I. The Roll on the Table

Augusta: The Lost Commentaries of Julia Agrippina · Sep 17, 2026 · 28m · transcript

There is a sentence in Tacitus that nobody reads. It sits in the middle of one of the most famous passages in Latin literature, and it says that he found a private scene between the emperor Tiberius and Agrippina’s mother in a book written by Agrippina herself.

She wrote a memoir. Pliny the Elder read it too, and cited it. Then it stops. This first episode is the case for the book that follows: the borrowed head in the Centrale Montemartini, a vanished dedication at Nîmes read from its nail holes, and what it means that everything we possess is what somebody chose to keep.

Source: front…