Marcus Junius Silanus Torquatus

Who was Marcus Junius Silanus Torquatus?

Marcus Junius M. f. M. n. Silanus Torquatus, was the eldest son of Marcus Junius Silanus Torquatus and Aemilia Lepida. His mother was the great-granddaughter of the emperor Augustus. As a member of the imperial family, Silanus could therefore be considered a possible candidate for the succession. Although he was honoured with a consulship by the Emperor Claudius in 46, according to Cassius Dio, and he served his proconsulship as Governor of the Province of Asia, Torquatus did not survive the death of that Emperor, whom the historian Tacitus hints was speeded on his way to Godhood by consuming funghi porcini doused with a dose of poison [infusum delectabili cibo boleto venenum]—said to have been administered at the instigation of the emperor's fourth wife, Agrippina the Younger.. Although Tacitus exonerates the young Emperor Nero of Torquatus' death, the 'first crime of the new principate,', the historian casts Agrippina, Nero's mother, as the architect of the murder, on the grounds that she feared that Torquatus would act as the avenger of his brother's death, of which, Tacitus implies, she was the perpetrator. As with Claudius, poison was the means to Torquatus' end; the epitomator of Dio Cassius' 'Roman History' even tells us that Agrippina sent Torquatus the same poison with which she dispatched her late husband; and Tacitus informs us that the lethal drug was administered by a Roman of the Equestrian class named P. Celer, with the aid of a freed slave named Helius. The pair committed the crime openly, and the Province of Asia eventually prosecuted Celer for this deed, among others; moreover, according to Tacitus, Nero saw to it that the prosecution was delayed to such an extent that Celer died of old age.