‘The Augusta has not been so careful as she might have been,’ said Seneca, in his mildest manner. ‘Those frequent secret meetings with her friends; that courting of senators of influence; those attentions to military personages; those open complaints about the children of Claudius, have aroused suspicion.’
Agrippina turned upon the speaker her flashing glance, and he quailed beneath it. ‘Is this your philosophic gratitude?’ she said. ‘But for me, you might have been dying of malaria in Corsica; and you, Burrus, might have remained a tenth-rate tribune.’
‘We are but obeying the Emperor’s behests,’ said Burrus, in a less threatening tone.
‘And, pray, who are my accusers?’
‘Late last night this charge was laid before the Emperor by Paris—’
‘By Paris!’ said Agrippina, in tones of crushing scorn. ‘Paris is an actor, a buffoon, a pantomime, a thing of infamy whom I scarcely brook to name. Pray, go on.’
‘He had been sent by Atimetus, the freedman of Domitia.’
‘Domitia—and her slave concubine!’ said Agrippina. ‘Of him I deign no word; but she—what has she been doing all these years? While I was arranging the adoption of Nero, his marriage with Octavia, his promotion to the proconsular dignity, his nomination as a future Consul, all that led to his imperial elevation—what was she doing? Improving her fishponds! And now she wants to rob me of my Nero, and for that purpose gets up a pantomime with her paramour and her dancer! Pray, is that all?’
‘The sources of the information were Iturius and Calvisius.’
‘Iturius and Calvisius!—ex-slaves, spendthrifts, debauchees, the scum of the earth, who want to repair their squalid bankruptcies by the gain of turning informers. They are nobodies; poor pieces on the draughts-board. Who moved them?’