ROMAN HISTORIAN TACITUS described the scene when Agrippina, “wild with grief,” arrived at the port of Brindisi with the ashes of her husband and accompanied by her six children—Nero, Drusus, Gaius (the future emperor Caligula), Agrippina the Younger, Julia Drusilla, and the little Julia Livilla. “Not only the harbour and the adjacent shores, but the city walls too and the roofs and every place which commanded the most distant prospect were filled with crowds of mourners, who incessantly asked one another, whether, when she landed, they were to receive her in silence or with some utterance of emotion … When Agrippina descended from the vessel with her two children, clasping the funeral urn, with eyes riveted to the earth, there was one universal groan. You could not distinguish kinsfolk from…