Britannicus Caesar
41 – 55 · Generation V · Julio-Claudian
Britannicus (AD 41 – AD 55). Claudius’s son by blood, poisoned at dinner months after his adoptive brother Nero took the throne. Born weeks into his father’s reign, he was greeted on the coinage as the hope of the dynasty and took his name from the Senate’s honour for the conquest of Britain. He was schooled alongside the future emperor Titus. His mother Messalina’s downfall in 48 and his father’s marriage to Agrippina the next year reversed his fortunes: her son was adopted in 50 as Nero and steadily promoted, while Britannicus, still in boy’s dress, saw his tutors, Sosibius among them, put to death. Claudius was said to be planning to give him the toga of manhood and name him heir shortly before his own death in 54. Once Agrippina threatened to champion him against her son, and he won sympathy at a Saturnalia gathering with a song about his own displacement, Nero turned to the poisoner Locusta. Titus later raised a golden statue in his friend’s memory.
Place in the family
- Britannicus Caesar was a great-great-nephew of Augustus Caesar.
One of 17 people of Julio-Claudian (85 BC–68) in this archive. Rome’s first imperial family: the Julii and the Claudii joined by marriage and adoption, Augustus to Nero.
Line of descent: Tiberius Claudius Nero → Drusus the Elder → Claudius Caesar → Britannicus Caesar.
Parents
- Claudius Caesar (10 BC – 54)
- Valeria Messalina (20 – 48)
Siblings
- Nero Caesar (37 – 68) (adopted)
- Claudia Octavia (39 – 62)