Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 September 2022
Most of the textual sources concerning the imperial court are relatively short; many recount anecdotes illuminating a single moment, a memorable saying, or a specific practice. The surviving works of history and biography do, however, contain a few longer narratives of connected sequences of events at court. Such narratives most commonly occur when historians and biographers describe crises, when events at court had wider implications for the political history of the Principate. Prompted by this observation, this chapter presents a selection of the richest crisis narratives. The narratives presented relate to: the fall of Claudius’ wife, Messalina; the loss of position at court suffered by Nero’s mother, Agrippina the Younger, and her ensuing murder by her son; and the assassinations of the emperors Domitian and Commodus.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.