This is CBS Eye on the World.

Here's John Batchelor.

It is 59 AD.

We are in the Roman Empire.

The emperor is Nero.

A new book, Nero, Matrocyde, Music and Murder in Imperial Rome. I welcome Anthony Everett and

Roddy Ashworth, the authors, to help me tell a story that is not believable, except there it is

in the books. We begin with Nero and his mother, Agrippina. There's a dinner party. The dinner party consists of the important personages

of these first five years of Nero's reign. Seneca, his teacher, Papia, his lover, future wife,

Burrus, the head of the Praetorian Guard, and Anachetetus, who is a man who's responsible for a particular

trirem. Gentlemen, a very good evening to you. Thank you for this. Anthony, I begin with you because

this moment, this dinner party, arranged by Nero, he is planning to murder his mother. Do we know when he came up with that idea and at this moment why he came up with it? Good evening to you.

Good evening and thank you very much for asking us. It's a great pleasure to be here.

We can only speculate because four or five years passed without much incident, except that Agrabino was constantly annoying her son.

The problem with Agapina was that she couldn't, she didn't really understand her son,

and she kept on pushing him to enter public life and to enjoy

entering public life to learn all the things you need to learn and he resisted he really

wanted to do race in chariots and listen to popular music and stuff like that make it himself

so we don't really know and we don't really know why. It must have been an

accumulation of irritations. The irritations, however, lead him to a murder plot that is indeed

strange, using a trirem that is to fall apart while taking Agrippina back to her villa.

The strange detail here is, why not poison?

...