Dr Emma Southon

speaker

450 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 29 Jun

Dr Emma Southon’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.

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Dan Snow's History Hit · Agrippina the Younger: Rome's Most Notorious Empress · 29 Jun 2026 podcast

They're never about her specifically.

She is always a player in their game rather than the game master.

So it is always presented as though she is...

not that agentic at this time.

But the fact that she is exiled, and interestingly enough, her sister is also exiled and the brother-in-law is executed, but it is Agrippina who is sent with his ashes, which leads me to suspect that she was more involved in the conspiracy and that the affair might have been a bit more problematic than people would like you to believe because he's not sent with his wife, he's sent with Agrippina, basically.

There are not that many people punished for this, and they are by far the most high-profile people punished for this.

I think that they are the leaders of an attempted rebellion against Caligula.

I think they think he doesn't get what being an emperor is, which he doesn't.

He doesn't understand what being an emperor is.

And he does not at all understand the balance of power in Rome, which is, especially at this time, the balance of power is that you're supposed to pretend that you're not the emperor.

You are merely the first citizen.

You are the first among equals.

And it just so happens that everybody agrees that you have the best opinions and you have a collection of powers which have been given to you because of your

fine moral standing.

And later on, you can see that she does, because when she does eventually get to a position where she can make strategic decisions for the empire, she makes pretty good ones and is very invested in the placement of who is going to be the governor of this place and what are they going to do there.

Much like Livia before her, in fact, who is also very invested in making political decisions.

Bit of both, to be honest, partly because the way the Roman system and way the whole of Roman culture operates, it operates on the basis of reciprocity and obligation to one another.

So if somebody does something for you, you have to do something for them.

And so if she didn't give positions to people who were in her inner circle, then she would be massively betraying everything that is Roman culture.

So in part, people get jobs under her because they're her friends, and that's the way that Rome works.

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