no evidence to support our theory, we might assume that 
she and Locusta, as their imperial patient lay at their 
mercy, resorted to direct methods to dispatch him. For- 
tunately, our texts come to our help. 
‘The victim of the plot,’ says Dio Cassius, ‘was car- 
ried from the banquet quite overcome by strong drink, 
a thing that had happened many times before.’ Sueton- 
ius’s version is hesitant: ‘Of those accidents which also 
ensued hereupon [after eating the mushrooms] the report 
is variable. Some say that straight upon the receipt of 
the poison he became speechless, and continuing all night 
in dolorous torments died a little before day. Others 
affirm that at first he fell asleep, and afterwards, as the 
meat flowed and floated aloft, vomited all up.” (If it is 
true that in his usual drunken stupor he threw up, this 
was enough to send the two women into a panic, for he 
might have rid himself of the fungal poison; but perhaps 
the vomiting came later, when the deadly amanitas finally 
made themselves felt.) Tacitus is explicit: ‘Agrippina 
therefore became dismayed; but as her life was at stake, 
she thought little of the odium of her present proceed- 
ings, and called in the aid of Nenophon the physician, 
whom she had already implicated in her guilty purposes. 
It is believed that he, as if he purposed to assist Claudius 
in his effort to vomit, put down his throat a feather be- 
smeared with deadly poison; not unaware that in desper- 
ate villainies the attempt without the deed is perilous, 
while to insure the reward they must be done effectually 
at once.” here was thus a second poisoning, with the 
Greek physician Nenophon replacing Locusta. Suetonius 
says that, according to one report, the second poisoning 
was by clyster. 
What was that poison to which Nenophon had hurried 
recourse! Robert Graves in private correspondence offers 
us an answer that fits the circumstances perfectly. Not 
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