It was then that Agrippina, long since bent upon the impious 
deed, and eagerly seizing the present occasion, well furnished 
too as she was with wicked agents, deliberated upon the nature 
of the poison she would use, whether, ‘if it were sudden and in- 
stantaneous in its operation, the desperate achievement would 
not be brought to light: if she chose materials slow and con- 
suming in their operation, whether Claudius, when his end ap- 
proached, and perhaps having discovered the treachery, would 
not resume his affection for his son’. Something of a subtle na- 
ture was therefore resolved upon, ‘such as would disorder his 
brain and require time to kill’. [Oxford translation, Annals, 
Book XII, Chap. 66. | 
There was only one poison available to the ancients 
that would fulfill Agrippina’s requirements—the poison 
of the deadly amanita. The victim would not give away 
the game by any abnormal indisposition at the meal, but 
when the seizure came, he would be so severely stricken 
that thereafter he would no longer be in command of 
his own faculties. For one familiar with the properties 
of Amanita phalloides the text in Tacitus seems trans- 
parently clear. The great Roman historian, probably 
unaware of the meaning behind his words, is revealing 
the secret of the murderers. But for others than myco- 
philes there might remain a doubt: is it legitimate for 
us to infer that Locusta knew the deadly amanita and 
its secret virtue to which even now, after nineteen cen- 
turies, few are privy / 
This question troubled and challenged us, not because 
we were uncertain but because it would be hard to carry 
conviction with an uninitiated public. Once more we 
reviewed all the principal sources, all the stray allusions 
in the classical writers. We concentrated especially on 
Seneca. After all, he was a witness whose testimony 
would have been competent in our own courts of justice ; 
he was articulate, and had he not carried the secret etched 
sharp in his memory from that fateful October day in 
A.D. 54 until his death eleven years later’ Somewhere, 
( 120 | 
