Agrippina the Elder

“ Agrippina, the wife of Claudius Cæsar, had a thrush that could imitate human speech, a thing that was never known before. At the moment that I am writing this, the young Cæsars [183] have a starling and some nightingales that are being taught to talk in Greek and Latin; besides which, they are studying their task the whole day, continually repeating the new words that they have learnt, and giving utterance to phrases of considerable length. Birds are taught to talk in a retired spot, where no other voice can be heard, so as to interfere with their lesson ”

“ She was so proud of her fidelity to her husband and of the admiration which she aroused at Rome that all the other defects of her character were exaggerated and increased by her excessive pride in her virtue. And among these defects should be counted a great ambition, a kind of harum-scarum and tumultuous activity, an irreflective impetuosity of passion, and a dangerous lack of balance and judgment. Agrippina was not evil; she was ambitious, violent, intriguing, imprudent, and thoughtless, and therefore could easily adapt her own feelings and interests to what seemed expedient. ”

“ The portrayal of the development of Agrippina’s character is particularly fine, even though death takes her from the scene. She is shown as a character who combines strength of determination with a marked weakness in certain other ways. ”

“ From him the Herods called themselves Agrippa; and his daughter was the first of those ladies named Agrippina, whose tragic stories mark the early years of the Roman empire. Cornelius Agrippa was probably assumed by the learned man of Cologne, who has connected it in the popular mind with alchemy and necromancy. St. Agrippina was martyred at Rome under Valerian, and her remains being transferred to Girgenti in Sicily, she became known to the Greeks. Her name is used in Russia in the softened form of Agrafina, and the rude contraction Gruscha or Grunja. ”

“ Agrippina, picked up by a boat, had succeeded in reaching one of her villas near by; she sent the freedman to tell the Emperor about the accident and to assure him of her safety. Agrippina alive! It was like a thunderbolt to Nero, and he lost his head: he saw his mother hurrying on to Rome, denouncing the abominable attempt to Senate and people, rousing against him the Prætorian guard and the legions. Thoroughly frightened, he summoned Seneca and Burrhus and laid before them the terrible situation. It is easy to imagine the shock of the old preceptors. ”

“ Agrippina continued, therefore, to live at Rome, in high favor with the court, for several years,—her little son advancing all the time in age and in maturity, until at length he became twelve years old. At this time, another great change took place in his own and his mother's condition. Messalina became herself, by her wickedness and infatuation, the means of raising her rival into her own place as wife of the emperor. ”

“ In beauty, youth, and wealth they differed but slightly. Both were shameless, infamous, and intractable, and were rivals in vice as much as in the advantages they had derived from fortune. It was indeed a desperate contest whether the aunt or the mother should have most power over Nero. Lepida tried to win the young prince's heart by flattery and lavish liberality, while Agrippina on the other hand, who could give her son empire but could not endure that he should be emperor, was fierce and full of menace. ”

“ Ag'rios, Lumpishness personified; a "sullen swain, all mirth that in himself and others hated; dull, dead, and leaden." Described in canto viii. of The Purple Island, by Phineas Fletcher (1635) . (Greek, agrios; "a savage.")
Agrippina was granddaughter, wife, sister, and mother of an emperor. She was granddaughter of Augustus, wife of Claudius, sister of Caligula, and mother of Nero. ”

“ Asleep or awake, in rest or in motion, grave or gay, Agrippina is always beautiful; and it is better to be beautiful than to fetch and carry from the rising to the setting of the sun. She is droll, too, with an unconscious humor, even in her most serious and sentimental moods. She has quite the longest ears that ever were seen on so small a cat, eyes more solemn than Athene's owl blinking in the sunlight, and an air of supercilious disdain that would have made Diogenes seem young and ardent by her side. ”

“ The bitter irony hidden in his words increased the feeling of hate in Agrippina as she said, “Thinkest thou, O Tiberius, that I am a lifeless piece of clay, without memory, feeling, or heart?”
“Ah, Agrippina!” he exclaimed. “Thou hast [213] always regarded me through a veil of hate. Every good act I commit becomes distorted.”
White with indignation, Agrippina interrupted: “What hast thou done that no one dares to visit me? Thou hast made friendship for Agrippina a crime. Sosius and Sosia were persecuted because they loved me. O Jupiter and ye celestial gods! ”

“ In the Capitol Museum there is a seated figure of Agrippina. It is one of the noblest pieces of statuary in the world. In it is seen none of that feminine sweetness which endeared the young wife of Germanicus to the hearts of the Roman legions; but there is that proud consciousness of moral dignity which Livia could not rival and that imperial manner which Tiberius could not cow. It is a sad, strong-hearted woman. One could fancy that a composite of all the noblest Roman matrons might have made just such a picture. ”

“ But a marriage between Nero and Acte was not possible. The Lex de maritandis ordinibus prohibited marriages between senators and freedwomen. It was therefore natural that Agrippina should have opposed it with all her strength. She, the great-granddaughter of Livia, the granddaughter of Drusus, the daughter of Germanicus, educated in the strictest ideas of the old Roman aristocracy, could not permit her son to compromise the prestige of the entire nobility in the eyes of the lower orders by so scandalous a mésalliance. But on this occasion the youth, carried away by his passion, resisted. ”

“ The people rushed in numbers to the shore, crowded the piers, filled the boats, and gave voice to a medley of cries of alarm. The uproar was at length allayed by some men with lighted torches, who assured the excited multitude that Agrippina had escaped and was now safe in her villa.
While they were speaking a body of soldiers, led by Anicetus, arrived, and with threats of violence dispersed the peasant throng. Then, planting a guard round the mansion, Anicetus burst open its doors, seized the slaves who appeared, and forced his way to the apartment of the empress. ”

“ Tacitus tells us that the death of Britannicus caused Agrippina great terror and unspeakable consternation, and it is not difficult to divine the reasons. Nero now remained the last and only survivor of the family of Augustus, and it was therefore no longer possible to bring any effective opposition to bear upon him by setting up some other member of the family who would be capable of governing. The new nobility, with its modern tendencies, now rapidly gained strength, and the influence of Agrippina declined proportionately. ”

“ This means that Agrippina was a lady of irreproachable life; for if there is one thing which stands out clearly in the history of this remarkable woman, it is that both her rise and her fall depended upon causes of such a nature that not even her womanly charms could have increased her power or retarded her ruin. All hearts were therefore filled with hope when they saw this respectable, active, and energetic woman take her place at the side of Claudius the weakling, for she brought back the memory of the most venerated personages of the family of Augustus. ”

“ To his after-life it gives one memory, which never dies. He has travelled to his beautiful country palace, that he might kill his mother!
We can picture to ourselves Agrippina, by knowing that she was Nero's mother, and our picture will not fail in one feature. She has all the beauty of sense, all the attraction of passion. Indeed, she is the Empress of Rome, because she is queen of beauty—and of lust. She is most beautiful among the beautiful of Rome; but what is that beauty of feature in a state of whose matrons not one is virtuous, of whose [pg 105] daughters not one is chaste? ”

“ He is said, as a boy, to have been affectionate, with some aptness to learn, and fond of praise.
As the niece of Claudius, Agrippina had been allowed to occupy a place in the imperial palace next to the empress Messalina herself. When Messalina’s dissolute character became manifest to all, Agrippina, as we have related, took advantage of it to increase her own favor with the emperor and the interests of her son as a possible successor to the throne. It was an audacious dream, because he would be thus put in the place of Britannicus, the emperor’s son by Messalina. ”

“ Agrippina, I am humbly aware, grants me neither her intimacy nor her confidence, but only her companionship, which I endeavor to receive modestly, and without flaunting my favors to the world. She is displeased and even downcast when I go out, and she greets my return with delight, thrusting her little gray head between the banisters the instant I open the house door, and waving a welcome in mid-air with one ridiculously small paw. ”

“ Seeing that I must choose 'twixt her and Rome,
I do consent to Agrippina's death.
The State like Nature must be pitiless,
And I must ruthless be as Nature's Lord.
But I'll be no Orestes, I'll not lift
This hand against her: see you then to that!
It is enough to have conceived this deed.
The how, the when, the where, I leave to you.
TIGELLINUS. She is delivered now into our hands,
And runs into the toils we had not set.
In Baiae no Praetorians are camped,
No populace inflamed in her cause;
A solitary woman doth she come.
Caesar, receive her graciously and well. ”

“ We have yet no proofs. An informer [Pg 179] has come to you at dead of night with this wild and improbable story, and if we take it for granted at once that it is true, and allow ourselves to act under the influence of excitement and alarm, we should afterward regret our rashness when the consequences could not be retrieved. Besides, Agrippina is your mother; and as it is the right of the humblest person in the commonwealth, when accused of crime, to be heard in answer to the accusation, it would be an atrocious crime to deprive the mother of the emperor of that privilege. ”

“ Every one will recognize how difficult was the task which she had undertaken.
But at the beginning fortune favored Agrippina as she boldly took up the work that lay before her. The wild pranks of Caligula and the scandals of Messalina had aroused an immeasurable disgust in Rome and Italy. Every one was out of patience. The senate as well as the people were demanding a stronger, more coherent, and respectable government, which would end the scandals, suits, and atrocious personal and family quarrels which were dividing Rome. ”

“ At the rumour of Agrippina's escape they rushed off in a body to her villa to express their congratulations, where they were dispersed by the soldiers of Anicetus, who had already token possession of it. Scattering or seizing the slaves who came in their way, and bursting their passage from door to door, they found the Empress in a dimly-lighted chamber, attended only by a single handmaid. "Dost thou too desert me?" exclaimed the wretched woman to her servant, as she rose to slip away. ”

“ Agrippina was assisted in her secret plans by Pallas, the perfidious confidant of Claudius. By her intrigues, L. Junius Silanus, the husband of Octavia, the daughter of Claudius, was put to death, and in a. d. 53, Octavia was married to young Nero. Lollia Paullina, once the rival of Agrippina for the hand of the emperor, was accused of high treason and condemned to death; but she put an end to her own life. ”

“ As soon as the funeral pile was lighted, one of her freedmen, surnamed Mnester, ran himself through with a sword, either from love of his mistress or from the fear of destruction. Many years before Agrippina had anticipated this end for herself and had spurned the thought. For when she consulted the astrologers about Nero, they replied that he would be emperor and kill his mother. "Let him kill her," she said, "provided he is emperor." ”

“ In 12 B.C. Agrippa, the great general of Augustus, to whom he may be almost said to have owed his throne, and who was its chief support, died at the age of fifty-one, leaving Julia, the emperor's only child, a widow. Agrippina, daughter of Agrippa by an earlier marriage, was wife of Tiberius, and had borne him a son, Drusus, afterwards father of Germanicus. Livia with great difficulty prevailed upon Augustus to replace Agrippa by Tiberius, who was compelled to exchange Agrippina for Julia, to his bitter grief. ”

“ On the nights of the twelfth and thirteenth of October, soon after Claudius had been suddenly stricken down by his violent malady, the doctors announced to Agrippina that the emperor was lost. Agrippina immediately understood that since the family of Augustus could at that moment present no full-grown man as candidate for the imperial office, there was grave danger that the senate might refuse to confer the supreme power either upon Nero or Britannicus. ”

“ After the death of the latter, Locusta--for whom Nero had found ample employment--was permitted to retire to the enjoyment of the immense wealth with which she had been rewarded for her services to those in power; it was stipulated, however, that she should train other women in the practice of her art.
Agrippina had done and suffered much to secure the Empire for her son; but she never contemplated that he would reign alone while she lived. She expected to occupy a throne by his side. Her officious dominance soon became intolerable to the young emperor. ”