“Thou placest the blame for thy troubles on human agencies. What the gods have sent upon thee thou shouldst bear with calmness,” was the hypocritical reply of the tyrant.
“Wouldst thou hate me less if I should respect thee more?” she asked. “Is it thy wish that I should grovel and fawn before thee, and thus defile the blood of the Julian family,—blood the purest and most illustrious in Rome?”
“I have asked of thee no favors. I bestow them,” said Tiberius, contemptuously. “Caligula shall come to the palace,” he continued relentlessly. Then he added roughly, “Feed less, O Agrippina, on thy daily bread of discontent, which is filled with worms of hate, and thou wilt be happier.”
During this conversation Tiberius paced up and down upon the tessellated floor of the atrium, before the altar that held the family gods of Germanicus. He twitched his fingers, and from time to time nervously adjusted the folds of his toga. Agrippina spoke without anger, and with a certain slow emphasis that made her words pierce the pride and dignity of the emperor.
Her mind was so overwhelmed by the flood of things she wished to say that at first she could not think clearly. In answer to his remarks about her food for reflection, she said: “I may eat of that bread, O Tiberius; but who serves it? Upon my bosom I have carried an invisible flower that has weighed upon me like a stone. The noxious odors that I have breathed in these past years have so affected my nature that thou now seest a hideous figure. Mine eyes have so changed that they have become spies upon my inner thoughts. Upon my lips can now be read bitter words that are not spoken. The light-hearted maid who married Germanicus never knew a care. What happened? Her loving brothers, Lucius and Caius, were murdered. By whose hands? Her mother was sent to Pandataria and starved to death. By whose hands? Who was it who murdered her brother Agrippa?”
“Cease thy invective,” ordered Tiberius.
But Agrippina ignored the order and continued: “By whose orders was Germanicus poisoned? Who has killed Sosius? Who has exiled Sosia? Ay, who strangled Claudia? The gods? Who but recently arrested Sabinus? Dost thou wish that I should sing and dance? Oh! the aroma from that invisible flower that drags me down bears the odors of savage hate, of murder, of stifling blood!”
Tiberius angrily said to her: “Thy words are the emanations of a diseased mind. Thou wilt talk more calmly when thou art well again. I sacrificed but yesterday to the Divine Augustus, and—”
“Such hypocrisy!” interrupted Agrippina. “Is it consistent in thee to offer victims to the deified Augustus and then to persecute his children? His divine spirit was not transfused into dumb statues. The genuine images of the Divine Augustus are the living descendants of his celestial blood. I myself am one. Why dost thou persecute me?”
“I understand thee, Agrippina. Thou thinkest thou art injured because thou dost not rule.”