These words, repeated to Agrippina, showed her clearly that if she was going to succeed in her purpose of getting the throne for her son, Nero, it would not do for her to risk any delay. She knew that she could do nothing injurious to her husband in the presence of his secretary, Narcissus. So she arranged with the physician of Narcissus that he should be sent away to some medicinal springs for his health. When he was gone she proceeded with her atrocious plan. By some means she secured the connivance of Halotes, the emperor’s prægustator (the slave whose duty it was to protect him from poison by tasting every dish before it was presented to him) and of Xenephon of Cos, his physician. Then she consulted with Locusta, the infamous woman who is known to have been a professional poisoner, often resorted to in those turbulent days. The very existence of such a person is a frightful indication of the prevailing enormities. A compound was sought that might be best suited for the special purpose, not too rapid in its action to excite suspicion and not too slow, lest Claudius should have time to arrange something for Britannicus. The poison was administered to him in a dish of mushrooms, of which he was extravagantly fond. It is said that Agrippina herself handed him a choice morsel of the food when he was somewhat intoxicated, and it immediately caused him to be silent. Afterward, when there were indications that, on account of his gluttony, it might be ineffective, a physician was induced, under pretense of causing vomiting and so giving him relief from pain, to thrust a feather smeared with a deadly liquid down his throat. This completed the wicked work. Before morning this Cæsar was a corpse.
While all these exciting scenes were taking place in the reign of Claudius, the Apostle Paul had been prosecuting his wonderfully earnest ministry of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and was making missionary journeys in Asia Minor, Macedonia, and Greece. It is in connection with his meeting Aquila and Priscilla at Corinth that we read in Acts xviii, 1, that “Claudius had commanded all the Jews to depart from Rome.” The Roman historian, Suetonius, speaks of this decree and says it was issued because the Jews were “constantly making a disturbance, Chrestus being the instigator.” No prominent Jew named Chrestus being otherwise known in the records of that time, some have queried whether Chrestus may not be here a Latin corruption of the Greek word Christos, and whether these disturbances among the Jews may not have been disputes about the Christ, or Messiah, whom they expected, or even about Jesus as claiming to be that Messiah. The suggestion is interesting, but we cannot prove it to be correct.
Like his predecessors, Claudius is represented to us by ancient art in the shape of many statues and busts. The one chosen to illustrate these pages shows him to us in a flattering manner, as if he possessed the attributes of Jupiter. He is standing half-draped, with a wreath of oak leaves about his head, his left hand upraised to grasp the upper end of a long staff, and with an eagle at his right foot. The figure is not without some majesty, but there seems to be a look of anxiety and weariness upon his face. Surely, he had enough to make him anxious and weary in both his public and his private life. Unexpectedly called upon to be an emperor, he had wrought industriously in the public service; but he had not been equal to the moral strain of such a high position and had been the undiscerning dupe of iniquitous and malicious enemies. His worst foes had been those of his own household.
CHAPTER V
NERO, THE CRUEL
NERO
Lucius Domitius Nero, the next Roman emperor, was, as we have seen, the stepson of Claudius and the grandson of the famous Germanicus, who was a brother of Claudius. His mother was Agrippina II, the sister of Caligula. This Agrippina became the last wife of Claudius; but Nero was her son by her former husband, Lucius Domitius. The Domitian gens, or family, had been a famous one for several generations and the particular branch of it to which Nero’s father belonged, namely, the Ahenobarbi, or brazen-beards, had long been prominent for its ability, its wealth, and its power. At the same time it had been noted for the faithlessness and ferocity shown by many of its representatives. Suetonius tells the story that the first Lucius Domitius, the founder of the line, was the man to whom Castor and Pollux announced the victory that had taken place at Lake Regillus, when they rode into Rome, and that his beard was then changed from black to red in token of that supernatural manifestation. The Ahenobarbi always inherited, it is said, the complexion as well as the name.