French Poison Woman: Why is Locusta being criticized as the dregs of the Nero era?
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Preface: Poisonous Woman Locusta
Poison, presumably many people will shudder. Indeed, whether in ancient times or now, poison is always a silent kill, which can kill people invisible. So today, Ji Yijun wants to share with you a secret history of the Roman Empire: why was Locusta, a poisonous woman in Gallic, called "the dregs that surfaced in the era of Nero"?
As Roman emperor Nero’s most trusted queen poisoner, Locusta, a woman from Gaul (now France), murdered many people including Roman emperor Claudius with poison. If ancient Roman historians Tacitus and Dior Cassius remember well, then she is most likely the first serial killer in Western history.
What are the stories behind this person? Today, let Ji Yijun share with you.
Poisoned the emperor, Locusta ascended the stage of history
In the history of the Roman Empire, poison is a kind of Frequently used things. At critical moments, you only need to put the poison in food or drink, and you can kill people without knowing it. Therefore, poisoning prevailed in the Roman Empire. In many cases, when Roman emperors wanted to privately execute Roman nobles who opposed them, or even their unsatisfied heirs, they would send people to poison. In this way, they can spend a small amount of effort to get rid of the people they want to get rid of the most without worrying about the widespread involvement and the anger of citizens.
At the same time, in order to avoid being poisoned in a muddle, many important figures in the Roman Empire, especially the emperors, arranged special testers. These people are usually chefs, both in charge of providing food to their host, and in charge of tasting the delicious food that their host will enjoy in advance.
It is easy to find a chef who cooks and tests poison, but a poison master who poisons is not so easy to find. It is understood that in order to find a suitable poison master, the emperors of the Roman Empire will send their confidants to search all corners of the empire. It is against this background that the protagonist of this article-the Gallic woman Lokusta, has stepped onto the stage of history.
According to Tacitus’s historical records, we know that this person is a Gaulish person who is good at using wild plants to make poisons. He was discovered by Nero’s mother Agrippina’s confidant around 54 AD , And was taken to Rome. There, her poison had an important influence on the entire history of Rome.
At that time, in order to help her son Nero rise to power, the young Agrippina decided to poison her husband, the Roman emperor Claudius. After finding Lokusta, the Gaul poison master, she ordered him to dispense a poison and throw it into Claudius' dinner. It is speculated that the raw material of Locusta’s poison should be a poisonous mushroom. Therefore, although Claudius’s tester had tried the food in advance, he did not find it because of the small dose. what is the problem.
But soon after Claudius ate all the food, Locusta’s poison took effect. After the mysterious death of the previous emperor from poisoning, Nero became the next emperor, while Locusta was arrested for poisoning.
second poisoning, serial killer
As mentioned earlier, Locusta was thrown into prison because of the bizarre death of the former emperor. However, when Nero became the throne and stabilized the situation, in 55 AD, he pardoned her and ordered her to make poison again. This time, the person Nero was about to poison was Britanicus, the former emperor’sHis son, a teenager who might threaten his throne.
Here, I want to add a comment. Nero is not Claudius’ son. Her mother, Agrippina, took him this "oil bottle" after her husband died. "Remarried to Claudius and became his fourth wife. However, because in Rome at that time, the adopted son and the parent-child had the same inheritance rights, so in the end, Claudius gave up his sick son and appointed Nero as his heir.
Continue to return to Locusta. From the historical materials handed down from ancient Rome, we can understand that after receiving Nero’s order, in order to fulfill Nero’s request, Britta was poisoned as soon as possible. Nikus, Lokusta uses belladonna, supplemented with arsenic, hydrangea, mandrake, mik aconitum, colchicum, hellebore and yew extract. In Pliny the Elder's "Natural History", these are the most effective poisons known to ancient Rome.
However, unexpectedly, Locusta’s first poisoning failed. Based on historical data, Ji Yijun speculated that it may be that Locusta's first dose of poison was relatively small. You should know that although arsenic will oxidize into the poison arsenic (arsenic trioxide), in our country, small doses of arsenic are not poisons, but drugs.
Because of this failure, Nero was furious. According to records, he personally flogged the failed Locusta. After that, in order to be sure of everything, he ordered Locusta to test the poison on the child and find a suitable dose, a dose that can kill Britanicus without letting people see that it is obviously poisoned.
In this way, under Nero’s order, Locusta used many innocent children as testers. When she finds that the dose of poison is too small and the poison takes effect too slowly, she will increase the dose. In this frenzied experiment, many innocent victims died miserably. In the end, after killing many people in a row, Lokusta "finally got his own satisfactory answer."
However, this "answer" is based on bones. If Tacitus’s "Chronicles" and Dior Cassius’s "History of Rome" are well remembered, then Locusta is the first serial killer in Western history, better than the later notorious Jack the Ripper. It was more than 1800 years earlier.
After determining the best dose, Nero arranged a dinner and invited his half-brother Britanicus to the dinner. At the banquet, after a cup of hot soup that had not yet been poisoned was served, Britanicus’s testers tasted it first. After seeing the waiter who tried the poison safe and sound, Britanicus felt relieved. Because the hot soup was still too hot, he put it aside first. However, what he didn't know was that before he picked it up, a sufficient amount of poison had been poured into the cup.
According to Tacitus records, after drinking the poison-infused hot soup, the teenage boy "immediately lost his voice and breath." Because he had been suffering from epilepsy before, Nero used this as an excuse to announce that his brother had an epilepsy again, and no one was allowed to approach him until he died completely.
In this way, Locusta’s poison again "made a merit" for Nero.
whoever poisoned others will not die
After making two consecutive "credits", Nero was very satisfied with the poisoner Locusta , So he decided to give him a big reward. First of all, he whitewashed his identity. After that, he rewarded her with rich wealth and slaves. Finally, he sent her a few "good students" so that they could learn the skills of drug distribution and poisoning with her.
These are the records recorded by Roman classical historians on the bright side. From these contents, Ji Yijun discovered a small detail-Nero continued to reward Locusta with slaves. Because the Roman Empire did not abolish slavery at the time, this detail seems reasonable. But remembering that Nero had ordered Locusta to find someone to test the poison, Ji Yijun suddenly shuddered.
Behind Nero's continuous rewards of money and slaves, I am afraid it is more than just rewards. It is very possible that he is using this method to support Locusta's poison "research", and those slaves, most likely, are her testers.
There is a saying in our country called “It’s not unreported, the time has not come”, but for Locusta, the Gallic woman, when Nero committed suicide in 68 AD, her “ The time has come." Before, she was able to enjoy wealth and wealth safely and securely because of Nero's trust and protection. Now, when Nero died, she, who had done a lot of evil before, was naturally doomed.
Sure enough, after the new emperor Garba became the throne, she was immediately arrested. Later, when the criminals who helped Nero torture were executed, she was also on the list. In the end, she was dragged across the streets of Rome and then executed.
Conclusion: Rome’s poisonous wind
The law of heaven revolves, retribution is unhappy, and the Gallic poisonous woman Locusta finally got her due punishment. The story is shared here, it should have come to an end, ending today's article. However, Ji Yijun still wants to say a few more words.
When learning about this history, Ji Yijun tried to think about Locusta’s potential motives and intentions to help abuse and poison people. As a Gaul woman, she did it because she wanted to. Power? Although the historical materials left over from the ancient Roman era do not record these, but Ji Yijun believes that from some clues, we can still discuss and discuss.
First of all, we can assume that because of her hometown, the province of Gaul, it was only conquered by Caesar for less than a hundred years, and most of them were still barbaric. Therefore, when she first entered Rome, her identity, It is very likely that it is not a guest, but a slave. If this hypothesis is true, then her poison may not only be a ladder for her promotion, but also a tool for her revenge. She hopes to use her own poison to scare the “superior conquerors” in Rome.
In ancient Rome, poison was both mysterious and mysterious. At least from the information handed down at that time, we can find that historians Tacitus, Dior Cassius, medical scientists Galen, scientist Pliny the Elder, and others have mentioned them in their works. And the ancient Romans also divided them into three categories, namely mineral poisons, herbal poisons and animal poisons.
Moreover, these classical historians of ancient Rome have left many famous poisoning incidents for later generations. For example, Drusus, the son and heir of the second Roman Emperor Tiberius, was slowly poisoned to death by his wife Julia and her accomplice Lucius with chronic poison. The emperor Claudius mentioned above was also killed by his fourth wife. Some emperors in Rome, such as Caligula, Nero, Commodore, Caracalla, and others, either used poison to kill or attempted to kill with poison.
And from a historical allusion, Ji Yijun even discovered such an amazing fact: the third emperor of Rome Caligula has a huge box filled with various poisons, Lu himself also carried a special poison, which was specially configured for him by Locusta, so that he could take the poison to commit suicide when necessary.
Having said that, perhaps we can also make a second conclusion. Although Locusta has a vengeance to avenge the Romans, it was the Roman Empire that really caused her poison to cause infinite harm. The environment of poisoning and the tyranny of Nero himself.
Dior Cassius was a historian in ancient Rome, about 100 years later than Nero and Locusta, in his "History of Rome", he mercilessly Locus The tower is called "the dregs that surfaced during the Nero era". Ji Yijun would like to say that this criticism is really a three-pointer, and the scum refers to Locusta and her poisonous deeds. However, these evil deeds are inseparable from the "trend" of Nero's tyrannical rule.
Readers and friends, what do you think of this matter, welcome to participate in the discussion in the comment area!
This article is the original of the History Translation Center. The main reference materials are "Chronicles", "History of Rome", "Natural History", etc. If you think the content of the translation is okay, can you click to add attention!
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