An old family with a legendary name
Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus belonged to one of Rome’s oldest plebeian noble families, the Domitii Ahenobarbi. Family legend traced the name — meaning “bronze-beard” — to an ancestor whose beard was said to have been turned bronze by the divine twins Castor and Pollux. An earlier namesake, consul in 122 BCE, had conquered the Allobroges and Arverni in southern Gaul, founded Rome’s first colony there at Narbo Martius, and built the Via Domitia, the first Roman road across Gaul; that ancestor’s son followed him as consul in 96 BCE. This Gnaeus’s own parents were Antonia Major, daughter of Marcus Antonius and Octavia Minor, and Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, consul in 16 BCE. His birth date is itself disputed, partly because some scholars have proposed — without certainty — that he appears as a child on the Ara Pacis south frieze, which would require an earlier birth than the alternative date usually cited.
A reputation for cruelty
Suetonius describes Domitius in thoroughly unflattering terms: a man convicted of treason, adultery, and incest with his sister at various points under Tiberius and Caligula (though he escaped punishment each time, partly through the deaths of those pursuing him), who deliberately ran down and killed a boy with his chariot on the Appian Way, and who gouged out the eye of a Roman knight during a dispute in the Forum. He nonetheless reached the consulship in 32 CE.
Marriage, an ill-omened birth, and an early death
In 28 CE Domitius married Agrippina the Younger, daughter of Germanicus. Their son, the future emperor Nero, was born on 15 December 37 CE. Suetonius reports that when friends congratulated Domitius on the birth, he replied that anything born of himself and Agrippina could only be detestable and a public disaster — a remark that later readers found darkly prophetic. Domitius died of oedema in 40 CE, when his son was not yet three years old, leaving Nero to be raised without him.
Historical sources
Suetonius, Nero 1–6
The family’s history and legendary name, Domitius’s character and offences, and the birth and early orphaning of Nero.