Through his great-grandmothers Vipsania Agrippina and Antonia Minor, he was also descended from Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa and Mark Antony.
His mother was the only daughter of Drusus, and had previously been married to her cousin Nero Julius Caesar, without issue.
Emperor Claudius (who was husband to Messalina, father to Brittanicus and maternal uncle to Julia) did not secure any legal defense for his niece.
According to Tacitus, Tigellinus wrote to Nero: "Plautus again, with his great wealth, does not so much as affect a love of repose, but he flaunts before us his imitations of the old Romans, and assumes the self-consciousness of the Stoics along with a philosophy, which makes men restless, and eager for a busy life.
"[2] When he was exiled from Rome by Nero, Plautus was accompanied by the famous Stoic teacher Musonius Rufus.
After a comet appeared in 60, public gossip renewed rumors of Nero's fall and Plautus' rise.