THE MOTHER OF NERO
Tacitus has given us a spirited picture of life in the Imperial palace
during the months which followed the execution of Messalina. Claudius
himself had sunk into a state of drowsy indifference when the storm
excited by his discovery had spent itself. “Where is the Empress?” he
asked, as he sat at supper the night after her death, and noticed the
empty place on the couch. Narcissus told him that she was dead, and he
asked no more. But the palace about his slumbering figure soon began
to hum with conflicting intrigues for the succession to her chamber.
Ladies who had visited the Palatine with nervous prudence while
Messalina lived now came to display their charms, and express their
tenderness, to the doting Emperor. From the sombre night of the tragedy
Rome passed with relief to the light enjoyment of the new comedy.
The freedmen, who surrounded and controlled Claudius, selected their
candidates.
Claudius had inserted one sentiment of his own in the speech which
Narcissus had induced him to make to the Prætorian Guards. He had sworn
that he would not marry again. There were ladies in his household, such
as Calpurnia and Cleopatra, who would encourage the resolution; but the
freedmen decided that he was bound to capitulate under so fair a siege,
and it would be better to have some share in the making of the new
Empress. Each of the Greeks chose a different lady. Narcissus, who had
been promoted to high public service for his zeal, favoured the suit
of Ælia Pætina, whom Claudius had lightly divorced twenty-one years
before. Callistus took up the cause of Lollia Paulina, the wealthy
and beautiful woman whom Caligula had torn from her husband and used
so unjustly. The steward, Pallas, was more fortunate in his choice.
He advocated marriage with Agrippina; and, as the mind of Agrippina
coincided more decisively with that of her champion than seems to
have happened in the case of her rivals, his campaign succeeded. She
discovered a most tender and considerate affection for her uncle,
visited him assiduously, and persuaded him to betroth his daughter
Octavia to her son Lucius Domitius (later Nero).
Octavia was already betrothed, and Agrippina is said to have removed
the first obstacle to her designs by a cruel and unscrupulous act. We
are told that she induced, and it is at least clear that she permitted,
the sycophantic courtier Vitellius, who favoured her suit, to accuse
the young man, to whom Octavia was betrothed, of incest with his
daughter-in-law. Tacitus has so mean an estimate of the young people
and their generation that he does not regard the charge as a serious
libel. He insists, however, that Agrippina had the case against them
forged, and thus opened her dark Imperial career with a crime.
We are now approaching the generation in which the great historian
lived, and we are considering the very woman whose memoirs furnished
him with his more serious charges against her rivals and predecessors.
It may therefore seem strange that, if we are to follow our authorities
with docility, we must ascribe a very vicious and unscrupulous
character to Agrippina herself. We have rejected the rumour that
she poisoned her second husband, but that is by no means the only
charge that is brought against her before she married Claudius. The
authorities uniformly assert that she had had incestuous relations with
Caligula in her early teens, had been notorious for her amours during
the life of Messalina, and now very flagrantly placed such honour as
she had at the disposal of Claudius. These charges we cannot control.
We shall find even more serious accusations against her later, and
shall have to regard them with reserve or frank incredulity. It was
the literary fashion to make a consort of the Cæsars imperial in her
vices. On the whole, however, we are compelled to think that the eldest
daughter of Agrippina and Germanicus had the taint of her stock. She
inherited the virile ambition of her mother, and she had even less
scruple in pursuing it. The best that can be said for her is that she
aimed rather at making the future of her son than her own. And when
that son proves to be the Emperor Nero, the murderer of his mother, we
are disposed to read her record with the lenient eye of pity.
When the elder Agrippina had been banished by Tiberius, as we saw, in
the year 12 A.D., her children were brought up in the house of their
grandmother Antonia. In this plain home of old Roman virtue Caligula
is said to have infected and corrupted all his sisters. Agrippina left
it, in her thirteenth year, to marry Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus. As the
authorities are sharply divided in regard to his character, we cannot
trace his influence in the development of her character. He died in
the year 40, leaving her with a three-year-old boy, Lucius Domitius.
Agrippina was still a young and beautiful woman, and is said to have
availed herself of the loose morals of Roman society until, as we
saw, the attitude of Messalina forced her to marry. She was soon a
widow for the second time, with considerable wealth. Her ambition
revived at the death of Messalina, and she paid the most winning and
flagrant attentions to Claudius. We should go beyond the letter of the
chronicles if we suggested that she bribed Vitellius and Pallas to
promote her suit. It is enough to say that they overcame the reluctance
of Claudius, and they profited materially by her accession to the
throne.
Claudius professed that he had a scruple about marrying his niece, and
proposed to adopt her as his daughter. That empty honour was hardly
recompense enough for the daily contemplation of his senility and
sensuality. Vitellius induced him to submit his delicate feeling to the
Senate and the people, and then artfully represented to the Senators
that, if Claudius married Agrippina, she might rid them of the hated
influence of the freedmen. Tacitus, whose disdain for the obsequious
Senate of the early Empire always aggravates his comments on their
conduct, describes how they raced each other to the palace to inform
Claudius of their decision, and how the people not improbably incited
by Vitellius, assembled below the Palatine Hill and clamoured for the
marriage. The obtuse and weak-willed Claudius assented, and a few days
later, in the year 49, Agrippina became the sixth Empress of Rome.
Little did she dream that she was entering upon the last decade of her
eventful life, and that it would close with the most ghastly horror.
She was in her thirty-third year, Claudius in his fifty-eighth.
Years of sensual indulgence had not improved his character or his
intelligence, and no one in Rome can have expected him to live more
than the few years which remained for him. Agrippina was looking to the
time when she would be sole mistress of the Empire. The fine statue of
her which is exhibited in the Lateran Museum has a moral physiognomy
so concordant with the authentic record of her career that we picture
her to ourselves with confidence. In face and figure she is all that
the word imperial suggests to the imagination. Haughty, strong,
and reposeful in her self-reliance, she has lost the last shade of
apprehension with the passing of Messalina, and has the majestic air
of a mistress of the world. Her low brow and large, finely-carved oval
face are said by some physiognomists to have every mark of purity and
refinement, but the close observer will discover in her features only
such a refinement of passion as her ambition would lead us to expect.
In a word, it is the face of a woman who will not stoop to vice or
crime to gratify a sensual impulse, but may have recourse to either
when her ambition lends it a certain expediency.
[Illustration: AGRIPPINA THE YOUNGER
BUST, MUS. NAZ., NAPLES]
The career of Agrippina shows that she really was a moral opportunist
of this character. We need not pass any censure on her ambition.
Unhappy would be the State in which men and women were not at times
fired by the impulse to exert their powers more energetically than
their fellows. But it is impossible to ignore the persistent and
harmonious statements of the Latin historians in regard to the
way in which Agrippina pursued her ambition. We may overlook the
amorous adventures of her earlier years; we may reject, as a light
and implausible rumour, eagerly caught up by prurient diarists, the
charge that she made any dishonourable advances to Claudius before her
marriage, or to the steward Pallas or her son Nero at later dates;
and we may hesitate to admit that she was concerned in the murder of
Claudius. But we cannot find any other motive than a not too nice
ambition in her marrying the aged and repulsive Emperor, and we have
strong reason to suspect her of conduct that is little short of
criminal in many of the events that follow.
The most formidable of her rivals for the throne had been Lollia
Paulina. Beautiful, wealthy, and popular, the former wife of Caligula
seemed to threaten Agrippina’s security. In their eagerness to avoid
the rock of hereditary power the Romans had steered their vessel into
the Charybdis of intrigue, and any prominent man or woman was regarded
with concern by the one who wore the purple, or aspired to wear it.
Agrippina had a strong and legitimate hope, but no guarantee, that
her son would succeed. Messalina’s son, young Britannicus, was ailing
and epileptic, and was generally ignored in the speculations as to
the succession. It was, therefore, quite natural that Roman gossip
should accuse Agrippina of destroying Paulina, and Tacitus is not less
generous in recording the charges against her than in admitting her
slanders against Livia. He affirms positively that it was the Empress
who persuaded Claudius to have Paulina prosecuted on the charge of
consulting oracles and astrologers as to the duration of his marriage,
and that, when her property was confiscated and she was sent into
exile, Agrippina sent a soldier to compel her to commit suicide. Dio,
as usual, improves upon the narrative. He describes Agrippina gloating
over the bleeding head of her rival, as Fulvia had rejoiced over the
head of Cicero, and opening the mouth to see certain peculiarities of
the teeth by which it might be identified.
The fatal defect of Dio’s more vivid account is that, as we know
from Pliny, the double canine teeth, of which he speaks, belonged to
Agrippina herself, not to Paulina, and were regarded as a sure presage
of good fortune. The substance of the story, however, we cannot lightly
reject. A beautiful and happy woman was driven to death for no graver
cause than, at the most, an idle patronage of the Oriental charlatans
who then abounded in Rome; and, since this consultation of oracles was
common, there must have been a special reason for the selection of
Paulina. The motive suggested by Tacitus is only too probable. He adds
that Agrippina also banished a lady named Calpurnia. If we may identify
this lady with the Calpurnia whose services to Claudius were so amiable
as to embolden her to disclose to him the crimes of his beloved
Messalina, she would hardly remain long in the palace of Agrippina.
Apart from such episodes as these, in which jealousy or avarice led
her to make an unworthy use of her power, she ruled judiciously and
serviceably. Claudius was in his sixtieth year. His poor mind was in
complete decay, and it was both fitting and useful that Agrippina
should rule in his name. The coinage of the time bears witness of her
activity. There is, in fact, a living memorial of her rule in the
city of Cologne, which, under the title of Colonia Agrippina, she
established as an outpost of civilization on the farthest confines of
the Empire. She gave dignity and etiquette to the easy-going court of
Claudius, had the right to enter the precincts of the Capitol and to
ride in the gilded imperial chariot of ceremony, and, when the famous
British prince Caractacus was brought to Rome, her throne was raised
by the side of that of the Emperor. The older Roman idea of woman’s
sphere was now discredited by the philosophers and contemptuously
ignored by the women themselves, but the citizens moved slowly, and
there was much discontent and consulting of astrologers. They were
expelled from the city, but in the guarded chambers of patrician
families they continued, in imposing Chaldæan dress, to scan horoscopes
and wave preternatural wands over their symbolical tripods--much as
they do in Bond Street to-day. The more enlightened reader, who is
disposed to regard the superstition with leniency, must reflect that
the prophets might at times, for the vindication of their art, be
tempted to lend a little human aid when nature tarried in bringing
about the deaths which the planets had so plainly foretold.
Within the palace the whole care of Agrippina was centred in the
education of her son for the purple. To the delight of Rome, she
recalled the philosopher Seneca from exile, and gave him charge of
her son’s studies. When the real character of Nero was revealed in
later years, it was said that Seneca had always disliked his task,
and had even predicted that the boy would become a savage monster.
Seneca himself merely says that the boy was spoiled, and his training
thwarted, by his mother. Nero would fly to Agrippina when Seneca
had made some attempt to check his wayward impulses, and the whole
lesson would be lost in her injudicious caresses. Apart from this not
unnatural weakness, Agrippina made the most commendable efforts to
prepare her son for the throne. The corrupt tutor whom Messalina had
brought to the palace was dismissed--Dio says that he was executed
for attempting the life of Lucius Domitius--to make way for the most
distinguished moralist of the time, and the military instruction was
entrusted to Burrus, whose integrity we shall learn presently. Pallas
was rewarded with such honours as no freedmen had ever borne before,
and Vitellius was rescued from some obscure charge of conspiracy and
restored to his rank.
Agrippina was now in a position of very great wealth and power. She
drove about Rome in a superb chariot, flaunted the stored jewels of the
Imperial house, and received presents from the ends of the earth. A
white nightingale, which had cost 6,000 sesterces, and a talking thrush
were amongst the rare presents sent to conciliate her. The lingering of
Claudius must have been irksome to her, but it was necessary to secure
the succession of her son before the Emperor died. The one apparent
obstacle was the boy Britannicus, who, as the son of Claudius and
Messalina, had a juster title to be chosen. He was, however, subject to
epileptic fits, delicate in health, and peevish in temper. Agrippina
had little difficulty in thrusting him aside in favour of her own
handsome and engaging boy. The _toga virilis_, or garment of the man,
was usually donned by the Roman youth in his seventeenth year, but the
age was anticipated in the case of princes, and Domitius was to receive
it at the end of the year 50. During the year, however, the convulsions
of nature so plainly portended some momentous event, probably the
passage of Claudius to join his divine forerunners, that Agrippina
pressed for the immediate performance of the rite. Three suns were seen
in the sky, an earthquake shook the solid earth, and birds of evil omen
rested on the temple. Claudius assented, and manhood and other high
distinctions were prematurely conferred on the future Emperor, whose
name was changed to Nero. He joined the priestly college, received
the authority of a proconsul, marched at the head of the guards, and
drew the attention of all at the games by the insignia of his manly
dignities, while Britannicus sat in the _prætexta_ and _bulla_ of the
boy. It was Nero who pleaded in the Senate for distressed cities, Nero
who was made prætor when Claudius was absent from Rome. In the year 52
he was married to Octavia, and all Rome regarded him as the virtual
heir to the throne.
There can be no serious doubt that Agrippina had no affection for
Claudius, and must have waited impatiently for his removal when the
succession was secured for her son. Certainly Rome held that view,
and interpreted the events of the succeeding years in accordance with
it. We must therefore be prepared to find much libellous conjecture
in the chronicles about this time. Serviez, who can never resist the
fascination of scandal, gives us a lively picture of Agrippina stooping
to any expedient course of vice or crime in the furtherance of her
ambition. We may have to tell a less romantic story, but it will be
romantic enough.
It is clear that the Empress now entered into a conflict with
Narcissus, the freedman who had ruined Messalina, and had then favoured
the suit of Ælia Pætina in opposition to her own. Her critics suggest
that she wished to remove this faithful servant in order to attempt the
life of the Emperor more easily, but the suggestion is superfluous.
Narcissus had found the rival freedman Pallas raised to such high
honours, and felt that his own service in exposing Messalina had
been so soon forgotten, that he clearly intrigued against Agrippina.
Tacitus says that it was he who spread the rumour, which reached the
ears of Claudius, that Agrippina was too intimate with Pallas. We are
quite unable to examine the truth or untruth of this charge, and may
dismiss it. Agrippina took an early occasion to attack and discredit
the Greek. In the centre of the Italian hills was a sheet of water, the
Fucine Lake, which had no regular outlet, and often caused disastrous
floods. Claudius ordered that a channel should be made to conduct its
superfluous water to the river, and celebrated the opening of it,
in the year 52, with a naval battle on the lake. Three thrones were
erected: one for the nodding, heavy-paunched Emperor, who had somehow
been squeezed into glittering armour, one for Agrippina, in her robes
of gold cloth, and one for Nero.
The play did not run smoothly, and Agrippina did not spare Narcissus,
who controlled it. The great ships drew up before the Emperor, and the
men who were about to risk or lose their lives to entertain him rang
out the usual salutation. Forgetting that if he returned the salute he
absolved them from their dangerous duty, Claudius hailed them, and they
claimed the right to abstain. The Emperor is described by Suetonius as
running alongside the lake, angrily urging them to fight. The battle
proceeded, but at the close it was found that the water could not be
released, and Narcissus was bitterly assailed. The performance was
repeated later, when the works were pronounced complete, but a number
of people were drowned, and the quarrel was renewed with spirit.
Agrippina suggested that the funds for the undertaking had been
diverted; Narcissus foiled the attack with a charge of ambition against
the Empress.
The Emperor was visibly failing, and there was great excitement at
Rome when, at the beginning of the year 54, nature announced once
more that some stirring chapter was to run from the reel of the
fates. The standards and tents of the soldiers were enveloped in
mysterious flames; a rain of blood, in which a modern naturalist
would doubtless discover an innocent microbe, spread terror over one
part of the Empire, and the birth of a pig with claws like those
of a hawk caused equal consternation in another; while Rome heard,
with reiterated shocks, that the doors of the temple of Jupiter had
been opened by unseen hands, and a horrible comet, followed by the
customary pestilence, had appeared in its skies. More significant still
to prudent people, perhaps, was the report that Claudius, returning
to dine at the palace after presiding at the trial of an adultress,
gloomily observed that he had been unfortunate in his marriages; he had
punished one unfaithful wife, and would know how to deal with another.
In this observation of Claudius we need see no more than an echo of the
whispers of Narcissus, but one can imagine how Rome must have throbbed
with expectation and abounded in gossip at the beginning of the year
54. Nor was this faith in natural oracles disappointed. Two tragedies
were added to the sombre chronicle of the city in that year, and in
both of them our Empress is accused of having acted criminally.
The first was the condemnation to death of one of the greatest ladies
of Rome, Domitia Lepida, sister-in-law of the Empress; and in this
case there is every reason to suspect a guilty action on the part of
Agrippina. When Agrippina had been exiled by Caligula, her boy had
lived for a few years with his father’s sister, Domitia Lepida, the
mother of Messalina. Lepida was far more indulgent even than Agrippina
to the pretty and wayward child, and, when the mother returned to Rome
and he was restored to her, there was an acrimonious struggle between
the two women for his affection. As it became clear that he would
inherit the purple, the struggle became more passionate. Narcissus
saw in it an opportunity to escape the ruin which would befall him
if Agrippina obtained full power, and, on the ground of his charge
of inconstancy against the Empress, he urged Claudius to make Lepida
guardian of Nero. It is very probable that this intrigue of Narcissus
is the only source of the charge of license brought against the Empress
in her mature years.
Angry and anxious, in view of the expected death of Claudius, she took
a bold step, and impeached Lepida of criminal conduct. How far Lepida
was guilty we cannot say, but as she was charged only with assailing
the Emperor’s marriage with imprecations, and exercising so little
control over her Calabrian slaves as to endanger the public peace,
the prudent reader will acquit Agrippina of anything more than an
exaggeration of the facts. That exaggeration sufficed, however, to ruin
her distinguished rival. Nero, schooled by his mother, gave witness
that his aunt had tried to alienate his affection; her very natural
comments on the Emperor’s marriage were made to assume the dark form of
magical imprecations; she was condemned to death.
But those lively convulsions of nature had portended something more
momentous than the death of a noble matron, and Rome continued to wait
for the great tragedy. Before long it was announced that Narcissus had
retired to Sinuessa for the treatment of his gout.[9] The Emperor was
now entirely surrounded by adherents of Agrippina, and we can quite
understand the conviction of Rome when Claudius was taken seriously ill
at a banquet, and died within twenty-four hours. Tacitus emphatically
attributes his death to his wife. Suetonius alone says that, while
it was certain that Claudius was poisoned, it was not certain who
was guilty; a feeble reserve, since Agrippina was so predominantly
interested in his death.
It is not surprising that recent historians have generally followed
Tacitus. Roergas de Serviez, who rarely has such ample authority for
the crimes he loves to attribute, fastens the murder on Agrippina
without the least hesitation. Merivale sees no ground to question
it, though he points out several inconsistencies in the pages of
Tacitus. Mr. Henderson follows the traditional story in his recent and
discriminating study of the reign of Nero.[10] But Mr. Baring-Gould
insists that the death of Claudius was quite natural, and any candid
student of the evidence must admit that it is inconclusive.
The facts are that on October 12th, A.D. 54, Claudius attended a
banquet of the priestly college with Agrippina. After eating some
mushrooms (or figs, according to others) from a dish that was served,
he became violently ill and vomited. He was taken back to the palace,
attended by his (and Agrippina’s) physician, but gradually sank,
and died on the morning of the 13th. The theory of the opponents of
Agrippina is that she employed a notorious poisoner, Locusta--a Gaulish
woman, who was certainly in Rome at the time, and was afterwards
employed by Nero--to concoct a slow poison (“a drug that would disturb
his mind and inflict a slow death,” says Tacitus). This is supposed
to have been inserted in a fine mushroom (or fig), which was taken by
Claudius when Agrippina had eaten one from the dish to encourage him.
He fell back and began to vomit, and the theory runs that Agrippina,
fearing that he might recover and suspect her, called in the physician
Xenophon, a dependent of hers, who tickled the Emperor’s throat with a
poisoned feather and made an end of him.
Mr. Baring-Gould points out that, since Tacitus expressly describes
the poison as “slow,” Agrippina could hardly be surprised and alarmed
when it did not take immediate effect. He concludes that Claudius
contracted a violent indigestion from eating too many figs. This is
no more convincing than the opposite theory. An attack of vomiting,
whether from a natural cause or as an unintended effect of poison,
might easily alarm Claudius, who was very suspicious, and so induce
Agrippina to act. An attack of indigestion, on the other hand, would
hardly have so violent and immediate an effect. The circumstance of
tickling his throat with a feather to cause a vomit, and at the same
time introducing poison, is puzzling; but it was an age of skill in
poisoning, and the feat may have been possible. The question must
remain open. The discrepancies in the narrative are not fatal to it,
but the story itself is no more than a retailing of Roman gossip, which
was at all times more prurient than scrupulous. The problem really
turns on the character of Agrippina, and this is ambiguous enough
to make us hesitate. One may scan the record of her career with the
most penetrating charity without discovering any plain indication of
high character, while the ruin of Lollia Paulina, Domitia Lepida, and
others, may be confidently traced to her. We can only conclude that she
was quite capable of accelerating the death of her husband, and would
have no light interest in doing so; but the circumstances of his death
are quite consistent with the kindlier view that it was due to his
own intemperance. We have not yet, however, reached the close of her
career, and it may be felt that her conduct after the death of Claudius
confirms the darker estimate of her character.
The malcontents of Rome would be sure to agitate in favour of
Britannicus unless the succession was secured for Nero before the
death of Claudius was known. The art with which Agrippina averted
this danger may excite our admiration of her virility and astuteness,
but must inevitably lessen our appreciation of her sensibility. She
announced that Claudius was dangerously ill, and called an assembly
of the Senate. Conscious that the servants of a palace commonly draw
their pay from some one without, she put guards at every approach to
the chamber of the dead man, and devised and carried out a tragi-comedy
of the most extraordinary character. The clothes were drawn over the
lifeless body, bandages and poultices were ostentatiously applied to
it by her servants, and even the mimes, who had been wont to dance
and ring their bells and crack their jokes before the Emperor, were
brought in to perpetrate their follies in the chamber of death. In a
neighbouring room Agrippina joined her conjugal sobs with the laments
of the youthful Britannicus. We are asked to believe, and we have
little difficulty in believing, that while she clung in tears to the
weeping youth, she was merely, with cold calculation, preventing him
from leaving the palace, lest he should fall in the way of the Guards,
or some ambitious partisan, and be proclaimed Emperor.
By noon the preparations of her agents were completed. The gates of the
palace were thrown open, and Nero was sent out, under the care of his
military tutor Burrus, the commander of the Guards. A few voices were
heard to mutter the name of Britannicus, but the cry was feeble, and
the response insignificant. The Guards were long accustomed to see the
superiority of Nero over the sickly young prince, and their support
was secured by a liberal promise of money. They conducted Nero to the
Senate, and bade that helpless body accept him. The same evening a
courier from Agrippina brought word to Sinuessa that Nero was Emperor.
Narcissus had lost, and his figure passes from the scene--with the
inevitable rumour that he was imprisoned or poisoned by Agrippina.
When the Guards came to Nero that night for the watchword he gave
them “The best of mothers,” and Agrippina looked confidently from her
supreme height into the future. Within five years her son would put her
to death with horrible brutality, and jeer at her naked body. No one of
the hundreds of thousands who hailed him with the wildest delight, and
smiled at his amiable irregularities, can have foreseen so rapid and
portentous a degradation. He was then a youth of seventeen, strikingly
handsome both in face and figure, with blue-grey eyes and light curly
hair and finely proportioned limbs. His tutor in arms pronounced him
“a young Apollo.” But his moral and intellectual trainer had failed
as signally as his physical trainer had succeeded. Seneca had vainly
endeavoured to implant in his mind the germs of the noble Stoic
philosophy. Men have disputed from all time whether it was the teacher
or the doctrine that was at fault, while the eugenic school of our time
would relieve both from censure, and regard Nero’s mind as an incurably
corrupt soil. One may venture to differ from both, and wonder if
circumstances had not the greater share in his demoralization. However
that may be, his accession to irresponsible power at such an age, in
such surroundings as we shall discover about him, was a tragedy. His
real advisers were young men, slightly older than himself, and better
versed in the ways of luxury and vice; and the first use he made of his
Imperial power was to toss aside the treatises of the moralists, and
give his whole attention to art, to chariot-racing, and to dissipation.
What sinister use he made of the later hours, or earlier hours, of the
day, and in what melancholy condition his girl-wife must have been,
we shall see in the next chapter. Here we have to consider only his
relations with his mother.
For a few years after Nero’s accession his mother willingly and
profitably ruled in his name. It must not be imagined that she
had, with the astuteness of a Marie de’ Medici, educated him in an
indifference to politics so that she might indulge her own ambition.
The appointment of Seneca as his tutor is the most creditable, though
unhappily the most futile, act of her career. When, however, the
young Emperor refused to be interested in any problem graver than
the art of driving a chariot or playing the flute, she undertook his
Imperial duties, or continued to have that share in the ruling of the
Empire which she had had under Claudius. She received embassies, was
surrounded by a special German guard when she went abroad, and was
associated with Nero on the coinage. It would be difficult to measure
with any precision the influence which she had on Roman affairs during
this period, since Seneca and Burrus had an equal, if not greater, part
in the government; but it may be recalled, with some honour to her,
that the first four years of Nero’s reign were amongst the happiest and
most prosperous that Rome witnessed during the first century.
The first thing to trouble her prosperous and happy use of power was
a certain discontent arising from the old prejudice against women in
politics. The Senators were annoyed because she injudiciously listened
to their debates. They met at this time in the Imperial library,
and the Empress had a door pierced into it from the palace, and sat
listening behind a curtain. The Senators are said to have punished
her indiscretion by making unflattering remarks in the course of the
debates, though it is difficult to believe that they were still capable
of so courageous a protest. On one occasion an important embassy came
to Rome from Armenia, and Agrippina declared that she would sit by the
side of Nero when he received it. This seems to have been a startling
innovation, and Seneca had to avert trouble by advising Nero to descend
from his throne, when his mother entered, and lead her affectionately
from the room.
An incident that shortly occurred gave a nucleus for the
crystallization of this diffused annoyance. A distinguished noble,
Junius Silanus, died, and the familiar whisper of foul play went once
more through all classes of the citizens. His brother Lucius Silanus
was the young noble who had been betrothed to Octavia, and had so
cruelly been separated from her by Agrippina. Was it not natural that
Junius Silanus should wish to avenge his younger brother, and that
Agrippina should detect his plot and have him removed? Tacitus and Dio
fully believed this. As in so many of these cases, however, the only
ground for the charge, as far as we know, is the fact that Silanus
undoubtedly died, and we will not waste time in discussing it. The
Senator had so little of the conspirator in him that even Caligula used
to call him “the golden sheep.” But Rome was convinced that the Empress
was guilty, and the story spread, and is fully accepted by Tacitus,
that she meditated a long series of executions of the men who had
opposed her progress, and that Seneca and Burrus had to restrain her
bloody vindictiveness.
One may decline to accept this charge on such poor and disputable
evidence; but Agrippina now incurred the anger of her son, and
descended rapidly from the height of her power. The young Emperor had,
as I said, used his Imperial license to ignore his tutors and indulge
his low and sensual tastes. He attracted to his side a band of the most
dissipated youths in the city, and his nightly exploits were the talk
of Rome. One of the less hurtful of his indulgences was his passion for
Acte, a beautiful freed slave from the Eastern market, whom Dumas has
made familiar. Agrippina resented the liaison--apparently from a sense
of justice to Octavia--and rebuked Nero. He turned on her with violence
the moment she tried to check his licentious ways, and threatened
to discharge her favourite Pallas. Agrippina was alarmed. She saw a
powerful party, deeply hostile to herself, growing up about her son,
and she felt that the support of Seneca and Burrus was being withdrawn.
She ceased to speak of Acte, and regarded with silent distress the
coarse ways that her son was exhibiting on the streets every night. A
reconciliation at this heavy price could not last. Shortly afterwards
Nero sent her some rich jewels and robes from the Imperial treasures.
She chose to regard this as a reminder that the Imperial wardrobe was
no longer at her disposal, and angrily refused the gifts.
Pallas was at once impeached for treason. The charge was so clumsy, and
Seneca defended him so ably, that he had to be acquitted; but Agrippina
forgot discretion in her victory. In the course of a quarrel with
Nero, she threatened to retire to the camp of the Prætorian Guard with
Britannicus and have him proclaimed Emperor. The only effect of this
was to open Nero’s long career of crime. The few months--we are still
at the beginning of the year 55--of unrestrained license and flattery
had destroyed the little moral restraint that Seneca had taught him,
and he determined to murder Britannicus. In the Roman prison was the
skilled poisoner, Locusta, whom Agrippina was believed to have employed
in the murder of her husband. Nero ordered her to prepare a deadly
poison, and, when the first preparation failed, he had her brought to
the palace. With blows and oaths he forced her to prepare a more deadly
drug under his eyes, and it was used the same evening. Britannicus
sat with his friends on one of the couches in the dining-hall at the
palace, and asked for a drink. It was winter-time, and the wine (not
soup, as Serviez says) was heated. He complained that it was too hot,
and the poison was administered with the cooling water, so that the
taster would not need to take a second sip.
A great horror fell upon the room as Britannicus, writhing with pain,
sank to the floor. Octavia sat in silent terror by the side of her
husband, who carelessly observed that Britannicus had one of his usual
epileptic fits. Agrippina openly betrayed her horror and disgust, and
from that date was regarded by her son with bitter hostility. Whether
or no it be true that Nero whitened with chalk the spots which broke
out on the body, the substance of the story cannot be discredited.
It is true that Nero was yet in his eighteenth year only, but his
conduct had been vicious and unbridled to a criminal extent. Within
a very short time we shall find him sinking to the lowest depths of
brutality. The fact that he is praised in the treatise “On Clemency,”
which Seneca wrote about that time, can only show either that the too
indulgent tutor refused to believe the crime, or that, as we have too
many reasons to know, the distinguished Stoic came perilously close to
that art of casuistry in which moralists of many schools have been apt
to excel.
In her abhorrence of the foul deed Agrippina drew closer to the tender
and virtuous Octavia, and confronted Nero with a sternness that had
been too long delayed. The breach between them widened. One day Nero
ordered that two and a half million denarii should be given to his
favourite secretary. Agrippina had the mass of coin brought under
the eyes of the Emperor, to make him realize his extravagance. He
laughingly observed that he did not think the sum was so small, and
ordered it to be doubled. The more lavishly he squandered, the more
carefully Agrippina saved, until the frivolous or malicious companions
of his revels suggested that she was gathering funds for the purpose
of dethroning him. He at once withdrew the guard he had given her, and
ordered her to leave his palace.
Agrippina had enjoyed only for one year the power which she had sought
so long. She was yet only in her fortieth year. The envoys of kings
had sued humbly at her feet, and her litter and guard had flashed
through the streets of Rome with an impression of greatness that no
other woman then known had ever possessed. But the reins passed from
her hands to her brutal son and his despicable courtiers. From the
palace she passed, with a few devoted followers, to the small mansion
of her grandmother Antonia, and the sycophantic courtiers deserted her.
Graver citizens, watching the rapid degradation of the Imperial house,
followed her with sympathy, but few dared to visit her in the lonely
mansion. Unfortunately, she quarrelled with one of these few, and came
near to losing her life.
Her old friend Julia Silana, a woman of great wealth but very faded
beauty, proposed to marry a handsome young Roman knight. Agrippina
imprudently advised him not to marry a woman of such advanced years
and so adventurous a record. Her words were repeated to Julia, and
friendship was exchanged for the most bitter animosity. Julia Silana
was childless, and it is conjectured that Agrippina hoped to inherit
her wealth if she died unmarried. Whether she believed this or no,
Julia conceived a deep hatred, and induced two of her clients to accuse
Agrippina of high treason. Nero seems to have been in an uncertain
mood, and an ingenious plot was devised to win him.
One night when he lay, flushed with wine, after the banquet, his
favourite comedian Paris came to amuse him. Nero noticed that the man
was agitated and less merry than usual, and asked the reason. Paris,
who was acting in the service of the plotters, confessed with artistic
tears that there was a conspiracy afoot to dethrone his noble master;
that Agrippina was about to marry Rubellius Plautus, a Senator of
Imperial descent, and seize the throne. The inebriated Emperor at
once demanded their heads, but Seneca and Burrus restrained him, and
compelled him to hear Agrippina on the morrow. In her speech, which
Tacitus has preserved, she refuted and routed her assailants with such
vigour that she was, apparently, reconciled to Nero and restored to
some authority. Julia Silana was banished, Domitia’s chamberlain (who
had instructed the actor) was executed, and Agrippina’s own followers
were rewarded.
The two years that followed this reconciliation are obscure, and we can
only dimly conjecture that Agrippina had some peace and prestige, but
no longer shared the Imperial rule. Then, in the year 58, another and
unexpected woman came into the field, and Agrippina sank rapidly toward
an abyss of tragedy.
In an earlier chapter we saw that Messalina drove to death a very
wealthy and beautiful Roman lady named Poppæa Sabina. It was her
daughter, who had inherited her wealth and her beauty, that now
attracted the amorous regard of the Emperor. She had married one of
Nero’s favourite companions, who babbled in his cups of her dazzling
beauty, and inflamed the desire of Nero. In the next chapter we
shall read of her natural charms, of the singular art with which she
cultivated them and the coquetry with which she employed them, and of
the superb and fabulous splendour of her equipage. It is enough to
say here that Nero visited her, learned that she was willing to be
an Empress, but not the mistress of an Emperor, and resolved to make
any sacrifice to secure so unique a treasure. The first victim to be
sacrificed to the new passion was Octavia, and the delicate and timid
girl would make little resistance. But Agrippina had espoused her cause
with a spirit that redeems much of her irregular conduct, and she now
saw that her own interest, as well as that of Octavia, required that
she should oppose Poppæa with all her strength. In that resolution she
wrote her death-sentence, not ignobly.
Even if we refuse to admit some of the incredible statements that are
made regarding it in the chronicles, it is clear that an extraordinary
struggle now took place about the person of the Emperor. The
antagonists were Poppæa and Agrippina. Octavia was one of those frail,
lily-like Roman women who never struggled; Poppæa’s husband was easily
set aside. Poppæa affected coyness, and refused to have any other
than conjugal relations with Nero, while she employed all her charms
to inflame him. Agrippina fought so desperately that Roman gossip,
and Roman historians, ascribed the most infamous devices to her. In
spite of his expression of doubt, it is plain that Tacitus shares the
popular belief, which he relates, that Agrippina used to sit with her
son in loose robes when he was heated with wine, and to ride in the
same litter with him. Against this charge, however, Dio defends her
(lxi, 11). He says that one of Nero’s courtesans resembled his mother,
and that a light remark of his on that circumstance gave birth to the
libel. Poppæa would not be indisposed to encourage the story. On
the other hand, Mr. Baring-Gould attempts an untenable defence when
he speaks of Agrippina as “the poor old lady.” She was only in her
forty-second year, and was a woman of great beauty and little scruple.
Whatever arts Agrippina employed in the struggle, she rapidly lost
ground before so formidable a rival, and Poppæa incited Nero against
her. He harassed her with lawsuits when she was in Rome, and sent men
to insult her when she withdrew to her villa in the country. Before
long Agrippina became sensible that her struggle for power had passed
into the appalling experience of a struggle for life against her own
son. Nero made several attempts to poison her, but she was on her guard
against this familiar weapon. It is said that she had an antidote
compounded of walnuts, figs, rue, and salt. Then a freedman in Nero’s
suite suggested a more insidious scheme. Her country house was in
repair, and Anicetus directed the workmen to saw through the heavy
timber over her bed, so that the room would collapse when she went to
rest. Agrippina was warned, however, and the plot was defeated.
By the early spring of the year 59 Nero had fallen into a mood of the
most sombre and bitter dejection. Poppæa continued to taunt him with
his dependence on his mother, and to display her maddening charms just
beyond the range of his eager arms. The better citizens of Rome, on
the other hand, now perceived his horrible design, and watched the
struggle with anxiety. As he sat at the theatre one day in this mood,
his attention was caught by one of the elaborate mechanical spectacles
which were often put on the stage at the time. A ship sailed into view
of the spectators, fell into pieces, and disgorged a number of wild
beasts upon the stage. Nero asked Anicetus, who was a skilful mechanic,
whether he could build a ship that would thus fall to pieces on the
water at a given moment. The man promised to do so, and Nero went down
to the coast in more cheerful temper.
It was the month of March, when wealthy Romans were wont to forsake
the city for the marble villas which shone in the spring sun on the
flowered hills about the northern corner of the Bay of Naples. The
season began with the festival of Minerva on March 19th. With some
surprise and suspicion, Agrippina, who had gone down to her villa,
received an affectionate invitation to join her son at Baiæ for the
celebration; and she heard from other quarters that he had announced
a desire to be reconciled with her. She went on board the Liburnian
galley which lay off the gardens of her villa at Antium, and sailed to
Baiæ. Nero met her in the Imperial galley, kissed her affectionately,
and invited her to a banquet which his friend Otho, the husband of
Poppæa, would give that night in honour of their reconciliation. She
consented, but it is clear that she wavered between her consciousness
of the utter unscrupulousness of her son and the bright vision of a
return to happiness which he held before her.
When the hour came for going, she was told that her galley had met with
an accident, but that a superb gilded galley, with sails of silk and a
military guard on board, had been sent as a love-gift from her son in
commemoration of their restored affection. She gazed with suspicion on
the beautiful object, as it lay mirrored in the waters of the little
haven, and decided to go overland, on a litter, to Otho’s villa. But
the amiable behaviour of Nero at the banquet dispelled the last shade
of her suspicion. In the joy which his caresses and his well-feigned
affection gave her, she did not notice the passing of the hours until
midnight, when she rose to go. The beautiful ship with the gilded
flanks and the silken sails awaited her once more, and this time she
embarked on it. Nero kissed her eyes and her hands, put his arms about
her and pressed her to his bosom, held her while he gave a last long
look into her eyes, and then--abandoned her to the murderer Anicetus.
The galley shot out over the smooth scented waters under a canopy
of brilliant stars. Agrippina sat in her cabin, in the soft spring
air, and talked about the happy future with her one male attendant,
Crepereius Gallus, and her one maid, Acerronia Pollia. And suddenly, as
they reached the deep water, there was an ugly crack, and the roof of
the cabin fell on them. Gallus was killed outright, but the two women
were saved, as the stout walls failed to collapse, and there was some
misunderstanding among the crew in the dark. The maid rushed to the
deck calling for aid for the Empress--others say that she represented
herself as the Empress--and was slain. Agrippina listened with terror
to the crash of timber and the rush of armed men, and realized the
treachery of her son. Still she did not court death. She dropped
quietly over the side, and swam toward the distant shore. Her strength
gradually failed, and she was about to abandon the awful struggle, when
some men who were fishing by night picked her up and took her ashore.
Wounded by the falling timbers, exhausted by the struggle, stricken
to the heart by the brutality of her son, she nevertheless rallied
at once, and devised a fresh plan. She calmly sent a message to Nero
that, by the favour of the gods, she had survived the wreck of the
galley which he had given her, but requested that he would not come to
visit her until her wound was healed. Without a word to her attendants
about the horrible plot, she ordered the remedies for her condition,
and trusted that Nero would repent. Through the remaining hours of
the night she lay on her couch, with one maid in attendance, her room
feebly lit by a single light. The whole country without was alive with
men. The shore was lit up with their torches, and they gathered about
the house to express their joy that Agrippina had escaped shipwreck on
the very night of so auspicious a reconciliation. As the first light
of dawn broke on the encircling hills, Anicetus and his men entered
the house with Nero’s reply. She read something of its tenor in their
faces, and said to their leader: “Hast thou come to visit me? Then tell
my son that I have recovered. Hast thou come to slay me? Then I say it
is not my son who sent thee.” A sailor struck her over the head with a
stick, and she saw that the end had come. Tearing aside her loose robe,
and baring her white body to the men, she said sadly: “Strike here,
Anicetus, for it was here that Nero was born.” She fell dead under a
shower of blows.
Nero had heard that his mother had escaped. Dreading that she might
stir into flame the resentment of Rome, he called a council of his
friends. Seneca is said to have been silent, Burrus indignant. At that
moment Agrippina’s chamberlain entered with her message. In a flash of
cunning Anicetus threw a sword at his feet, and pretended that he had
been sent by Agrippina to kill Nero. The Emperor accepted the sordid
pretext, and, as Burrus bluntly refused to send his soldiers to execute
her, Anicetus gladly charged himself with the task. He was appointed
admiral of one of the fleets for his services. It is even recorded,
though details like this must always be regarded with reserve, that
when the servants bore their mistress’s body to the garden, and
stripped it for the pile, Nero stood by and said, jeeringly: “I had no
idea she was so handsome.”
A report was issued, and a formal announcement made to the Senate,
that Agrippina had attempted the Emperor’s life, and that, when
Nero sent men to arrest her, she took her own life. And the Senate
licked the feet of Nero, decreed games and festivals in gratitude
for his preservation, and led the enthusiasm of the people. So well
known was the murder that an actor referred mockingly to it in the
theatre. “Farewell, my father,” he said, eating a mushroom--“Farewell,
mother,” he added, imitating the action of a swimmer. The common folk
repeated numbers of these grim jokes. But they enjoyed the games of
thanksgiving, and Senators and nobles took part in them on the stage
and in the arena, and Rome sank swiftly into the terrible degradation
of Nero’s later reign, which will occupy us in the next chapter.
It is hardly necessary to add a summary estimate of Agrippina’s
character. In the view of Stahr and Baring-Gould and a few other recent
writers, she was “queenly, honourable, and pure,” and had only the
doubtful vices of ambition and pride. For Tacitus and the other Latin
writers she was capable of any enormity, and guilty of most. It will
be seen that I hold an intermediate view. She was a woman of great
distinction, ability, and strength. Had she lived in an age when virtue
was not inexpedient, she would have been an illustrious and virtuous
queen. But she had to struggle to obtain and retain power in an age
when a new and more intellectual moral standard was replacing an older
and more instinctive standard, and, where it seemed profitable, she
availed herself of the moral scepticism which such a change always
engenders. She was queenly, but she was not entirely honourable, and
she was almost certainly not pure. But she served Rome well, and left
it happy and prosperous; and her unselfish passion for the advancement
of her son, her chivalrous and fatal defence of his injured wife, and
the bravery with which she met his unspeakable brutality, do much to
outweigh her evil deeds in the scale of Osiris.