<I>Femina Ingens Animi</I>: Tacitus' Depiction of Agrippina the Elder

Regarding Tacitus’ depiction of the women of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, Ronald Syme states, “Pride, anger, energy, ferocity, and ambition are manifested in all these women say and all they do” (1958, 2.314). Indeed, Tacitus and other Roman writers tend to censure harshly women who transgress the boundaries of socially accepted activity for their gender. Women of the imperial family such as Livia, Agrippina the Younger, and Poppaea Sabina are depicted negatively for their “masculine” political ambitions. In this paper, I will examine Tacitus’ portrayal of Agrippina the Elder, and focus in particular on how the historian depicts her actions during the German campaign of her husband Germanicus in AD 15. According to Tacitus, the Roman garrison guarding the Rhine River bridge was poised to demolish it since they had heard a rumor that a hostile German army was approaching. Agrippina stepped in, prevented the fearful troops from destroying the bridge, and took on “the duties of a commander” (Ann. 1.69). While Tacitus does often present Agrippina as an ambitious and imperious woman - even characterizing her as semper atrox (Ann. 4.53.2) - he favorably depicts her assumption of a military role in this episode on the Rhine River. Tacitus’ approval of Agrippina’s actions is extraordinary, since the most outrageous behavior for a Roman woman was to be a dux femina - a woman who desired to lead Roman troops. As martial activity was an exclusively male sphere, women who tread into this all-male preserve were generally served with the most cutting criticism of all. Velleius Paterculus’ description of Fulvia as nihil muliebre praeter corpus gerens (2.74.2) when she acted as commander epitomizes how such women could be considered as the ultimate gender deviants. In Tacitus, descriptions of women in a military setting often serve as a motif to demonstrate how Roman civilization tended to break down in times of civil conflict. Under normal circumstances, female warriors or commanders were a feature of barbarian society, and had no place in the “civilized” Roman world. Tacitus’ description of the British queen Boudicca’s uprising in AD 61 aptly demonstrates what was for the Romans the aberrant spectacle of women on the battlefield (Ann. 14.36). Given Tacitus’ penchant for denouncing Roman women who take on a military role, most modern writers have interpreted Annals 1.69’s depiction of Agrippina as unfavorable. However, such interpretations take an unnecessarily rigid approach by assuming that all Tacitean depictions of women in military roles must be negative. Those scholars advocating an unfavorable portrayal of Agrippina in this episode have viewed the text solely in terms of gender and have overlooked the other factors (especially political ones) that influenced Tacitus’ description. In fact, a careful reading of Annals 1.69 reveals a subtler, more complex depiction of women by Tacitus than most scholars acknowledge.