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Saturday, August 21, 2010 - 6:57 PM
It happened at this time that the emperor after inspecting the
apparel in which wives and mothers of the imperial house had been seen
to glitter, selected a jewelled robe and sent it as a gift to his mother,
with the unsparing liberality of one who was bestowing by preference on
her a choice and much coveted present. Agrippina, however, publicly declared
that so far from her wardrobe being furnished by these gifts, she was really
kept out of the remainder, and that her son was merely dividing with her
what he derived wholly from herself.
Some there were who put even a worse meaning on her words. And
so Nero, furious with those who abetted such arrogance in a woman, removed
Pallas from the charge of the business with which he had been entrusted
by Claudius, and in which he acted, so to say, as the controller of the
throne. The story went that as he was departing with a great retinue of
attendants, the emperor rather wittily remarked that Pallas was going to
swear himself out of office. Pallas had in truth stipulated that he should
not be questioned for anything he had done in the past, and that his accounts
with the State were to be considered as balanced. Thereupon, with instant
fury, Agrippina rushed into frightful menaces, sparing not the prince's
ears her solemn protest "that Britannicus was now of full age, he who was
the true and worthy heir of his father's sovereignty, which a son, by mere
admission and adoption, was abusing in outrages on his mother. She shrank
not from an utter exposure of the wickedness of that ill-starred house,
of her own marriage, to begin with, and of her poisoner's craft. All that
the gods and she herself had taken care of was that her stepson was yet
alive; with him she would go to the camp, where on one side should be heard
the daughter of Germanicus; on the other, the crippled Burrus and the exile
Seneca, claiming, forsooth, with disfigured hand, and a pedant's tongue,
the government of the world." As she spoke, she raised her hand in menace
and heaped insults on him, as she appealed to the deified Claudius, to
the infernal shades of the Silani, and to those many fruitless
crimes.
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire was confounded at this, and as the day was near on which Britannicus
would complete his fourteenth year, he reflected, now on the domineering
temper of his mother, and now again on the character of the young prince,
which a trifling circumstance had lately tested, sufficient however to
gain for him wide popularity. During the feast of Saturn, amid other pastimes
of his playmates, at a game of lot drawing for king, the lot fell to Nero,
upon which he gave all his other companions different orders, and such
as would not put them to the blush; but when he told Britannicus to step
forward and begin a song, hoping for a laugh at the expense of a boy who
knew nothing of sober, much less of riotous society, the lad with perfect
coolness commenced some verses which hinted at his expulsion from his father's
house and from supreme power. This procured him pity, which was the more
conspicuous, as night with its merriment had stript off all disguise. Nero
saw the reproach and redoubled his hate. Pressed by Agrippina's menaces,
having no charge against his brother and not daring openly to order his
murder, he meditated a secret device and directed poison to be prepared
through the agency of Julius Pollio, tribune of one of the praetorian cohorts,
who had in his custody a woman under sentence for poisoning, Locusta by
name, with a vast reputation for crime. That every one about the person
of Britannicus should care nothing for right or honour, had long ago been
provided for. He actually received his first dose of poison from his tutors
and passed it off his bowels, as it was rather weak or so qualified as
not at once to prove deadly. But Nero, impatient at such slow progress
in crime, threatened the tribune and ordered the poisoner to execution
for prolonging his anxiety while they were thinking of the popular talk
and planning their own defence. Then they promised that death should be
as sudden as if it were the hurried work of the dagger, and a rapid poison
of previously tested ingredients was prepared close to the emperor's
chamber.
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