The History of Rome: Rise and Fall of the Empire. John Bagnell Bury
The Emperor refused statues of gold and silver; he declined the honor of letting the year begin with his birth-month, December; he dismissed the charge of a delator against a knight and a senator. Such acts were counted to him for righteousness.
Agrippina had lost her influence with Nero, and when, after the death of Britannicus, she posed as the protectress of Octavia, her son’s wife, whom he treated with contemptuous neglect, and attempted to form a party of her own, he became alarmed. He caused the guard which had hitherto attended her to be removed, and forced her to leave the palace, and take up her residence in the house which formerly belonged to her grandmother Antonia. At these signs of disfavor her friends fell away, and Junia Silana, who had a private grudge against her, attempted to work her ruin by a false charge of conspiracy. Two suborned informers stated that she had plotted to overthrow her son, and replace him by Rubellius Plautus, who was as nearly related to Augustus as Nero himself. But on examination the charges fell through, and Silana was banished.
During the next three years Agrippina vanishes from the pages of history. Though her influence was gone, there seems to have been no open rupture. While Seneca and Burrus administered the affairs of the Empire, and an unwonted activity was permitted to the senate, the Emperor occupied his time in the licentious amusements of youth. Adopting a favorite pastime of profligate young nobles, he used to wander through the streets at night, disguised in the garb of a slave to conceal his person, and visit taverns and low haunts. He and his comrades used to seize goods exposed for sale, and assail those whom they encountered in their progress. The Emperor himself bore on his face the marks of wounds received in these brawls. When it became known that Nero was in the habit of masquerading thus, and many men and women of distinction had been insulted in his nocturnal escapades, others assumed his name and followed his example, so that the city was infested by gangs like the Mohawks, who in the last century used to make London dangerous at night. On one occasion a man of senatorian rank, named Julius Montanus, happened to meet Nero in the darkness. He first repelled his assailant vigorously, but afterwards recognized him, and sent in a petition for pardon. Nero, angry at being recognized, asked “Has he not, then, already dispatched himself, seeing that he struck Nero?” and Montanus was obliged to destroy himself. But after this occurrence the Emperor was more cautious, and on such expeditions was always attended by a guard of soldiers and gladiators, to interfere if necessary.
The two most intimate companions of Nero were two profligate men of fashion, Salvius Otho and Claudius Senecio. In 58 A.D., his intimacy with Otho led to an entanglement with Otho’s wife Poppaea Sabina. She had been divorced from a former husband to marry Otho, and she regarded her second husband as merely a stepping-stone to a still higher alliance. She had determined to win the hand of Nero himself. The historian Tacitus has described with great art her coquetry, her fascinations, her audacity, and her wickedness. “She had all things except a high mind”. In her, Agrippina had indeed found a match. The Emperor succumbed to her charms, and got rid of Otho by appointing him governor of Lusitania. In order to marry Nero it was necessary for Poppaea to procure the divorce of Octavia, but she saw clearly that the chief obstacle to her plans was Agrippina, who had always striven to maintain the nominal union of her son and her stepdaughter. So Poppaea set herself to bring about a rupture between the Emperor and his mother. She, had friends and supporters in Seneca and Burrus, the opponents of Agrippina, and she had made up her mind to step over the corpses of the two Empresses into the palace of the Caesars.
The daughter of Germanicus still possessed considerable influence with the praetorians, and it would have been dangerous to resort to public measures against her. But Nero, led on by the persuasions of his mistress Poppaea, did not shrink from contriving a scheme for her assassination. His old tutor Anicetus, whom he had raised to be captain of the fleet of Misenum, undertook to construct a vessel which could be sunk, without exciting suspicion, and if it could be managed that Agrippina should embark in it, her destruction would be imputed by the world to the winds and waves. At the Quinquatrus, a festival of Minerva lasting five days in the month of March, Nero invited his mother to his villa near Baiae. She landed at Bauli, between Baias and Cape Misenum, and completed her journey in a litter, but after the banquet, when night had fallen, she was induced to return to Bauli in the vessel which had been prepared for her destruction. But the mechanism did not do its work with the expected success, and Agrippina succeeded in swimming to shore, whence she proceeded to her villa on the Lucrine lake. One of her maids. Acerronia, who in order to save her own life called out, “I am the Empress”, was struck with oars, and drowned. Agrippina saw through the treachery which she had so narrowly escaped, but pretended to regard it as an accident, and sent her freedman Agerinus to bear to Nero the news of her fortunate escape. Nero, who had been waiting in agitation to learn that his mother was no more, was terror-stricken at the tidings that the plan had miscarried. He appealed for help in his difficulty to Burrus and Seneca, who, however, seem to have had no part in the plot. But Anicetus undertook to finish the work. It was pretended that a dagger was found in the possession of Agerinus, the freedman of Agrippina, and that she had conspired against the Emperor’s life. Anicetus, accompanied by a captain and a military tribune, hastened to the Lucrine villa. They found her lying on a couch, with a single attendant, all the others having deserted her at the approach of the assassins; and at their appearance the last slave fled. She was dispatched with many wounds, crying. “Strike the womb which bore Nero”. She was buried by slaves, and Mnester a faithful freedman, slew himself on her pyre (59 A.D.).
If the matricide felt stings of remorse, they were speedily alleviated by the congratulations, which poured in on him from every side, on having escaped the plots of his mother. He wrote a letter to the senate, explaining the circumstances of her death, and there is no reason to suppose that this false account, embellished by the art of Seneca, and confirmed by the testimony of Burrus, was not generally believed. This is an instance of the way in which the senate served the Princeps as a means of reaching the public ear. The true story was probably known only to a few initiated persons; and there was nothing improbable in a woman who had killed her husband planning to kill her son. Otherwise the great sympathy which was expressed for Nero is unintelligible. The senate decreed that thanksgivings should be offered for the Emperor’s safety, and that golden statues of Minerva and the Emperor should be erected in the senate-house. The Quinquatrus were henceforward to be celebrated by public games, and Agrippina’s birthday to be regarded as a day of ill-omen. All those persons who had been sent into exile owing to her influence were permitted to return. Nero’s entry into Rome was like a triumph. He ascended to the Capitol and offered thanks to the gods for his preservation.
SECT. II. — THE ASCENDENCY OF POPPAEA AND TIGELLINUS
Agrippina, with all her unscrupulous ambition, had a high conception of the imperial dignity, of which Nero was totally devoid. After her death, there was no restraint to hinder him from following his bent, and indulging his theatrical and artistic tastes, in a manner which set at defiance all the national prejudices of the Romans. His great desire was to appear in public, in tragic costume, and delight the ears of his subjects by singing and playing on the lyre, or to guide a chariot with his own hands in the circus. When Seneca represented that such acts hardly befitted the dignity of the Emperor, Nero answered him with appeals to the superior culture of the Greeks, and the example of his uncle Gaius. Seneca and Burrus, seeing that there was no help for it, tried at least to limit the performances of the Emperor to a select audience. A circus was erected in the Vatican valley, and there a privileged number of courtiers were permitted to admire the skill of the imperial charioteer. But if his guides thought that he would be satisfied with this concession, they were mistaken; it only stimulated him to more public exhibitions. He was resolved to appear as a singer and an actor. He seized the occasion on which his beard was first clipped to institute a feast called Juvenalia, to be celebrated within the palace. Numerous invitations were issued, and noble young Romans were induced to contend as singers and dancers for the prizes which the Emperor offered. Nero himself descended on the stage with his lyre in his hand, and a band of young men, called Augustiani, were enrolled to applaud the excellence of his singing. Burrus is described as looking on, “grieving, but applauding” (59 A.D.). In the following year, the Emperor instituted another feast, called by his own name Neronia, modeled strictly on the great Greek games, and to be held every five years. In the musical contests he took part himself. These exhibitions were far more