eliminating a political rival in rome was already complicated enough on its own. doing it when your target has a personal taster who samples everything he eats and drinks demands something else: criminal ingenuity. nero solved that technical problem with chilling elegance, and erased his half-brother in front of the entire court without so much as flinching.
it was the year 55 ce. nero was seventeen and had a legitimacy problem. he had come to the throne the year before, after the death — probably the poisoning — of the emperor claudius, but he was not the blood heir: he was the stepson, adopted thanks to the manoeuvres of his mother, agrippina. the natural heir lived under the same roof. his name was britannicus, he was the biological son of claudius, and he was already nearing his coming of age. once britannicus donned the toga virilis, he would be a legitimate pole around whom every malcontent could rally. nero needed him gone, and fast.
the obstacle was the taster. any important figure at court ate under the watch of a praegustator, a slave whose job was to sample every dish and every cup beforehand; if he dropped dead, the diner was saved. to get around him, nero turned to a specialist: locusta, a professional poisoner already condemned for other crimes, whom he had taken out of prison to design the method. a first attempt with a slow poison failed. nero, furious, demanded something immediate and undetectable, and according to the sources he threatened locusta with death if she did not deliver.
the taster sampled the cup and declared it safe. the trick was not in the cup: it was in what came afterwards.
the plan, as tacitus tells it, was of perfect coldness. during a banquet, britannicus was served a hot drink. the taster sampled it in front of everyone and confirmed it was safe. then britannicus complained it was too hot, and the servants — following the script — added cold water to cool it. the taster did not sample that water again, because the prescribed ritual had already been observed. and in that added water lay the poison. britannicus drank and collapsed at once; according to tacitus, he lost his voice and his breath at the same time.
nero’s composure completed the scene. with britannicus convulsing and dying on the triclinium, before the eyes of his sister octavia and of agrippina herself, nero did not so much as flinch: he calmly remarked that his half-brother had suffered epileptic fits since childhood, that it would pass, and went on with dinner. most of the guests, according to tradition, played along and kept eating, because the alternative was to acknowledge aloud that they had just witnessed an imperial murder. that same night the body was carried out and hastily cremated, under the rain.
a historian’s caveat is in order: the poison narrative comes from sources hostile to nero — tacitus, suetonius and dio — who wrote decades later, so the tale of the poisoned water may carry literary embellishment. what is certain is that britannicus died suddenly and conveniently, just when he was in the way; murder is the traditional reading, but part of modern historiography (a. barrett, for instance) does not rule out a natural death from the epilepsy the young man genuinely suffered, and tacitus himself (13.17) admits that even then some doubted the poisoning. nero rewarded locusta with lands and, according to tradition, with disciples to whom she taught the trade. in rome, the true art of power was not poisoning a rival. it was doing it in public and carrying on with dinner.
