He was the eldest son of Marcus Junius Silanus Torquatus and Aemilia Lepida.
Although Tacitus exonerates Nero of Silanus' death, the 'first crime of the new principate,' the historian casts Agrippina, Nero's mother, as the architect of the murder, on the grounds that she feared that Silanus would avenge his brother's death, of which she was the perpetrator.
[3] As with Claudius, poison was the means to Silanus' end; the epitomator of Dio Cassius' Roman History tells us that Agrippina sent Silanus the same poison which she gave her late husband;[4] and Tacitus informs us that the lethal drug was administered by a Roman of the Equestrian class named Publius Celerius, with the aid of a freedman named Helius.
[5] Silanus' son, Lucius Junius Silanus Torquatus, whom Tacitus calls a young man of moderation (modesta iuventa),[6] was considered a threat on similar grounds as his father had been, and informers soon invented a conspiracy implicating him and his aunt Junia Lepida on charges of magic rites and incest.
Young Silanus, however, did not open his veins, when invited to do so; he went down fighting with his fists, and Tacitus notes that the centurion was forced to run him through with his sword; his fatal wound, according to the historian, was in front.