Agrippina condotta a morire or Dunque sarà pur vero exactly when or where the cantata, to a text by an anonymous author, was first performed, but it is probable that it was one of the many secular cantatas Handel composed for entertainment at the palace of Cardinal Ruspoli in Rome, at some point between 1707- 08. The soloist was probably the soprano castrato Pasqualino Tiepoli. The historical Roman empress Agrippina the Younger, wife of the emperor Claudius, had plotted to make her son by another marriage, Nero, Claudius' heir to the throne and had finally poisoned her husband, according to various Roman historians, to ensure the success of her
Roman emperor Emperor Theodosius I's sons Arcadius and Honorius succeeded as co-emperors. Eighty-five years later, following Germanic migrations which had reduced the empire's effective control across Brittania, Gaul and Hispania and a series of military coup d'état which drove Emperor Nepos out of Italy, the idea of dividing the position of emperor was formally abolished by Emperor Zeno (480). The Roman Empire survived in the east until 1453, but the marginalization of the former heartland of Italy to the empire had a profound cultural impact on the empire and the position of emperor. In 620, the official language was changed from Latin