Professor Mary Beard
speaker
662 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2026
last heard 1 May
Professor Mary Beard’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 1.
Appearances
In the story, everybody's in on it.
When they try, because you'd think that if somebody's looking a bit ill after eating something, you might make them sick.
What the doctor does is put a feather down his throat so he can puke it up.
But it's a poisoned feather.
The trouble is, as an old teacher of mine always used to say, it's very hard in the Roman world to tell a nasty case of poisoning from a nasty case of peritonitis.
People can die of ordinary things.
They could die of ordinary things, but everybody always wants them to die of poison.
An epileptic fit.
Might have been epilepsy.
But people on that occasion had clear grounds for suspicion because it was said... Again, it was said...
After he'd keeled over at dinner, they had a quick burial, but the funeral pyre had already been prepared.
Well, one story is, and it's not without some evidence, that the power behind the throne was Agrippina.
Stage mum.
Stage mum.
And she indeed does appear on the coins.
with Nero.
Now, I have to underline that this was not something entirely new.
Roman women connected with the imperial family had appeared on the coins before, but there were also rumours of incest with Nero, that she was trying to control him.
Again, how do we know?
We don't know what happened between Agrippina and Nero, really, and incest is not impossible.
Showing 361–380 of 662 · page 19 of 34
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