‘GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER’: THE MURDER OF NERO’S MOTHER AGRIPPINA IN ITS TOPOGRAPHICAL SETTING

摘要

One of the most abhorrent events of Nero’s reign, as viewed at thentime and by commentators thereafter, was the premeditated murdernof the emperor’s mother Agrippina in March AD 59, which somenhave felt marked the end of the ‘fi ve good years’ of Nero’s reign, thenquinquennium Neronis.1 The murder took place, not in Rome as manynothers that disfi gured the Julio-Claudian dynasty, but on the Bay ofnNaples, more particularly on the Gulf of Pozzuoli at or near the resortnof Baiae, modern Baia (see fi gure 1).