, they yield (12.69). Nero is sixteen. Before the day is over, he is emperor.
Claudius receives a funeral on the scale of Augustus’s and becomes a god. His will was not read publicly, because passing power to a stepson instead of a son might provoke discontent (Tacitus 12.69). Dio records two more jokes. Seneca composed a piece on the deification and called it the “Pumpkinification,” after the word “deification.” Nero is said to have remarked that mushrooms are the food of the gods, since thanks to a mushroom Claudius became a god (60.35).
In the next episode: Nero. A stepson on the throne at the age of sixteen. The first watchword he gives the soldiers is: the best of mothers (Tacitus 13.2). The first death of his reign is Agrippina’s doing, without his knowledge (13.1). Britannicus has less than half a year left. And Narcissus, the freedman who knew too much, will not long outlive the emperor (13.1).