She added: ‘No doubt it is as worthy of a Roman Emperor to roam about at night and join in street brawls with slaves as it is for him to sing, and write verses, and dance on the stage.’
‘How do you know that I have roamed the streets?’
Unwittingly she had betrayed herself, but in an instant she recovered from her confusion.
‘What Otho and your other boon companions do—such as they are—is notorious; and when Cæsar has a black eye the event is hard to account for in any ordinary way.’
‘Say rather that your spies have told you about it,’ said Nero.
‘And if they have,’ she said defiantly—‘what then?’
‘Why this,’ he answered; ‘that, as I have told you before, I am Emperor, and mean to be Emperor; and if you do not choose to be taught it by fair means, by all the gods, you shall be taught it by foul.’
‘By all the gods?’ said Agrippina, repeating his oath. ‘Are you not afraid of their wrath?’
Nero smiled a peculiar smile. ‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘Why should I fear gods when I can make them myself?’[53]
Agrippina was stung by the sense of her impotence, and maddened by the shipwreck of her ambition; but she was too proud and fierce to abandon the contest.