Nero / Makers of History Series

by Jacob Abbott

Britannicus offends Nero.
Agrippina's anger.

Agrippina was one day made very angry with Britannicus, for what might seem a very trifling cause. It seems that Britannicus, though young, was a very intelligent boy, and that he understood perfectly the policy which his step-mother was pursuing toward him, and was very unwilling to submit to be thus supplanted. One day, when he and Nero were both abroad, attending some public spectacle or celebration, they met, and Nero accosted his cousin, calling him Britannicus. Britannicus, in returning the salutation, addressed Nero familiarly by the name Domitius;—Domitius Ahenobarbus having been his name before he was adopted by Claudius. Agrippina was very indignant when she heard of this. She considered the using of this name by Britannicus, as denoting, on his part, a refusal to acknowledge his cousin as the adopted son of his father. She immediately went to Claudius with earnest and angry complainings. "Your own edict," said she, "sanctioned and confirmed by the Senate, is disavowed and annulled, and my son is subjected to public insult by the impertinence of this child." Agrippina farther represented to Claudius, that Britannicus never would have thought of addressing her son in such a manner, of his own accord. His doing it must have arisen from the influence of some of the persons around him who were hostile to her; and she made use of the occasion to induce Claudius to give her authority to remove all that remained of the child's instructors and governors, who could be suspected of a friendly interest in his cause, and to subject him to new and more rigorous restrictions than ever.

The Fucine lake.
Plan for draining it.
The canal.

One of the most imposing of all the spectacles and celebrations which Claudius instituted during his reign, was the one which signalized the opening of the canal by which the Fucine lake was drained. The Fucine lake was a large but shallow body of water, at the foot of the Appenines, near the sources of the Tiber.[A] It was subject to periodic inundations, by which the surrounding lands were submerged. An engineer had offered to drain the lake, in consideration of receiving for his pay the lands which would be laid dry by the operation. But Claudius, who seemed to have quite a taste for such undertakings, preferred to accomplish the work himself. The canal by which the water should be conveyed away, was to be formed in part by a deep cut, and partly by a tunnel through a mountain; and inasmuch as in those days the power now chiefly relied upon for making such excavations, namely, the explosive force of gunpowder, was not known, any extensive working in solid rock was an operation of immense labor. When the canal was finished, Claudius determined to institute a grand celebration to signalize the opening of it for drawing off the water; and as he could not safely rely on the hydraulic interest of the spectacle for drawing such a concourse to the spot as he wished to see there, he concluded to add to the entertainment a show more suited to the taste and habits of the times. He made arrangements accordingly for having a naval battle fought upon the lake, for the amusement of the spectators, just before the opening of the canal, which was to draw off the water. Thus the battle was to be the closing scene, in which the history and existence of the lake were to be terminated forever.

Grand celebration at the opening of the canal.
Naval conflict to take place on the lake.

Ships were accordingly built, and an immense number of men were designated and set apart for fighting the battle. These men consisted of convicts and prisoners of war—men whom it was, in those days, considered perfectly just and right to employ in killing one another for the amusement of the emperor and his guests. A sort of bulwark was built all around the shore, and the emperor's guards were stationed upon it, to prevent the escape of the combatants, and to turn them back to their duty if any of them should attempt, when pressed hard in the battle, to escape to the land. The fleet of galleys was divided into two antagonistic portions, and the men in each were armed completely, as in a case of actual war. At the appointed time, hundreds of thousands of people assembled from all the surrounding country to see the sight. They lined the shores on every side, and crowned all the neighboring heights. The contest, of course, might be waged with all the fury and fatal effect of a real battle without endangering the spectators at all, as there were in those days no flying bullets, or other swift-winged missiles, like those which in modern times take so wide a range beyond the limits of the battle. The deadly effect of all that was done in an ancient combat was confined of course to those immediately engaged. Then there was, besides, nothing to intercept the vision. No smoke was raised to obscure the view, but the atmosphere above and around the combatants remained as pure and transparent at the end of the combat as at the beginning.

End of the naval battle.

A real battle was accordingly regarded by the Romans as the most sublime and imposing of spectacles, and hundreds of thousands of spectators flocked to witness the one which Claudius arranged for them on the Fucine lake. He himself presided, dressed in a coat of mail; and Agrippina sat by his side, clothed in a magnificent robe, which the historian states was woven from threads of gold, without the admixture of any other material. The signal was given, and the battle was commenced. There was some difficulty experienced, as usual in such cases, in getting the men to engage, but they became sufficiently ferocious at last to satisfy all the spectators, and thousands were slain. At length the emperor gave orders that the battle should cease, and the survivors were informed that their lives were spared.

The water will not flow.

It was fortunate, on the whole, for Claudius, that he did not rely wholly on the simple drawing off of the water from the lake for the amusement of the immense assemblage that he had convened, for it was found, when, after the close of the battle, the canal was opened, that the water would not run. The engineers had made some mistake in their measurements or their calculations, and had left the bed of the canal in some part of its course too high, so that the water, when the sluices were opened, instead of flowing off into the river to which the canal was intended to conduct it, remained quietly in the lake as before.