This is John Bachelor, a conversation continuing with Daisy Dunn, the class

assistant author of the new book The Missing Thread, a women's history of the ancient

world. Agrippina, the younger, Agrippina minor. Fascination.

Claudius's wife and maybe Claudius's poisoner, maybe.

Nero's mother and perhaps Nero's victim, told by Daisy Don Agrippina is a

fascination. She is all-powerful while Nero learns to be emperor as a teenager and then

Well therein lies the mystery

Matroside

Daisy Dunn on Agrippina the Younger. Much more of this later tonight.

Agrippina the Younger is best known to history for being the mother of Emperor Nero.

And she was a lot more than that.

She is again another kind of very feisty,

very astute, very clever woman.

And the fact is that Nero becomes Emperor

when he's only 16 years old. So at the very beginning of his rule, she is essentially

co-emperor, you know, not in name, but in effect. And on on the coins she's shown side by side her

face is there with her sons and as time goes on and there it gets a little bit

older and more kind of rebellious in his teenage years, he wants absolutely nothing to do with

her and really resents her having any control or power whatsoever.