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  • Agrippina

  • Empress, Exile, Hustler, Whore
  • By: Emma Southon
  • Narrated by: Imogen Church
  • Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
  • 4.3 out of 5 stars (234 ratings)
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Agrippina cover art

Agrippina

By: Emma Southon
Narrated by: Imogen Church
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Summary

Agrippina the Younger held a unique position in the first Roman imperial family. As great niece of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, wife of Claudius and mother of Nero, she stood at the centre of power in the Roman empire for three generations. Even in her own time, she was recognised as a woman of unparalleled power. From exile to being hailed empress, across three marriages and three widowhoods, her life, power and role were extraordinary in their scope and drama. Beautiful and intelligent, she is alternately a ruthless murderer and helpless victim, the most loving mother and the most powerful woman of the Roman empire. 

She is portrayed in ancient sources as using sex, motherhood, manipulation and violence to get her way and as single-minded in her pursuit of power for herself and her son. Agrippina’s life sheds light on the Julio-Claudian dynasty and Rome at its height - the chaos, blood and politics of it all - as well as the place of women in the Roman world.

This book follows Agrippina as a daughter born to the expected heir to Augustus’ throne and who was then orphaned; as a sister to Caligula, who raped his sisters and showered them with honours until they attempted rebellion against him and were exiled; as a seductive niece and then wife to Claudius, who gave her access to near unlimited power; and then as a mother to Nero, who adored her until he killed her. 

She was 44 when she died. It takes us from the camps of Germany during a mutiny, through senatorial political intrigue, assassination attempts and exile to a small island, to the heights of imperial power, thrones and golden cloaks and games and adoration. 

We will see Agrippina found her own city (Cologne), live up to and then flaunt the greatest ideals of Roman femininity and motherhood, and explore the absolute limits of female power in Rome. The biography of Agrippina is also the biography of the first Roman imperial family, the Julio-Claudians, and of the empire itself.

©2020 Emma Southon (P)2020 Audible, Ltd

What listeners say about Agrippina

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

History - Facebook style

Its not a bad telling of the story (well what we know and can guess) and makes clear the difficulties of using unreliable texts, mostly written and compiled by authors with an agenda decades or more after the events. This is probably the most useful bit of the book but that is not what people are likely to be most interest in.

The performance is good given the poor quality of the writing - which seems more an attempt at written standup. The author seems to be aiming more for street cred than style. My main irritation is the pronounciation of names which seems to border on the pompous and not the way most English speaking readers would recogise them.

Don't expect literature or a nice turn of phrase ... you get often pointless swearing, references to the David Cameron Pig F*****g episode, Sejanus is referred to as the one played by Patrick Stewart with hair in the 70s BBC series I Claudius, comparisons to Philp Green and Alan Sugar for class distinction and emphatic phrases like "Livia would have cut her sons (Tiberius) bollocks off before she ..." etc.

After a while it all becomes tedious to listen to ... I suspect the book was not read by an editor. Its a bit like horrible histories for adults with swearing, but the contemporary cultural references that guarantee it will be unreadable in 20 years.

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28 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Expected Better

Did not care for narration or content aware content bit frivolous could not take serious.

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8 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

An entertaining listen

This was good fun! It took me a while to get used to the narrator's unusual style, but I really grew to appreciate how she took on the role wholeheartedly; this is not a stuffy, serious history book and shouldn't be read as such. Southon injects her own personality into her writing and research, providing us with a humorous and human account of Agrippina's life and times. It's refreshing to hear a disparaging female perspective picking apart the ancient, mysogynistic sources and considering the historical figure as a real person with real feelings.

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8 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Amazing book and narrator

Lovely book, really funny as well. It's great to have story, specially of neglected women figures revisited by a woman. The narrator is very good too!

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5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Jokey asides and juvenile performance

Shocked at the content and performance- just dreadful. Flippant, OTT showing off - more like a high school panto than an audiobook
Defeated me

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Narration style spoiled this for me.

I persevered as the subject is interesting. However, the narrator more suited for children's books.

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

We know now that it was "because she was a woman"!

Emma Southon's text, its very modern and utterly un-academic tone, the spiffiness, the spikiness, the examples taken from today's world and the billion mentions of sexual activities (quite some thinking has gone into some of them: "getting his 'Richard' wet" was new to me) seems refreshing in the beginning, but gets very tiresome after about two hours of listening.

Imogen Church's rendition of the text makes one think that she took about a box and a half to many feminism pills. The sarcasm drips so heavily, the word "hysteric" regularly comes to mind.

There's a fine line between being fresh, modern, feminist (I'm all for that!) and writing for effect, rudeness and being over the top from the beginning to the end.
We really get it, Agrippina did everything she did, good or bad, with - through - because of - in spite of - against the fact that - she was a WOMAN. But do we need to get reminded of that verbally, in an almost banshee-like tone, very 25 minutes?

If you want to listen to something else than a classical and serious historian/writer talking seriously about something of interest, you'll love this book... for an hour or two. And then you'll be fed-up with the tone, etc.

This is the first time I leave a review before I finished listening to a book. I'll finish it because the subject matter really IS quite interesting (more's the pity), but I'll be happy to start the next one ASAP.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Wonderful!

I absolutely loved this audiobook.
Just fabulous.
The narrator was excellent and I hope she narrates Emma Southon's other book 'A Fatal Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum'

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

loved it from start to finish

excellent narration of a fantastic roman epic
nothing more to say apart from see you in the forum

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

LOVE LOVE LOVE this book

Bit of a warning if you don't like hearing/reading some swear words this may not be for you. But I really think you would be missing out. I am a PhD in Roman archaeology and I want to write like this. It feels effortless but she tells us the story alongside why the sources are problematic and other technical stuff whilst being entertaining. just love it.

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2 people found this helpful