Cologne owes its Roman name to Nero's formidable mother, Agrippina
Agrippina the Younger was the sister of one emperor, the wife of another and the mother of a third. She survived exile, plotted, and steered her son Nero toward the throne. She was probably born in a Rhine outpost that later became a Roman colony bearing her name, today's Cologne.
Born on 6 November AD 15, possibly AD 14, she was a great-granddaughter of Augustus and daughter of the adored general Germanicus. Suetonius put her birth at Trier instead, but her later favour toward the Rhine town, and the colony founded there at her prompting, point to Cologne. Her father died suddenly at Antioch in AD 19, amid wide suspicion that the governor of Syria had poisoned him, and she grew up on the Palatine under the eyes of her mother, her grandmother Antonia and her great-grandmother Livia.
At thirteen she was married by Tiberius's arrangement to Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus, a relative from a distinguished family. Their only child, born at Antium on 15 December AD 37, was Lucius, the future Nero. Suetonius reports his father joking that nothing produced by him and Agrippina could be good for Rome.
Her brother Caligula became emperor that same year and heaped honours on his sisters, including their images on coins. The favour did not last. In AD 39 she and her sister Livilla were convicted as accessories to a failed plot to kill him, and she was reportedly made to carry the conspirator Lepidus's ashes to Rome before being exiled to the Pontine Islands. After Caligula's murder in AD 41, their uncle Claudius recalled them.
Widowed twice and now very wealthy, Agrippina married Claudius, her own uncle, in AD 49, becoming empress. Ancient and modern writers alike depict her as ruthless and ambitious, and she manoeuvred Nero into the succession. Claudius died in AD 54 under suspicious circumstances, possibly poisoned by her. She held great sway early in Nero's reign, but he turned against her and she was killed in AD 59. Pliny the Elder recorded one odd detail: a double canine tooth, seen by Romans as a sign of luck.
Source: Agrippina the Younger
