The Empresses of Rome

by Joseph McCabe

Her old friend Julia Silana, a woman of great wealth but very faded beauty, proposed to marry a handsome young Roman knight. Agrippina imprudently advised him not to marry a woman of such advanced years and so adventurous a record. Her words were repeated to Julia, and friendship was exchanged for the most bitter animosity. Julia Silana was childless, and it is conjectured that Agrippina hoped to inherit her wealth if she died unmarried. Whether she believed this or no, Julia conceived a deep hatred, and induced two of her clients to accuse Agrippina of high treason. Nero seems to have been in an uncertain mood, and an ingenious plot was devised to win him.

One night when he lay, flushed with wine, after the banquet, his favourite comedian Paris came to amuse him. Nero noticed that the man was agitated and less merry than usual, and asked the reason. Paris, who was acting in the service of the plotters, confessed with artistic tears that there was a conspiracy afoot to dethrone his noble master; that Agrippina was about to marry Rubellius Plautus, a Senator of Imperial descent, and seize the throne. The inebriated Emperor at once demanded their heads, but Seneca and Burrus restrained him, and compelled him to hear Agrippina on the morrow. In her speech, which Tacitus has preserved, she refuted and routed her assailants with such vigour that she was, apparently, reconciled to Nero and restored to some authority. Julia Silana was banished, Domitia’s chamberlain (who had instructed the actor) was executed, and Agrippina’s own followers were rewarded.

The two years that followed this reconciliation are obscure, and we can only dimly conjecture that Agrippina had some peace and prestige, but no longer shared the Imperial rule. Then, in the year 58, another and unexpected woman came into the field, and Agrippina sank rapidly toward an abyss of tragedy.

In an earlier chapter we saw that Messalina drove to death a very wealthy and beautiful Roman lady named Poppæa Sabina. It was her daughter, who had inherited her wealth and her beauty, that now attracted the amorous regard of the Emperor. She had married one of Nero’s favourite companions, who babbled in his cups of her dazzling beauty, and inflamed the desire of Nero. In the next chapter we shall read of her natural charms, of the singular art with which she cultivated them and the coquetry with which she employed them, and of the superb and fabulous splendour of her equipage. It is enough to say here that Nero visited her, learned that she was willing to be an Empress, but not the mistress of an Emperor, and resolved to make any sacrifice to secure so unique a treasure. The first victim to be sacrificed to the new passion was Octavia, and the delicate and timid girl would make little resistance. But Agrippina had espoused her cause with a spirit that redeems much of her irregular conduct, and she now saw that her own interest, as well as that of Octavia, required that she should oppose Poppæa with all her strength. In that resolution she wrote her death-sentence, not ignobly.

Even if we refuse to admit some of the incredible statements that are made regarding it in the chronicles, it is clear that an extraordinary struggle now took place about the person of the Emperor. The antagonists were Poppæa and Agrippina. Octavia was one of those frail, lily-like Roman women who never struggled; Poppæa’s husband was easily set aside. Poppæa affected coyness, and refused to have any other than conjugal relations with Nero, while she employed all her charms to inflame him. Agrippina fought so desperately that Roman gossip, and Roman historians, ascribed the most infamous devices to her. In spite of his expression of doubt, it is plain that Tacitus shares the popular belief, which he relates, that Agrippina used to sit with her son in loose robes when he was heated with wine, and to ride in the same litter with him. Against this charge, however, Dio defends her (lxi, 11). He says that one of Nero’s courtesans resembled his mother, and that a light remark of his on that circumstance gave birth to the libel. Poppæa would not be indisposed to encourage the story. On the other hand, Mr. Baring-Gould attempts an untenable defence when he speaks of Agrippina as “the poor old lady.” She was only in her forty-second year, and was a woman of great beauty and little scruple.

Whatever arts Agrippina employed in the struggle, she rapidly lost ground before so formidable a rival, and Poppæa incited Nero against her. He harassed her with lawsuits when she was in Rome, and sent men to insult her when she withdrew to her villa in the country. Before long Agrippina became sensible that her struggle for power had passed into the appalling experience of a struggle for life against her own son. Nero made several attempts to poison her, but she was on her guard against this familiar weapon. It is said that she had an antidote compounded of walnuts, figs, rue, and salt. Then a freedman in Nero’s suite suggested a more insidious scheme. Her country house was in repair, and Anicetus directed the workmen to saw through the heavy timber over her bed, so that the room would collapse when she went to rest. Agrippina was warned, however, and the plot was defeated.

By the early spring of the year 59 Nero had fallen into a mood of the most sombre and bitter dejection. Poppæa continued to taunt him with his dependence on his mother, and to display her maddening charms just beyond the range of his eager arms. The better citizens of Rome, on the other hand, now perceived his horrible design, and watched the struggle with anxiety. As he sat at the theatre one day in this mood, his attention was caught by one of the elaborate mechanical spectacles which were often put on the stage at the time. A ship sailed into view of the spectators, fell into pieces, and disgorged a number of wild beasts upon the stage. Nero asked Anicetus, who was a skilful mechanic, whether he could build a ship that would thus fall to pieces on the water at a given moment. The man promised to do so, and Nero went down to the coast in more cheerful temper.

It was the month of March, when wealthy Romans were wont to forsake the city for the marble villas which shone in the spring sun on the flowered hills about the northern corner of the Bay of Naples. The season began with the festival of Minerva on March 19th. With some surprise and suspicion, Agrippina, who had gone down to her villa, received an affectionate invitation to join her son at Baiæ for the celebration; and she heard from other quarters that he had announced a desire to be reconciled with her. She went on board the Liburnian galley which lay off the gardens of her villa at Antium, and sailed to Baiæ. Nero met her in the Imperial galley, kissed her affectionately, and invited her to a banquet which his friend Otho, the husband of Poppæa, would give that night in honour of their reconciliation. She consented, but it is clear that she wavered between her consciousness of the utter unscrupulousness of her son and the bright vision of a return to happiness which he held before her.

When the hour came for going, she was told that her galley had met with an accident, but that a superb gilded galley, with sails of silk and a military guard on board, had been sent as a love-gift from her son in commemoration of their restored affection. She gazed with suspicion on the beautiful object, as it lay mirrored in the waters of the little haven, and decided to go overland, on a litter, to Otho’s villa. But the amiable behaviour of Nero at the banquet dispelled the last shade of her suspicion. In the joy which his caresses and his well-feigned affection gave her, she did not notice the passing of the hours until midnight, when she rose to go. The beautiful ship with the gilded flanks and the silken sails awaited her once more, and this time she embarked on it. Nero kissed her eyes and her hands, put his arms about her and pressed her to his bosom, held her while he gave a last long look into her eyes, and then—abandoned her to the murderer Anicetus.

The galley shot out over the smooth scented waters under a canopy of brilliant stars. Agrippina sat in her cabin, in the soft spring air, and talked about the happy future with her one male attendant, Crepereius Gallus, and her one maid, Acerronia Pollia. And suddenly, as they reached the deep water, there was an ugly crack, and the roof of the cabin fell on them. Gallus was killed outright, but the two women were saved, as the stout walls failed to collapse, and there was some misunderstanding among the crew in the dark. The maid rushed to the deck calling for aid for the Empress—others say that she represented herself as the Empress—and was slain. Agrippina listened with terror to the crash of timber and the rush of armed men, and realized the treachery of her son. Still she did not court death. She dropped quietly over the side, and swam toward the distant shore. Her strength gradually failed, and she was about to abandon the awful struggle, when some men who were fishing by night picked her up and took her ashore.