6 POISONS : THEIR EFFECTS AND DETECTION. [§ 6. 
terribly shown in the deaths of Socrates, Demosthenes, Hannibal, and 
Cleopatra, than in the pages of the older writers on poisons. 
In the reign of Artaxerxes II. (Memnon) (405-359 B.C.), Phrysa 
poisoned the queen Statira by cutting food with a knife poisoned on one 
side only. Although this has been treated as an idle tale, yet two 
poisons, aconite and arsenic, were at least well known ; either of these 
could have been in the way mentioned introduced in sufficient quantity 
into food to destroy life. 
In the early part of the Christian era professional poisoners arose, and 
for a long time exercised their trade with impunity. 1 Poisoning was so 
much in use as a political engine that Agrippina (a.d. 26) refused to eat 
of some apples offered to her at table by her father-in-law, Tiberius. 
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 Homans 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. 2 
The children of the Imperial house, with others of the great Homan 
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 
midden 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 Homan and Greek writers knew only the rudiments of 
human anatomy, while as to pathological changes and their true inter¬ 
pretation their knowledge may be said to have been absolutely nil. It 
1 Tacitus, lib. xii., xiii. Mentioned also by Juvenal and Suetonius. 
2 The death of Arius (a.d. 325) is ascribed by Gibbon either to a miracle or to 
poison — “ his bowels suddenly burst out in a privy.” 
