AGRIPPINA

Born in 15 BC, the elder Agrippina was the daughter of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa and Julia, daughter of Augustus. About AD 5 she married Germanicus, elder son of Nero Claudius Drusus just after his adoption by his uncle Tiberius. She accompanied her husband on many of his military campaigns, sharing the hardships of camp life. She also bore him nine children, including the future emperor Caligula and the empress Agrippina Junior, mother of the future emperor Nero. Following her husband's early death at Antioch in AD 19 she lived in Rome and became involved in the opposition to the growing power of the praetorian prefect Sejanus. Unfortunately, she was on bad terms with the emperor Tiberius, whom she suspected of being implicated in her husband's mysterious demise. In AD 29 Sejanus succeeded in engineering her arrest and banishment to the island of Pandateria, where she died of starvation four years later.