18. “The Food of the Gods”
Agrippina was the granddaughter of Emperor Augustus, and the younger sister of Emperor Caligula. At age thirteen, she married a cousin, Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus, and bore him a son, the future Emperor Nero. Ahenobarbus died in 41 AD, and when Claudius executed Messalina in 48 AD, he chose Agrippina as his fourth wife. She convinced Claudius to adopt her son, Nero, and make him his heir and recognized successor in lieu of his biological son with Messalina, Britannicus.
By 54 AD, Claudius seemed to repent of having married Agrippina, and began favoring Britannicus and preparing him for the throne. So Agrippina poisoned Claudius at a banquet with a plate of deadly mushrooms. For the remainder of her life, she jokingly referred to mushrooms as “the food of the gods” (because Roman emperors were deified as gods after their deaths, and by killing Claudius, mushrooms had made him a god).