Agrippina
Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics
BBC
4.8 • 598 Ratings
🗓️ 18 February 2020
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Join Natalie Haynes and guests for half an hour of comedy and the Classics from the BBC Radio Theatre in London. Natalie is a reformed comedian who is a little bit obsessive about Ancient Greece and Rome. Today she stands up in the name of one of the most powerful women of Ancient Rome and Caligula's big sister, Agrippina the Younger. Julia Agrippina was pretty well-connected all round given that her granddad was the Emperor Augustus, her husband (also her uncle: don't ask) was Emperor Claudius and her son was Emperor Nero. And she was no slouch. Turns out it was her handiness with the purse strings that kept the Empire going. Also, who else has survived an assassination attempt by a specially built collapsible boat? Producer: Mary Ward-Lowery
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in May 2016.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:05.1 | Ladies and gentlemen, today I am standing up for Agrippina the Younger. |
| 0:17.1 | Agrippina the Younger is almost impossibly well connected to the Julio Claudian household. So on her mother's side, her mother is Agrippina the Younger is almost impossibly well connected to the Julio Claudian household. |
| 0:23.1 | So on her mother's side, her mother is Agrippina the elder. |
| 0:25.6 | They are not the most imaginative namers in her family. |
| 0:28.1 | I'm not the nighting. |
| 0:29.4 | On her mother's side, she is the great granddaughter of the Emperor Augustus. |
| 0:34.6 | That's Brian Blessed, if you still like to date your emperors from I Claudius. |
| 0:40.9 | I fully understand. So she is the great-granddaughter of Brian Blessed on her mother's side. |
| 0:46.4 | And on her father's side, her father is Germanicus. She is the great niece of Rome's second emperor, the Emperor Tiberius. |
| 0:52.1 | George Baker. |
| 0:55.5 | Oh, Inspector Wexford. |
| 0:59.6 | She has several siblings, not least of whom, |
| 1:04.2 | Gaius Caligula, who would turn out to be one of Rome's shorter-lived and madder emperors. |
| 1:07.2 | He, of course, John Hurt, to stick with I. Claudius. |
| 1:14.0 | Or Malcolm McDowell, if you prefer to remember your emperors from Penthouse porn films don't let me stop you actually and in fairness to them it is the most successful I think |
| 1:20.4 | this is still true now but on its 30th anniversary it was the most successful film that Penthouse |
| 1:25.3 | had ever produced it still shifted 3,000 copies a month on its 30th |
| 1:30.3 | anniversary, which just goes to show that everything is better with the Romans. Even smut. |
| 1:37.7 | Agrippina, like so many people who will grow up to be famous in the ancient world, has omens |
| 1:43.5 | told about her from her childhood. In her case, she has a predictor of greatness. She has a double canine tooth on the right-hand side of her mouth. I know. On the left-hand side, that would be unlucky, because the Romans don't like the left, right? It's sinister, literally for them, that's the word. And on the right, though, it means the favour of fortune. It's a great omen for her. It's not the only interesting omen she |
| 2:05.0 | gets in her life when she gives birth to her child, Nero, who would go on to become the Emperor Nero. |
... |
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