Seekers after God

the aged Emperor's hand. They were his former wife, Aelia Petina, who had only been divorced in consequence of trivial disagreements, and who was supported by Narcissus; Lollia Paulina, so celebrat

matrimony, had made the strongest possible asseverations that he would never again submit himself to such a yoke. But he was so

ns than it would be among ourselves. But Agrippina, by the use of means the most unscrupulous, prevailed over all her rivals, and managed h

to understand his position, and his writings, if we remember that all history discloses to us no phenomen

name in the form Cologne), she lost her father at the age of three, and her mother (by banishment) at the age of twelve. She was educated with bad sisters, with a wild and wicked brother, and under a grandmother whom she detested. At the age of fourteen she was married to Cnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus, one of the most worthless and ill-reputed of the young Roman nobles of his day. The gossiping biographies of the time still retain some anecdotes of his cruelty and self

one Emperor; intrigue elevated her into the wife of another; her own crimes made her the mother of a third. And at first sight her career might have seemed unusually successful, for while still in the prime of life she was wielding, first in the name of her husband, and then in that of her son, no mean share in the absolute government of the Roman world. But meanwhile that same unerring retribution, whose stealthy footsteps in the rear of the triumphant criminal we can track through page after page of history, wa

treason, upon which her wealth was confiscated, but her life spared by the Emperor, who banished her from Italy. This half-vengeance was not enough for the mother of Nero. Like the daughter of Herodias in sacred history, she despatched a tribune with orders to bring her the head of her enemy; and when it was brought to her, and she found a difficulty in recognizing those withered and ghastly features of a once-celebrated beauty, she

for Seneca's happiness if he had never left Corsica, or set his foot again in that Circean and bloodstained court. Let it, however, be added in his exculpation, that another man of undoubted and scrupulous honesty,--Afranius Burrus--a man of the old, blunt, faithful type of Roman manliness, whom Agrippina had raised to the Prefectship of the Praetorian cohorts, was willing to share his danger and his responsibilities. Yet he must have lived from the first in the very atmosphere of base and criminal intrigues. He must have formed an important member of Agrippina's party, which was in daily and deadly enmity against the party of Narcissus. He must have watched the incessant artifices by which Agrippina secured the adoption of her son Nero by an Emperor whose own son Britannicus was but three years his junior. He must have seen Nero always honoured, promoted, paraded before the eyes of the populace as the f

aul was brought before his tribunal. Very possibly his elevat

orance that, in addition to her other plots and crimes, Agrippina had been as little true to him as his former unhappy wife. The information sank deep into his heart, and he was heard to mutter that it had been his destiny all along first to bear, and then to avenge, the enormities of his wives. Agrippina, whose spies filled the palace, could not long remain uninformed of so significant a speech; and she probably saw with an i

to her purpose. Locusta was mistress of her art, in which long practice had given her a consummate skill. The poison must not be too rapid, lest it should cause suspicion; nor too slow, lest it should give the Emperor time to consult for the interests of his son Britannicus; but it was to be one which should disturb his intellect without causing immediate death. Claudius was a glutton, and the poison was given him with all the more ease because it was mixed with a dish of mushrooms, of which he was extravagantly fond. Agrippina herself handed him the choicest mushroom in the dish, and the poison at once reduced him to si

tire, which overflows with the deadliest contempt of Claudius, is not from the same pen which wrote for Nero his funeral oration. It has, however, been supposed (without sufficient grounds) to be the lost [Greek: Apokolokuntoois] which Seneca is said to have written on the apotheosis of Claudius. The very name is a bitter satire. It imagines the Emperor transformed, not into

llows; actors were sent for "by his own desire" to afford it some amusement; and priests and consuls were bidden to offer up their vows for the life of the dead. Giving out that the Emperor was getting better, Agrippina took care to keep Britannicus and his two sisters, Octavia and Antonia, under her own immediate eye. As though overwhelmed wit

seen, and no one stirred in his favour, they followed the multitude. Nero was carried in triumph to the camp, made the soldiers a short speech, and promised to each man of them a splendid donative. He was at once saluted Emperor. The Senate followed the choice of the soldiers, and the provinces made no demur. Divi

d his throne, gave to the sentinel who came to ask him the pass for the night t