the work that lay before her. The wild pranks of Caligula and the
scandals of Messalina had aroused an immeasurable disgust in Rome and
Italy. Every one was out of patience. The senate as well as the
people were demanding a stronger, more coherent, and respectable
government, which would end the scandals, suits, and atrocious personal
and family quarrels which were dividing Rome. Agrippina was the
daughter of Germanicus, the granddaughter of Drusus, and she had in her
veins the blood of the Claudii, with all their pride, their energy,
their puritanical, conservative, and aristocratic spirit, and the
moment she appeared, all hopes were centered in her. Although she was
a sort of feminine Tiberius, and in the purity of her life resembled
her mother and her great-grandmother Livia, Tacitus nevertheless
maligns her for her relationships with Pallas and Seneca. The fact
that Messalina, even with her implacable hatred, failed to bring about
her downfall under the _Lex de adulteriis_, proves the unreliability of
these statements, and Tacitus proves it himself when he says that she
suffered no departure from chastity unless it helped her power (_Nihil
domi impudicum nisi dominationi expediret_). This means that Agrippina
was a lady of irreproachable life; for if there is one thing which
stands out clearly in the history of this remarkable woman, it is that
both her rise and her fall depended upon causes of such a nature that
not even her womanly charms could have increased her power or retarded
her ruin. All hearts were therefore filled with hope when they saw
this respectable, active, and energetic woman take her place at the
side of Claudius the weakling, for she brought back the memory of the
most venerated personages of the family of Augustus.
[Illustration: The Emperor Nero.]
The new empress, encouraged by this show of favor, applied herself with
all the strength of her impassioned nature to the task of again making
operative in the state those traditional ideas of the nobility in which
Livia had educated first Tiberius and Drusus, then Germanicus, and then
Agrippina herself. In this descendant of hers the spirit of the
great-grandmother finally reappeared, for it had been eclipsed by the
fatal and terrible struggle between Tiberius and Agrippina, by the
madness of Caligula, and the comic scandals of the first part of the
reign of Claudius. All this served to bring back into the state a
little of that authoritative vigor which the nobility in the time of
its splendor had considered the highest ideal of government. Tacitus
says of her rule that it was as rigid as if a man's (_adductum et quasi
virile_). This signifies that under the influence of Agrippina the
laxity and disorder of the first years of Claudius's reign gave place
to a certain order and discipline. Severity there was, and more often
haughtiness (_palam severitas ac saepius superbia_). The freedmen who
had formerly been so powerful and aggressive, now stepped aside, which
is an evident sign that their petulance had now found a check in the
energy of Agrippina. The state finances and the fortune of the
imperial house were reorganized, for Agrippina, like Livia and like all
the ladies of the great Roman nobility, was an excellent administrator,
frugal, and ever watchful of her slaves and freedmen, and careful of
all items of income and expense. The Roman aristocracy, like all other
aristocracies, hated the parvenus, the men of sudden riches,
traffickers who had too quickly become wealthy, and all persons whose
only aim was to amass money. We know that Agrippina sought to prevent
as far as possible the malversations of public funds by which the
powerful freedmen of Claudius had been enriching themselves. After she
became empress we hear accounts of numerous suits instituted against
personages who had been guilty of wasting public treasure, while under
Messalina no such cases were brought forward. We know, furthermore,
that she reestablished the fortune of the imperial family, which in all
probability had been seriously compromised by the reckless expenditures
of Messalina. This is what Tacitus refers to in one of his sentences,
which, as usual, is colored by his malignity: _Cupido auri immensa
obtentum habebat quasi subsidium regno pararetur_ (She sought to enrich
the family under the pretext of providing for the needs of the empire).
What Tacitus calls a "pretext" was, on the contrary, the ancient
aristocratic conception of wealth, which in the eyes of the great
families was destined to be a means of government and an instrument of
power: the family possessed it in order to use it for the benefit of
the state.
In short, Agrippina attempted to revive the aristocratic traditions of
government which had inspired the policies of Augustus and Tiberius.
Not only did she attempt to do this, but, strange as it may seem, she
succeeded almost without a struggle. The government of Agrippina was
from the first a great success. From the moment when she became
empress there is discernible in the entire administration a greater
firmness and consistency of policy. Claudius no longer seems, as
formerly, to be at the mercy of his freedmen and the fleeting impulses
of the moment, and even the dark shadows of the time are lighted up for
some years. A certain concord and tranquillity returned to the
imperial house, to the aristocracy, to the senate, and to the state.
Although Tacitus accuses Agrippina of having made Claudius commit all
sorts of cruelties, it is certain that trials, scandals, and suicide
became much less frequent under her rule. During the six years that
Claudius lived after his marriage with Agrippina, scandalous tragedies
became so rare that Tacitus, being deprived of his favorite materials,
set down the story of these six years in a single book. In other
words, Agrippina encountered virtually no opposition, while Tiberius
and even Augustus, when they wished to govern according to the
traditions of the ancient nobility, had to combat the party of the new
aristocracy, with its modern and oriental tendencies. This party no
longer seemed to exist when Agrippina urged Claudius to continue
resolutely in the policy of his ancestors, for one party only, that of
the old nobility, seemed with Agrippina to control the state. This
must have been the result partly of the disgust for the scandals of the
previous decade, which had made every one realize the need of restoring
more serious discipline in the government, and partly of the exhaustion
which had come upon both parties as the result of so many struggles,
reprisals, suits, and scandals. The force of the opposition in the two
factions gradually diminished. A greater gentleness induced all to
accept the direction of the government without resistance, and the
authority of the emperor and his counselors acquired greater importance
in proportion as the strength of the opposition in the aristocracy and
the senate became gradually weaker.
[Illustration: Agrippina the Younger, sister of Caligula and mother of
Nero.]
In any case, the empire was no longer to have forced upon it the
ridiculous and scandalous spectacle of such weaknesses and
incongruities as had seriously compromised the prestige of the highest
authority in the first period of the reign of Claudius. But Agrippina
was not content with merely making provision as best she could for the
present; she also looked forward to the future. She had had a son by
her first husband, and at the time of her marriage with Claudius this
youth was about eleven years old. It is in connection with her plans
for this son that Tacitus brings his most serious charges against
Agrippina. According to his story, from the first day of her marriage
Agrippina attempted to make of her son, the future Emperor Nero, the
successor of Claudius, thereby excluding Britannicus, the son of
Messalina, from the throne.
To obtain this end, she spared, he says, neither intrigues, fraud, nor
deceit; she had Seneca recalled from exile and appointed tutor of her
child. She removed from office the two commanders of the pretorian
guard, who were creatures of Messalina, and in their stead she had
elected one of her own, a certain Afranius Burrhus. She laid pitfalls
for Britannicus and surrounded him with spies, and in the year 50, by
dint of much intrigue and many caresses, she finally succeeded in
having Claudius adopt her son. But this whole story is merely a
complicated and fantastic romance, embroidered about a truth which in
itself is comparatively simple. Tacitus himself tells us that
Agrippina was a most exacting mother; that is, a mother of the older
Roman type--in his own words, _trux et minax_. She did not follow the
gentle methods of the newer education, which were gradually being
introduced into the great families, and she had brought up her son in
the ancient manner with the greatest simplicity. It is well to keep in
mind, furthermore, that neither Britannicus nor Nero had any right to
the throne of Claudius. The hereditary principle did not yet exist in
the imperial government: the senate was free to choose whomsoever it
wished. To be sure, up to that time the choice had always fallen upon
a member of the Augustan family; but it had only been because it was
easier to find there persons who were known and respected, who
commanded the admiration of the soldiers in distant regions, and who
had received a certain preparation for the diverse and often difficult
duties of their office. And it was precisely for this reason that
Augustus and Tiberius had always sought to prepare more than one youth
for the highest office, both in order that the senate might have a
certain freedom of choice, and also that there might be some one in
reserve, in case one of these young men should disappoint the hopes of
the empire or should die prematurely, as so many others had died. That
she should have persuaded Claudius to adopt her son does not mean,
therefore, that she wished to set Britannicus aside and give the
advantage to Nero. It merely proves that she did not wish the family
of Augustus to lose the supreme power, and for this reason she intended
to prepare not only one successor, but two possible successors, to
Claudius, just as Augustus had for a long time trained both Drusus and
Tiberius.
[Illustration: Britannicus.]
In order to understand how wise and reasonable the conduct of Agrippina
really was, we must also remember that Nero was four years older than
Britannicus, and that, therefore, in the year 50, when Nero was
adopted, Britannicus was a mere lad of nine. As Claudius was already
sixty, it would have been most imprudent to designate a nine-year-old
lad as his only possible successor, when Nero, who was four years his
senior, would have been better prepared than Britannicus to take up the
reign. There is a further proof that Agrippina had no thought of
destroying the race of Claudius and Messalina, for before his adoption
she had married Nero to Octavia, the daughter of the imperial pair.
Octavia was a woman possessed of all the virtues which the ancient
Roman nobility had cherished. She was chaste, modest, patient, gentle,
and unselfish, and she would be able to assist in strengthening the
power of her house. Agrippina had therefore, in the ancient manner,
affianced the young pair at an early age, and hoped that she might make
a couple which would serve as an example to the families of the
aristocracy.
In short, Agrippina, far from seeking to weaken the imperial house by
destroying the descendants of Messalina, was attempting to bring her
son into the family precisely for the purpose of giving it strength.
And, sensible woman that she was, she could hardly have acted
otherwise. She had seen the family of Augustus, once so prosperous,
reduced to a state of exhaustion and virtually destroyed by the fatal
discord between her mother and Tiberius and the quarrels between her
brothers. The state had suffered greatly through the madness of
Caligula and the reckless hatred of the first Agrippina, and the
present empress, her daughter, who was not merely fond of her son, but
endowed in addition with the gift of reflection, sought as far as
possible to make amends for the evils which had unconsciously been
wrought. The hopes of the future were henceforth to abide in
Britannicus and in Nero. In Agrippina there reappeared the wisdom of
her greatest predecessors, and the people were so well satisfied that
they conferred upon her the very highest honor, such as in her time
even Livia herself had not received. She was given the title Augusta;
she was allowed to ride into the precincts of the Capitol in a gilded
coach (carpentum), though this was an honor which in old time had been
conceded only to priests and to the images of the gods. This last
descendant of Livia and Drusus, in whom the virtues of a venerated past
seemed to reappear, was surrounded by a semi-religious adoration. This
is an evidence of sincere and profound respect, for though the Romans
often showered marks of human adulation upon their potentates, it was
not often that they bestowed honors of so sacred a character.
The unforeseen death of Claudius suddenly cut short the work which
Agrippina had well under way. Claudius was sixty-four years old, and
one night in the month of October of the year 54 he succumbed to some
mysterious malady after a supper of which, as usual, he had partaken
inordinately. Tacitus pretends to know that Agrippina had secretly
administered poison to Claudius in a plate of mushrooms. During the
night, however, fearing lest Claudius would survive, she had called
Claudius's physician, Xenophon, who was a friend of hers. The latter,
while pretending to induce vomiting, had painted his throat with a
feather dipped in a deadly poison, and had killed him. This version is
so strange and improbable that Tacitus himself does not dare affirm it,
but says that "many believe" that it was in this manner that Claudius
met his death. But if there are still people credulous enough to
believe that the head of a great state can be poisoned in the twinkling
of an eye by a doctor who brushes his throat with a feather, it is more
difficult to understand what grounds Agrippina could have had for
poisoning her husband. According to Tacitus, it was because she was
disturbed by the fact that Claudius had for some time shown that he
preferred Britannicus to Nero; but even if the fact were true, as a
motive it would be ridiculous. Augustus was much fonder of Germanicus
than he was of Tiberius; and yet at his death the senate chose
Tiberius, and not Germanicus, because at that moment the situation
clearly called for the former as head of the empire. When Claudius
died, Britannicus was thirteen and Nero seventeen years old. They were
both, therefore, mere lads, and it was most probable that if the
imperial seat fell vacant, the senate would choose neither, since they
were both too young and inexperienced. This is so true that other
historians have supposed, on the contrary, that Agrippina had fallen
out with some one of the more powerful freedmen of Claudius, and seeing
Claudius waver, had despatched him in order that she herself should not
end like Messalina. But this hypothesis also is absurd. An empress
was virtually invulnerable. Messalina had proved this, for she had
committed every excess and abuse with impunity. Agrippina, protected
as she was by the respect of all, invested with honors that gave her
person a virtually sacred character, had nothing to fear either from
the weak Claudius or from his powerful freedmen.
This accusation of poisoning, therefore, seems to be of precisely the
same sort as, and not a whit more serious than, all those other similar
accusations which were brought against the members of the Augustan
family. Claudius, who was already sixty-four, in all probability died
a sudden but natural death, and from the point of view of the interests
of the house of Augustus, which Agrippina had strongly at heart, he
died much too soon. It was a dangerous and difficult matter to ask the
Roman senate to appoint one of these striplings commander of the armies
and emperor, even though they were the only survivors of the race of
Augustus. So true is this that Tacitus tells us that Agrippina kept
the death of Claudius secret for many hours and pretended that the
physicians were still struggling to save him, when in reality he was
already dead, _dum res firmando Neronis imperio componuntur_ (while
matters were being arranged to assure the empire to Nero).
Consequently, if everything had to be hurried through in confusion at
the last moment, it is plain that Agrippina herself must have been
taken by surprise by the illness and death of Claudius. She therefore
cannot be held responsible for having caused it.
It is not, however, difficult to reconstruct the course of events. On
the nights of the twelfth and thirteenth of October, soon after
Claudius had been suddenly stricken down by his violent malady, the
doctors announced to Agrippina that the emperor was lost. Agrippina
immediately understood that since the family of Augustus could at that
moment present no full-grown man as candidate for the imperial office,
there was grave danger that the senate might refuse to confer the
supreme power either upon Nero or Britannicus. The only means of
avoiding this danger was to bring pressure to bear upon the senate
through the pretorian cohorts, which were as friendly to the family of
Augustus as the senate was hostile. She must present one of the two
youths to the guards and have him acclaimed not head of the empire, but
head of the armies. The senate would thereby be constrained to
proclaim him head of the empire, as they had done in the case of
Claudius.
But which one of the two youths was it best to choose, Claudius's son
by blood or his son by adoption? Nero was chosen as the result of the
unrighteous ambition of Agrippina, so Tacitus says. It is very
probable that Agrippina was more eager to see her own son at the head
of the empire than to see Britannicus there; but this does not seem to
have been the real reason of her choice, for it could not have been
otherwise, even if Agrippina had detested Nero and had cherished
Britannicus with a maternal affection. Nero was four years older than
Britannicus, and therefore he had to be given the preference over the
latter. It was a very bold move to propose that the senate make a
youth of seventeen emperor; it would have been nothing less than folly
to ask that they accept a thirteen-year-old lad as commander-in-chief
of the imperial armies of Rome.
Through the help of Seneca and Burrhus, the plan developed by Agrippina
was carried out with rapidity and success. On the thirteenth of
October, after matters had been arranged with the troops, the doors of
the imperial palace were thrown open at noon; Nero, accompanied by
Burrhus, advanced to the cohort which was on guard. He was received
with joyous welcome, placed in a litter, borne to the quarters of the
pretorians, and acclaimed head of the army. The senate grudgingly
confirmed his election. There resulted in Rome a most extraordinary
situation: a youth of seventeen, educated in the antique manner, and,
though already married, still entirely under the tutelage of a strict
mother, had been elevated to the highest position in the immense
empire. He was ignorant of the luxury, pleasure, and elegance which
were becoming general in the great families; outside of a lively
disposition and docility toward his mother, he had up to this point
shown no special quality, and no particular vice. Only one peculiarity
had been noticed in him: he had studied with great zest music,
painting, sculpture, and poetry, and had made himself proficient in
these arts, which were considered frivolous and useless for a Roman
noble. On the contrary, he had neglected oratory, which was held a
necessary art by an aristocracy like the Roman, whose duty it was to
use speech at councils, in the tribunals, and in the senate, just as it
used the sword on the fields of battle. But the majority believed that
this was merely a passing caprice of youth.
[Illustration: Statue of Agrippina the Younger, in the Capitoline
Museum, Rome.]
Agrippina, then, with the assistance of Seneca and Burrhus, had kept
the highest office in the state in the family of Augustus, and she had
done so by a bold move which had not been without its dangers. She was
too intelligent not to foresee that a seventeen-year-old emperor could
have no authority, and that his position would expose him to all sorts
of envy and intrigue, and to open as well as secret opposition. She
succeeded in mitigating this evil and in parrying this danger by
another very happy suggestion--the virtually complete restoration of
the old republican constitution. After the funeral of Claudius, Nero
introduced himself to the senate, and in a polished and modest
discourse, seemingly intended to excuse his youth, he declared that of
all the powers exercised by his predecessors he wished to keep only the
command of the armies. All other civil, judicial, and administrative
functions he turned over to the senate, as in the times of the republic.
This "restoration of the republic" was Agrippina's masterpiece, and
marks the zenith of her power. It followed, as a result of her
decision, that Nero, who was to go down to posterity as the most
terrible of tyrants, was that one of all the Roman emperors who had the
most limited power; and furthermore it was likewise the result of her
activity that the constitution of the empire had never been so close to
that of the ancient republic as under the government of Nero. Most
historians, hallucinated by Tacitus, have not noticed this, and they
have consequently not recognized that in carrying out this plan
Agrippina is neither more nor less than the last continuator of the
great political tradition founded by Augustus. In the minds of both
Augustus and Tiberius the empire was to be governed by the aristocracy.
The emperor was merely the depositary of certain powers of the nobility
conceded to him for reasons of state. If these reasons of state should
disappear, the powers would naturally revert to the nobles. It was
therefore expedient at this time to make the senate forget, in the
presence of a seventeen-year-old emperor, the pressure which had been
brought to bear upon it by the cohorts, and to wipe out the rancor
against the imperial power which was still dormant in the aristocracy.
This restoration was not, therefore, a sheer renunciation of privileges
and powers inherent in the sovereign authority, but an act of political
sagacity planned by a woman whose knowledge of the art of government
had been received in the school of Augustus.
[Illustration: Agrippina the Younger.]
The move was entirely successful. The illusion that the imperial
authority was only a transitory expedient made necessary by the civil
wars, and that it might one day be entirely abolished, was still deeply
grounded in the Roman aristocracy. Every relaxation of authority was
specially pleasing to the senatorial circles. The government of Nero
therefore began under the most favorable auspices, with joyous hope in
the general promise of concord. The disaffection which had been felt
in the last six years of Claudius's government was changed into a
general and confident optimism, which the first acts of the new
government and the signs of the future seemed to justify. Agrippina
continued to keep Nero subject to her authority, as she had done before
the election: together with his two masters, Seneca and Burrhus, she
suggested to him every word and deed. The senate resumed its ancient
functions; and governed by Seneca, Burrhus, and Agrippina in
conjunction with the senate, the empire seemed to be progressing
wonderfully, and in the eyes of the senators the entire government was
in a better way than it ever yet had been.