Locusta appears as a character in the 1965 Doctor Who story The Romans, played by Ann Tirard. The film is thought to be among the lost films from its era. The film was an episodic depiction of humanity's brutality throughout its history, and the historic episodes depicted were chosen because they involved fratricide, murders, religious persecution, physical abuse and public humiliation, prisons and executions of prisoners, torture, and violent criminal subcultures. Locusta was one of the characters depicted in the historical film Humanity Through the Ages (1908) by director Georges Méliès. In the novel The Count of Monte Cristo (1844) by Alexandre Dumas, the poisoner Madame de Villefort is frequently compared to Locusta. Juvenal refers to her in one of his Satires, describing a poisoner as even more skilled than Locusta.
Along with Nero's favorites Helius, Patrobius, Narcissus and "others of the scum that had come to the surface in Nero's day," she was led in chains through the city and executed. Execution Īfter Nero's suicide, Locusta was condemned to die by the emperor Galba during his brief reign, which ended 15 January AD 69. Before Nero fled Rome in AD 68, he acquired poison from Locusta for his own use and kept it in a golden box.
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Nero rewarded Locusta with a full pardon and large country estates where he sent pupils to learn her craft. When this poison was slow to work, Nero flogged Locusta with his own hand and threatened her with immediate execution, whereupon she supplied a quicker-acting poison that succeeded. In AD 55, while still imprisoned, Locusta was called upon by Agrippina's son, the emperor Nero, to concoct a poison to murder Claudius' son Britannicus. Dioscorides called the plant "strychnos manikos" or "thryon." The effective doses of atropa needed to cause hallucinations for up to four days, and the ones needed to kill a person were described by a 1st-century writer, Pedanius Dioscorides. Atropa-derived poisons were commonly used in ancient Roman murders, and previous empress Livia reportedly used them to murder her contemporaries. Extracts of atropa have been used for poisoning since antiquity, as the plant and its fruits contain tropane alkaloids (primarily hyoscyamine and scopolamine). She reportedly advised Agrippina to use Atropa belladonna as a poison. This was sprinkled on a mushroom and given to the emperor by his food-taster Halotus when this poison appeared to be ineffectual, the doctor Gaius Stertinius Xenophon murdered Claudius with a poisoned feather ostensibly put down his throat to induce vomiting. According to some historians, in AD 54, already notorious and imprisoned on poisoning charges, Locusta was ordered by the empress Agrippina the Younger to supply a poison for the murder of her husband, Claudius. Locusta served as a poisons expert under empress Agrippina the Younger. Juvenal also mentions Locusta in Book 1, line 71 of his Satires.
Locusta's career is described by the ancient historians Tacitus ( Annals 12.66 and 13.15), Suetonius ( Life of Nero, 33 and 47), and Cassius Dio (61.34 and 63.3).
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