AGRIPPINA, the "younger" (A.D. 16–S9), daughter of Ger manicus and Agrippina the elder, sister of Caligula and mother of Nero, was born at Oppidum Ubiorum on the Rhine, afterwards named in her honour Colonia Agrippinae (mod. Cologne). By her first husband, Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus, she was the mother of the emperor Nero ; her second husband was Passienus Crispus, whom she was accused of poisoning, in 49. After the death of Messalina, she married the emperor/ Claudius, her uncle, and induced him to adopt the future Nero as heir to the throne in place of his own son (Britannicus). In S4 she poisoned Claudius and secured the throne for her son. Being alarmed at the influence of the freedwoman Acte over Nero, she threatened to support the claims of the rightful heir Britannicus. Nero thereupon murdered the young prince and decided to get rid of his mother. Pretending a reconciliation, he invited her to Baiae, where an unsuccessful attempt was made to drown her on a vessel especially constructed to founder. Eventually he had her put to death at her country house. Agrippina wrote memoirs of her times, referred to by Tacitus (Ann. iv. 53).
See Tac. Ann. xii., xiii., xiv. ; Dio Cassius lix.—lxi. ; Suetonius, Nero, 34 ; Stahr, Agrippina, die Mutter Neros (188o) ; Raffay, Die Memoiren der Kaiserin Agrippina (1884) ; B. W. Henderson, The Life and Princi pate of the Emperor Nero (1903) ; J. MacCabe, Empresses of Rome, ch. v. (1911) ; also article NERO.