it was taken, the victim gradually growing weaker. It was perhaps in consequence of this belief that the possession or cultivation of aconite was made a capital offence. Pliny states that Calpurnia Bastia, one of the Catiline conspirators, was poisoned by aconite.
Locusta was one of the noted poison compounders of the Roman empire. She had been condemned to death in the reign of Claudius, but probably by the influence of the Empress Agrippina, she was pardoned and was employed by that infamous woman. Claudius was getting on in years, and was showing more affection for his own son Britannicus than for his stepson Nero, whom at the solicitation of Agrippina he had adopted and made his heir. The empress therefore resolved to get rid of Claudius, but she was afraid to use a suddenly acting agent, and Locusta was ordered to compound something which should produce a fatal effect, but not immediately. It was to be so compounded that it would destroy the emperor's reason lest in the course of his proposed illness he should take measures to supplant Nero by Britannicus. Locusta had to pretend to be able to fulfil this commission, and the poison she prepared was mixed in a dish of mushrooms. Claudius having eaten some of these was soon taken ill and had to be carried from the table, but as this was what usually occurred at his dinner not much notice was taken of the event. His physician gave him an emetic, and he was in a fair way to recover, but Agrippina, frightened at the possible exposure, employed another minion to apply more of Locusta's poison on a feather to his throat, under the pretence of making him vomit more. He soon died. Tacitus and Suetonius relate how Nero used Locusta later to help him rid himself of Britannicus, and also of his old tutor
