It is not surprising that recent historians have generally followed Tacitus. Roergas de Serviez, who rarely has such ample authority for the crimes he loves to attribute, fastens the murder on Agrippina without the least hesitation. Merivale sees no ground to question it, though he points out several inconsistencies in the pages of Tacitus. Mr. Henderson follows the traditional story in his recent and discriminating study of the reign of Nero.[10] But Mr. Baring-Gould insists that the death of Claudius was quite natural, and any candid student of the evidence must admit that it is inconclusive. The facts are that on October 12th, A.D. 54, Claudius attended a banquet of the priestly college with Agrippina. After eating some mushrooms (or figs, according to others) from a dish that was served, he became violently ill and vomited. He was taken back to the palace, attended by his (and Agrippina’s) physician, but gradually sank, and died on the morning of the 13th. The theory of the opponents of Agrippina is that she employed a notorious poisoner, Locusta--a Gaulish woman, who was certainly in Rome at the time, and was afterwards employed by Nero--to concoct a slow poison (“a drug that would disturb his mind and inflict a slow death,” says Tacitus). This is supposed to have been inserted in a fine mushroom (or fig), which was taken by Claudius when Agrippina had eaten one from the dish to encourage him. He fell back and began to vomit, and the theory runs that Agrippina, fearing that he might recover and suspect her, called in the physician Xenophon, a dependent of hers, who tickled the Emperor’s throat with a poisoned feather and made an end of him.