Et son calcul s’avère juste ; les relations avec eux deviennent bientôt si cordiales que le roi et la plus grande partie de sa suite manifestent le désir de devenir chrétien. Ce à quoi les autres conquérants espagnols ne parvenaient que par des mois et des années de tortures, Magellan l’a obtenu en quelques jours et sans faire appel à la violence.

Geoffrey Parker, his best biographer, finds an answer in late twentieth-century “prospect” theory: leaders, it suggests, risk more to avoid losses than to achieve gains.76 Given the empire Philip inherited and then expanded, he had a lot to lose. What’s strange, though, are the risks he ran to regain territories he hadn’t lost. It wasn’t Philip’s

Claudius’ daughter Octavia was one of the building blocks by which Agrippina had ensured her son’s claim to the imperial throne, but Nero was not interested in his wife and treated her badly. He embarked on a public affair with a freedwoman called Acte. Agrippina regarded this as scandalous and tried to put a stop to it—which only encouraged Nero