regulate their destiny only in part; that about us, above us, are
forces complex and obscure, which we can hardly comprehend, which
invest us, seize us, impel us whither we had not thought to go, now
to shipwreck on the rocks of misadventure, now to the discovery of
islands of happiness, or to find, like Columbus, an America on the
way to India. The Greeks called this power; the Latins, Fortuna, and
deified it; erected temples and made sacrifices to it; dedicated to
it a cult, of which Augustus was a devotee, and which contained more
secret wisdom of life than all the superb theories on human destiny
conceived by European genius in the delirium of this quarter-hour of
measureless might in which we are living. No, man is not the voluntary
artificer of his whole destiny; fortune and misfortune, triumph and
catastrophe, are never entirely proportioned to personal merit or
blame; every generation finds the world organised in a certain order
of interests, forces, traditions, relations, and as it enjoys the good
that preceding generations have accomplished, so in part it expiates
the errors they have committed; as it draws advantage from beneficent
forces acting outside of it and independent of its merit, so it
suffers from the sinister forces that it finds--even though blameless
itself--acting through the great mass of the world, among men and
their works. From this relation to the unseen follows a rule of wisdom
that modern men, full of unbounded pride, and persuaded that they
are the beginning and end of the universe, too often forget: we must
indeed press on with all our powers to the accomplishment of a great
task, for although our destiny is never entirely made by our own
hands, there is no destiny on the earth for the lazy; but, since
a part of what we are depends not on ourselves, but upon what the
ancients called Fortune, we dare never be too much elated over
success, nor abased by failure. The wheel of destiny turns by a
mysterious law, alike for families and for peoples: those in high
position may fall; those in low, may rise.
Certainly Cæsar never suspected when he was fighting the Gauls, that
the great-grandsons of the vanquished would live in villas modelled on
the Roman, but more sumptuous; that the great Gallic nobles would have
the satisfaction of parading before the people that conquered them a
latinity more impressive and magnificent; and that some day the Gaul
put by him to fire and sword would get the better, in empire, in
wealth, in culture, of even Italy.
Nero
On the 13th of October of 54 A.D., when Emperor Claudius died, the
Senate chose as his successor his adopted son, Nero, a young man of
seventeen, fat and short-sighted, who had until then studied only
music, singing, and drawing. This choice of a child-emperor, who
lacked imperial qualities and suggested the child kings of Oriental
monarchies, was a scandalous novelty in the constitutional history of
Rome. The ancient historians, especially Tacitus, considered the event
as the result of an intrigue, cleverly arranged by Nero's mother,
Agrippina, a daughter of Germanicus and granddaughter of Agrippa, the
builder of the Pantheon. According to these historians, Agrippina,
a highly ambitious woman, induced Claudius to marry her after
Messalina's death, although she was a widow and had a child, and as
soon as she entered the emperor's mansion she began to open the way
for the election of her son. In order to exclude Britannicus, the son
of Messalina, from succession, she persuaded Claudius to adopt Nero;
then, with the help of the two tutors of the young man, Seneca and
Burrhus, created in the Senate and among the Prætorians, a party
favourable to her son; no sooner did she feel that she could rely on
the Senate and the Prætorians, than she poisoned Claudius.
Too many difficulties prevent our accepting this version. To cite one
of them will suffice: if Agrippina wished--as she surely did--that her
son should succeed Claudius, she must also have wished that Claudius
would live at least eight or ten years longer. As a great-grandson of
Drusus, a grandson of Germanicus and the last descendant of his line,
the only line in the whole family enjoying a real popularity, Nero was
sure of election if he were of age at the death of Claudius. After the
terrible scandal in which his mother had disappeared, Britannicus was
no longer a competitor to be feared. There was only one danger for
Nero, if Claudius should die too soon, the Senate might refuse to
trust the Empire to a child.
I believe that Claudius died of disease, probably, if we can judge
from Tacitus's account, of gastroenteritis, and that Agrippina's
coterie, surprised by this sudden death, which upset all their plans,
decided to put through Nero's election in spite of his youth, in order
to insure the power to the line of Drusus, which had so much sympathy
among the masses. As a matter of fact, the admiration for Drusus
and his family triumphed over all other considerations: Nero became
emperor at seventeen; but when the election was over, Rome--again
according to the tales of the ancient historians--saw a still
greater scandal than his election. The young man--and this is
credible--hastened to engage as his master the first zither-player
of Rome, Terpnos; continued his study of singing; and bought statues,
pictures, bronzes, beautiful slaves, while his mother seized the
actual control of the State.
Agrippina insisted on being kept informed of all affairs; directed
the home and foreign policy; and if she did not reach the point of
partaking in the sessions of the Senate, which would have been the
supreme scandal, she called it to meet in her palace and, concealed
behind a black curtain, listened to its discussions. In short, the
Empire fell into the hands of a woman; Rome saw the evolution of
customs, through which woman had for four centuries been freeing
herself from her ancient slavery, suddenly a fact accomplished by
her visible intervention in politics--the intervention that the great
keepers of tradition, first among them Cato, had always decried as the
most frightful cataclysm that could menace the city.
This story is also the exaggeration of a simpler truth. Even if Nero
had been a very serious young man, at his age he could not by himself
have governed the Empire; it would have been necessary for him to
serve a long apprenticeship and to listen to experienced counsellors.
Burrhus and Seneca, his two teachers, were naturally destined to be
his counsellors; but why should not his mother also have helped him?
Like all the women of her family, Agrippina was of superior mind, of
high culture, and, as Tacitus himself admits, led a most respectable
life, at least to the time of her marriage with Claudius. Brought up,
as she was, in that family which for eighty years had been governing
the Empire, she was well informed about affairs of State. Is it
possible to suppose that such a woman would shut herself up in her
home to weave wool, when, with her talent, her energy, her experience,
she could be of so much service to her son and to the State? We do not
need to attribute to Agrippina a monstrous ambition, as does Tacitus,
in order to explain how the Empire was ruled during the first two
years, by Seneca, Burrhus, and Agrippina; it was a natural consequence
of the situation created by the premature death of Claudius. Tacitus
himself is forced to recognise that the government was excellent.
Helping her son in the apprenticeship of the Empire, Agrippina did her
duty; but during restless times when misunderstanding is almost a
law of social life, it is often very dangerous to do one's duty. The
period of Agrippina and Nero was full of confusion; though apparently
quiet, Italy was deeply torn by the great struggle that gives the
history of the Empire its marvellous character of actuality, the
struggle between the old Roman military society and the intellectual
civilisation of the Orient.
The ancient aristocratic and military Roman society had had so great
and world-wide a success, that the ideas, the institutions and the
customs, that had made it a perfect model of State, considered as an
organ of political and military domination, exercised a great prestige
on the following generations. Even during the time of which we speak,
every one was forced after eight years of peace, to admit that the
Empire had been created by those ideas, those institutions and those
customs; that for the sake of the Empire they must be maintained,
and alike in family as in State, must be opposed all that forms
the essence of intellectual civilisation; that is to say, all
that develops personal selfishness at the expense of collective
interest--luxury, idleness, pleasure, celibacy, feminism, and at
the same time, all that develops personality and intelligence at the
expense of tradition--liberty of women, independence of children,
variety of personal tendencies, and the critical spirit in all forms.
In spite of the resistance offered by traditions, peace and wealth
favoured everywhere the diffusion of the intellectual civilisation of
the Hellenised Orient. The woman now become free, and the intellectual
man now become powerful, were the springs to set in motion this
revolution. Under Claudius, in vain had they exiled Seneca, the
brilliant philosopher and the peace-advocating humanitarian, who had
diffused in high Roman society so many ideas and sentiments considered
by the traditionalists pernicious to the force of the State; he had
come back far more powerful, and ruled the Empire. Husbands, burdened
by the excessive expenses, by the too frequent infidelities, by the
tyrannical caprices of their wives, in vain regretted the good old
time when husbands were absolute masters; the invading feminism
weakened everywhere the strength of the aristocratic and military
traditions.
So contradiction was everywhere. The Republic had still its old
aristocratic constitution, but the nobility was no longer spurred by
that absorbing and exclusive passion for politics and war, which
had been its power. Society life, pleasure, amateur philosophy
and literature, mysticism, and, above all, sports, dissipated in a
thousand directions its energy and activity. Too many young men
were to be found in the nobility who, like Nero, preferred singing,
dancing, and driving, to caring for their clients or enduring the
troubles of public office.
Augustus and Tiberius had done their utmost to strengthen the great
Latin principle of parsimony in public and private life: in order to
set a good example they had lived very simply; they had caused new
sumptuary laws to be passed and tried to enforce the old ones;
they had spent the State moneys, not for the keeping of artists and
writers, nor for the building of monuments of useless size, but to
build the great roads of the Empire, to strengthen the frontiers;
they had made the public treasure into an aid fund for all suffering
cities, stricken by earthquake, fire, or flood. And yet the Oriental
influence, so favourable to unproductive and luxurious expenditure,
gained ground steadily. The merchant of Syrian and Egyptian objects
_de luxe_, in spite of the sumptuary laws, found a yearly increasing
patronage in all the cities of Italy. The exactingness of the desire
for public spectacles increased, even in secondary cities. The Italian
people were losing their peasant's petty avarice and growing fond
of things monumental and colossal, which was the great folly of the
Orient. They found the monuments of Rome poor; everywhere, even in
modest _municipia_, they demanded immense theatres, great temples,
monumental basilicas, spacious forums, adorned with statues. In spite
of the principles insisted upon with so much vigour by Augustus and
Tiberius, public finances had, thanks to the weak Claudius and the
extravagant Messalina, already gone through a period of great waste
and disorder.
These contradictions, and the psychological disorder that followed,
explain the discords and struggles very soon raging around the young
Emperor. The public began to feel shocked by the attention that
Agrippina gave to State affairs, as by a new and this time intolerable
scandal of feminism. Agrippina was not a feminist, as a matter of
fact, but a traditionalist, proud of the glory of her family, attached
to the ancient Roman ideas, desirous only of seeing her son develop
into a new Germanicus, a second Drusus. Solely the necessity of
helping Nero had led her to meddle with politics. But not in vain had
Cato declaimed so loudly in Rome against women who pretend to govern
states; not in vain had Augustus's domination been at least partly
founded on the great antifeminist legend of Antony and Cleopatra,
which represented the fall of the great Triumvir as the consequence of
a woman's influence. The public, although willing to give all possible
freedom to women in other things, still remained quite firm on this
point: politics must remain the monopoly of man. So to the popular
imagination, Agrippina soon became a sort of Roman Cleopatra. Many
interests gathered quickly to reinforce this antifeminist reaction,
which, although exaggerated, had its origin in sincere feeling.
Agrippina, as a true descendant of Drusus, meant to prepare her son
to rule the Empire according to the principles held by his great
ancestors. Among these principles was to be counted not only
the defence of Romanism and the maintenance of the aristocratic
constitution, but also a wise economy in the management of finances.
Agrippina is a good instance of that well-known fact--the British
have noticed it more than once in India--that in public administration
discreet and capable women keep, as a rule, the spirit of economy
with which they manage the home. This is why, especially in despotic
states, they rule better than men. Even before Claudius's death,
Agrippina had vigorously opposed waste and plunder; it also appears
that the reorganisation of finances after Messalina's death was due
chiefly to her.
The continuation under Nero of this severe régime displeased a great
number of persons, who dreamed of seeing again the easy sway of
Messalina. From the moment they were satisfied that Agrippina, like
Augustus and Tiberius, would not allow the public money to be stolen,
many people found her insistent interference in public affairs
unbearable. In short, Agrippina became unpopular, and, as always
happens, because of faults she did not have. A noble deed, which
she was trying to accomplish in defence of tradition, definitively
compromised her situation.
Her son resembled neither Agrippina nor the great men of her family.
He had a most indocile temperament, rebellious to tradition, in no
sense Roman. Little by little, Agrippina saw the young Emperor develop
into a precocious _debauché_, frightfully selfish, erratically vain,
full of extravagant ideas, who, instead of setting the example of
respect toward sumptuary laws, openly violated them all; and across
whose mind from time to time flashed sinister lightnings of cruelty.
Nero's youth--the fact is not surprising--did not resist the mortal
seductions of immense power and immense riches; but Agrippina, the
proud granddaughter of the conqueror of Germany, must have chafed
at the idea of her son's preferring musical entertainments to the
sessions of the Senate, singing lessons to the study of tactics and
strategy.
She applied herself, therefore, with all her energy to the work of
tearing her son from his pleasures, and bringing about his return
to the great traditions of his family. Nero resisted: the struggle
between mother and son grew complicated; it excited the passion of the
public, which felt that this conflict had a greater importance than
any other family quarrel, that it was actually a struggle between
traditional Romanism and Oriental customs. Unfortunately, every one
sided with Nero: the sincere friends of tradition, because they did
not want the rule of a woman, whoever she might be; those that longed
for Messalina's times, because they saw personified in Agrippina the
austere and inflexible spirit of the _gens Claudia_. The situation was
soon without an issue. The accord of Agrippina with Seneca and Burrhus
was troubled, because the two teachers of the young Emperor, under
the impression of public malcontent, had somewhat withdrawn from her.
Nero, who was sullen, cynical, and lazy, feared his mother too much to
have the courage to oppose her openly, but he did not fear her enough
to mend his ways. The mother, on her side, was set to do her duty to
the end. Like all situations without an issue, this one was suddenly
solved by an unexpected event.
Insisting on wanting to make a Roman of this young _debauché_,
Agrippina made him into a murderer. Nero, progressing from one caprice
to another, finally imagined a great folly: to divorce Octavia and to
raise to her place a beautiful freed-woman called Acte. According to
one of the fundamental laws of the State, the great law of Augustus on
marriage, which forbade marriages between senators and freedwomen, the
union of Nero and Acte could be only a concubinage. Agrippina wanted
to avoid this scandal; and, as Nero persisted in his idea, it seems
that she actually thought of having him deposed and of securing the
choice of Britannicus, a very serious young man, as his successor. A
true Roman, Agrippina was ready to sacrifice her son for the sake of
the Republic.
The threat was, or appeared to be, so serious to Nero, that it made
him step over the threshold of crime. One day during a great dinner
to which he had been invited by Nero, Britannicus was suddenly seized
with violent convulsions. "It is an attack of epilepsy," said Nero
calmly, giving orders to his slaves to remove Britannicus and care
for him. The young man died in a few hours and every one believed that
Nero had poisoned him.
This dastardly crime aroused at first a sense of horror and fright
among the people, but the impression did not last long. In spite of
all his faults, Nero was liked. In Rome they had respected Augustus
and hated Tiberius; they had killed Caligula and jeered at Claudius;
Nero seemed to be the first of the Roman Emperors who stood a chance
of becoming popular. Contrary to Agrippina's ideas, it was his
frivolity that pleased the great masses, because this frivolity
corresponded to the slow but progressive decay of the old Roman
virtues in them. They expected from Nero a less hard, less severe,
less parsimonious government--in a word, a government less Roman than
the rule of his predecessors, a government which, instead of force,
glory, and wisdom, meant pleasure and ease.
So it happened that many soon forgot the unfortunate Britannicus, and
some even tried to justify Nero by invoking State necessity. Agrippina
alone remained the object of the universal hatred, as the sole cause
of so many misfortunes. Implacable enemies, concealed in the shadow,
were subtly at work against her; they organised a campaign of absurd
calumnies in the Court itself, and it is this campaign from which
Tacitus drew his material.
Some wretches finally dared even accuse her of conspiracy against
the life of her son. Agrippina, refusing to plead for herself, still
weathered the storm, because Nero was afraid of her, and though he
tried to escape from her authority, did not dare to initiate any
energetic move against her. To engage in a final struggle with so
indomitable a woman, another woman was necessary. This woman was
Poppæa Sabina, a very handsome and able dame of the great Roman
nobility. Poppæa represented Oriental feminism in its most dangerous
form: a woman completely demoralised by luxury, elegance, society
life, and voluptuousness, who eluded all her duties toward the species
in order to enjoy and make others enjoy her beauty.
Corrupted as that age was, Poppæa was more corrupt. As soon as she
observed the strong impression she had made on Nero, she conceived
the plan of becoming his wife; her beauty would then be admired by the
whole Empire, would be surrounded by a luxury for which the means of
her husband were not sufficient, and with which no other Roman dame
could compete. There was one obstacle--Agrippina.
Agrippina protected Octavia, a true Roman woman, simple and honest:
Agrippina would never consent to this absolutely unjustifiable
divorce. To force Nero to a decisive move against his mother, Poppæa
had her husband sent on some mission to Lusitania and became the
mistress of the Emperor. From that point the situation changed.
Dominated by Poppæa's influence, Nero found the courage to force
Agrippina to abandon his palace and seek refuge in Antony's house; he
took from her the privilege of Prætorian guards, which he himself
had granted her; he reduced to a minimum the number and time of his
visits, and carefully avoided being left alone with her. Agrippina's
influence, to the general satisfaction, rapidly declined, while Nero
gained every day in popularity. Agrippina, however, was too energetic
a woman peaceably to resign herself: she began a violent campaign
against the two adulterers, which deeply troubled the public. In Rome,
where Augustus had promulgated his stern law against adultery; in
Rome, where Augustus himself had been obliged to submit to his own
law, when he exiled his daughter and his grand-daughter and almost
exterminated the whole family; in Rome, a young man of twenty-two
dared all but officially introduce adultery and polygamy into the
Palatine! In her struggle against Nero, Agrippina once more stood on
tradition: and Nero was afraid.
Poppæa was probably the one who suggested to Nero the idea of killing
Agrippina. The idea had been, as it were, floating in the air for
a long time, because Agrippina was embarrassing to many persons and
interests. It was chiefly the party that wanted to sack the imperial
budget, to introduce the finance of great expenditure, which could not
tolerate this clever and energetic woman, who was so faithful to
the great traditions of Augustus and Tiberius, who could neither be
frightened nor corrupted. One should not consider the assassination of
Agrippina as a simple personal crime of Nero, as the result of his
and Poppæa's quarrels with his mother. This crime, besides personal
causes, had a political origin. Nero would never have dared commit
such a misdeed, in the eyes of the Roman almost a sacrilege, if he had
not been encouraged by Agrippina's unpopularity, by the violent hatred
of so many against his mother.
Nero hesitated long; he decided only when his freedman, Anicetus,
the commander of the fleet, proposed a plan that seemed to guarantee
secrecy for the crime: to have a ship built with a concealed trap. It
was the spring of the year 59 A.D.; the Court had moved to Baiæ, on
the Gulf of Naples. If Nero succeeded in getting his mother on board
the vessel, Anicetus would take upon himself the task of burying
quickly below the waves the secret of her death; the people who hated
Agrippina would easily be satisfied with the explanations to be given
them.
Nero executed his part of the plan in perfect cold-blood. He made
believe he had repented and was anxious for a reconciliation with his
mother; he invited her to Baiæ and so profusely lavished kindnesses
and amiabilities upon her, that Agrippina finally believed in his
sincerity.
After spending a few days at Baiæ, Agrippina decided to return to
Antium; in a very happy frame of mind and full of hopes that her son
would soon show himself to the world the man she had dreamed, the
descendant of Drusus, she boarded one evening the fatal ship; Nero
had escorted her thither and pressed her to his heart with the most
demonstrative tenderness.
A calm night diffused its starry shadows over the quiet sea, which
with subdued murmur lulled in their sleep the great summer homes
along the shore. The ship departed, carrying toward her sombre destiny
Agrippina, absorbed in her smiling dreams. When the moment came and
the wrecking machine was set to work, the vessel did not sink as fast
as they had hoped: it listed, overturning people and things. Agrippina
had time to understand the danger; with admirable presence of mind she
jumped overboard and escaped by swimming, while, during the confusion
on the boat, the hired murderers killed one of Agrippina's freedwomen,
mistaking her for Agrippina herself. The ship finally sank; the
murderers also took to the water; everything returned to its wonted
calm; the starry night still diffused its silent shadows; the sea
still cradled with subdued murmur the homes along the coast--all men
slept except one.