The Empresses of Rome

by Joseph McCabe

By noon the preparations of her agents were completed. The gates of the palace were thrown open, and Nero was sent out, under the care of his military tutor Burrus, the commander of the Guards. A few voices were heard to mutter the name of Britannicus, but the cry was feeble, and the response insignificant. The Guards were long accustomed to see the superiority of Nero over the sickly young prince, and their support was secured by a liberal promise of money. They conducted Nero to the Senate, and bade that helpless body accept him. The same evening a courier from Agrippina brought word to Sinuessa that Nero was Emperor. Narcissus had lost, and his figure passes from the scene—with the inevitable rumour that he was imprisoned or poisoned by Agrippina.

When the Guards came to Nero that night for the watchword he gave them “The best of mothers,” and Agrippina looked confidently from her supreme height into the future. Within five years her son would put her to death with horrible brutality, and jeer at her naked body. No one of the hundreds of thousands who hailed him with the wildest delight, and smiled at his amiable irregularities, can have foreseen so rapid and portentous a degradation. He was then a youth of seventeen, strikingly handsome both in face and figure, with blue-grey eyes and light curly hair and finely proportioned limbs. His tutor in arms pronounced him “a young Apollo.” But his moral and intellectual trainer had failed as signally as his physical trainer had succeeded. Seneca had vainly endeavoured to implant in his mind the germs of the noble Stoic philosophy. Men have disputed from all time whether it was the teacher or the doctrine that was at fault, while the eugenic school of our time would relieve both from censure, and regard Nero’s mind as an incurably corrupt soil. One may venture to differ from both, and wonder if circumstances had not the greater share in his demoralization. However that may be, his accession to irresponsible power at such an age, in such surroundings as we shall discover about him, was a tragedy. His real advisers were young men, slightly older than himself, and better versed in the ways of luxury and vice; and the first use he made of his Imperial power was to toss aside the treatises of the moralists, and give his whole attention to art, to chariot-racing, and to dissipation. What sinister use he made of the later hours, or earlier hours, of the day, and in what melancholy condition his girl-wife must have been, we shall see in the next chapter. Here we have to consider only his relations with his mother.

For a few years after Nero’s accession his mother willingly and profitably ruled in his name. It must not be imagined that she had, with the astuteness of a Marie de’ Medici, educated him in an indifference to politics so that she might indulge her own ambition. The appointment of Seneca as his tutor is the most creditable, though unhappily the most futile, act of her career. When, however, the young Emperor refused to be interested in any problem graver than the art of driving a chariot or playing the flute, she undertook his Imperial duties, or continued to have that share in the ruling of the Empire which she had had under Claudius. She received embassies, was surrounded by a special German guard when she went abroad, and was associated with Nero on the coinage. It would be difficult to measure with any precision the influence which she had on Roman affairs during this period, since Seneca and Burrus had an equal, if not greater, part in the government; but it may be recalled, with some honour to her, that the first four years of Nero’s reign were amongst the happiest and most prosperous that Rome witnessed during the first century.

The first thing to trouble her prosperous and happy use of power was a certain discontent arising from the old prejudice against women in politics. The Senators were annoyed because she injudiciously listened to their debates. They met at this time in the Imperial library, and the Empress had a door pierced into it from the palace, and sat listening behind a curtain. The Senators are said to have punished her indiscretion by making unflattering remarks in the course of the debates, though it is difficult to believe that they were still capable of so courageous a protest. On one occasion an important embassy came to Rome from Armenia, and Agrippina declared that she would sit by the side of Nero when he received it. This seems to have been a startling innovation, and Seneca had to avert trouble by advising Nero to descend from his throne, when his mother entered, and lead her affectionately from the room.

An incident that shortly occurred gave a nucleus for the crystallization of this diffused annoyance. A distinguished noble, Junius Silanus, died, and the familiar whisper of foul play went once more through all classes of the citizens. His brother Lucius Silanus was the young noble who had been betrothed to Octavia, and had so cruelly been separated from her by Agrippina. Was it not natural that Junius Silanus should wish to avenge his younger brother, and that Agrippina should detect his plot and have him removed? Tacitus and Dio fully believed this. As in so many of these cases, however, the only ground for the charge, as far as we know, is the fact that Silanus undoubtedly died, and we will not waste time in discussing it. The Senator had so little of the conspirator in him that even Caligula used to call him “the golden sheep.” But Rome was convinced that the Empress was guilty, and the story spread, and is fully accepted by Tacitus, that she meditated a long series of executions of the men who had opposed her progress, and that Seneca and Burrus had to restrain her bloody vindictiveness.

One may decline to accept this charge on such poor and disputable evidence; but Agrippina now incurred the anger of her son, and descended rapidly from the height of her power. The young Emperor had, as I said, used his Imperial license to ignore his tutors and indulge his low and sensual tastes. He attracted to his side a band of the most dissipated youths in the city, and his nightly exploits were the talk of Rome. One of the less hurtful of his indulgences was his passion for Acte, a beautiful freed slave from the Eastern market, whom Dumas has made familiar. Agrippina resented the liaison—apparently from a sense of justice to Octavia—and rebuked Nero. He turned on her with violence the moment she tried to check his licentious ways, and threatened to discharge her favourite Pallas. Agrippina was alarmed. She saw a powerful party, deeply hostile to herself, growing up about her son, and she felt that the support of Seneca and Burrus was being withdrawn. She ceased to speak of Acte, and regarded with silent distress the coarse ways that her son was exhibiting on the streets every night. A reconciliation at this heavy price could not last. Shortly afterwards Nero sent her some rich jewels and robes from the Imperial treasures. She chose to regard this as a reminder that the Imperial wardrobe was no longer at her disposal, and angrily refused the gifts.

Pallas was at once impeached for treason. The charge was so clumsy, and Seneca defended him so ably, that he had to be acquitted; but Agrippina forgot discretion in her victory. In the course of a quarrel with Nero, she threatened to retire to the camp of the Prætorian Guard with Britannicus and have him proclaimed Emperor. The only effect of this was to open Nero’s long career of crime. The few months—we are still at the beginning of the year 55—of unrestrained license and flattery had destroyed the little moral restraint that Seneca had taught him, and he determined to murder Britannicus. In the Roman prison was the skilled poisoner, Locusta, whom Agrippina was believed to have employed in the murder of her husband. Nero ordered her to prepare a deadly poison, and, when the first preparation failed, he had her brought to the palace. With blows and oaths he forced her to prepare a more deadly drug under his eyes, and it was used the same evening. Britannicus sat with his friends on one of the couches in the dining-hall at the palace, and asked for a drink. It was winter-time, and the wine (not soup, as Serviez says) was heated. He complained that it was too hot, and the poison was administered with the cooling water, so that the taster would not need to take a second sip.

A great horror fell upon the room as Britannicus, writhing with pain, sank to the floor. Octavia sat in silent terror by the side of her husband, who carelessly observed that Britannicus had one of his usual epileptic fits. Agrippina openly betrayed her horror and disgust, and from that date was regarded by her son with bitter hostility. Whether or no it be true that Nero whitened with chalk the spots which broke out on the body, the substance of the story cannot be discredited. It is true that Nero was yet in his eighteenth year only, but his conduct had been vicious and unbridled to a criminal extent. Within a very short time we shall find him sinking to the lowest depths of brutality. The fact that he is praised in the treatise “On Clemency,” which Seneca wrote about that time, can only show either that the too indulgent tutor refused to believe the crime, or that, as we have too many reasons to know, the distinguished Stoic came perilously close to that art of casuistry in which moralists of many schools have been apt to excel.

In her abhorrence of the foul deed Agrippina drew closer to the tender and virtuous Octavia, and confronted Nero with a sternness that had been too long delayed. The breach between them widened. One day Nero ordered that two and a half million denarii should be given to his favourite secretary. Agrippina had the mass of coin brought under the eyes of the Emperor, to make him realize his extravagance. He laughingly observed that he did not think the sum was so small, and ordered it to be doubled. The more lavishly he squandered, the more carefully Agrippina saved, until the frivolous or malicious companions of his revels suggested that she was gathering funds for the purpose of dethroning him. He at once withdrew the guard he had given her, and ordered her to leave his palace.

Agrippina had enjoyed only for one year the power which she had sought so long. She was yet only in her fortieth year. The envoys of kings had sued humbly at her feet, and her litter and guard had flashed through the streets of Rome with an impression of greatness that no other woman then known had ever possessed. But the reins passed from her hands to her brutal son and his despicable courtiers. From the palace she passed, with a few devoted followers, to the small mansion of her grandmother Antonia, and the sycophantic courtiers deserted her. Graver citizens, watching the rapid degradation of the Imperial house, followed her with sympathy, but few dared to visit her in the lonely mansion. Unfortunately, she quarrelled with one of these few, and came near to losing her life.