It was at this time that the infamous Locusta flourished. She is said to have supplied, with suitable directions, the poison by which Agrippina got rid of Claudius; and the same woman was the principal agent in the preparation of the poison that was administered to Britannicus, by order of his brother Nero. The details of this interesting case have been recorded with some minuteness.
It was the custom of the Romans to drink hot water, a draught nauseous enough to us, but, from fashion or habit, considered by them a luxury; and, as no two men’s tastes are alike, great skill was shown by the slaves in bringing the water to exactly that degree of heat which their respective masters found agreeable.[5]
[5] Tacitus, lib. xii., xiii. Mentioned also by Juvenal and Suetonius.
The children of the Imperial house, with others of the great Roman families, sat at the banquets at a smaller side table, while their parents reclined at the larger. A slave brings hot water to Britannicus; it is too hot; Britannicus refuses it. The slave adds cold water; and it is this cold water that is supposed to have been poisoned; in any case, Britannicus had no sooner drunk of it than he lost voice and respiration. Agrippina, his mother, was struck with terror, as well as Octavia, his sister. Nero, the author of the crime, looks coldly on, saying that such fits often happened to him in infancy without evil result; and after a few moments’ silence the banquet goes on as before. If this were not sudden death from heart or brain disease, the poison must have been either a cyanide or prussic acid.
In those times no autopsy was possible: although the Alexandrian school, some 300 years before Christ, had dissected both the living and the dead, the work of Herophilus and Erasistratus had not been pursued, and the great Roman and Greek writers knew only the rudiments of human anatomy, while, as to pathological changes and their true interpretation, their knowledge may be said to have been absolutely nil. It was not, indeed, until the fifteenth century that the Popes, silencing ancient scruples, authorised dissections; and it was not until the sixteenth century that Vesalius, the first worthy of being considered a great anatomist, arose. In default of pathological knowledge, the ancients attached great importance to mere outward marks and discolorations. They noted with special attention spots and lividity, and supposed that poisons singled out the heart for some quite peculiar action, altering its substance in such a manner that it resisted the action of the funeral pyre, and remained unconsumed. It may, then, fairly be presumed that many people must have died from poison without suspicion, and still more from the sudden effects of latent disease, ascribed wrongfully to poison. For example, the death of Alexander was generally at that time ascribed to poison; but Littré has fairly proved that the great emperor, debilitated by his drinking habits, caught a malarious fever in the marshes around Babylon, and died after eleven days’ illness. If, added to sudden death, the body, from any cause, entered into rapid putrefaction, such signs were considered by the people absolutely conclusive of poisoning: this belief, indeed, prevailed up to the middle of the seventeenth century, and lingers still among the uneducated at the present day. Thus, when Britannicus died, an extraordinary lividity spread over the face of the corpse, which they attempted to conceal by painting the face. When Pope Alexander VI. died, probably enough from poison, his body (according to Guicciardini) became a frightful spectacle—it was livid, bloated, and deformed; the gorged tongue entirely filled the mouth; from the nose flowed putrid pus, and the stench was horrible in the extreme.
All these effects of decomposition, we know, are apt to arise in coarse, obese bodies, and accompany both natural and unnatural deaths; indeed, if we look strictly at the matter, putting on one side the preservative effects of certain metallic poisons, it may be laid down that generally the corpses of those dying from poison are less apt to decompose rapidly than those dying from disease—this for the simple reason that a majority of diseases cause changes in the fluids and tissues, which render putrefactive changes more active, while, as a rule, those who take poison are suddenly killed, with their fluids and tissues fairly healthy.
When the Duke of Burgundy desired to raise a report that John, Dauphin of France, was poisoned (1457), he described the imaginary event as follows:—
“One evening our most redoubtable lord and nephew fell so grievously sick that he died forthwith. His lips, tongue, and face were swollen; his eyes started out of his head. It was a horrible sight to see—for so look people that are poisoned.”