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Page 39
Claudius asked the senate to authorize marriages between uncles and
nieces, as he did not dare to assume the responsibility of going
counter to public sentiment. And thus the daughter of Germanicus and
the sister of Caligula became an empress.
VI
AGRIPPINA, THE MOTHER OF NERO
It is possible, as Tacitus says, that marriage with Claudius was the
height of Agrippina's ambition, but it is also possible that it was an
act of supreme self-sacrifice on the part of a woman who had been
educated in the traditions of the Roman aristocracy, and who therefore
considered herself merely a means to the political advancement of her
relatives and her children.
I am rather inclined to accept this second explanation. When she
married Claudius, Agrippina not only married an uncle who was much
older than herself, and who must necessarily prove a rather difficult
and disagreeable husband, but she bound up her fate with that of a weak
emperor whose life was continually threatened by plots and revolts, and
whose hesitations and terrors plainly portended that he would one day
end by precipitating the imperial authority and government into some
bizarre and terrible catastrophe. For Agrippina it meant that she was
blindly staking her life and her honor, and that she would lose them
both should she fail to compensate for the innumerable deficiencies of
her strange husband through her own intelligence and strength of will.
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. Agrippina was the
daughter of Germanicus, the granddaughter of Drusus, and she had in her
veins the blood of the Claudii, with all their pride, their energy,
their puritanical, conservative, and aristocratic spirit, and the
moment she appeared, all hopes were centered in her. Although she was
a sort of feminine Tiberius, and in the purity of her life resembled
her mother and her great-grandmother Livia, Tacitus nevertheless
maligns her for her relationships with Pallas and Seneca. The fact
that Messalina, even with her implacable hatred, failed to bring about
her downfall under the _Lex de adulteriis_, proves the unreliability of
these statements, and Tacitus proves it himself when he says that she
suffered no departure from chastity unless it helped her power (_Nihil
domi impudicum nisi dominationi expediret_). 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.
[Illustration: The Emperor Nero.]
The new empress, encouraged by this show of favor, applied herself with
all the strength of her impassioned nature to the task of again making
operative in the state those traditional ideas of the nobility in which
Livia had educated first Tiberius and Drusus, then Germanicus, and then
Agrippina herself. In this descendant of hers the spirit of the
great-grandmother finally reappeared, for it had been eclipsed by the
fatal and terrible struggle between Tiberius and Agrippina, by the
madness of Caligula, and the comic scandals of the first part of the
reign of Claudius. All this served to bring back into the state a
little of that authoritative vigor which the nobility in the time of
its splendor had considered the highest ideal of government. Tacitus
says of her rule that it was as rigid as if a man's (_adductum et quasi
virile_). This signifies that under the influence of Agrippina the
laxity and disorder of the first years of Claudius's reign gave place
to a certain order and discipline. Severity there was, and more often
haughtiness (_palam severitas ac saepius superbia_). The freedmen who
had formerly been so powerful and aggressive, now stepped aside, which
is an evident sign that their petulance had now found a check in the
energy of Agrippina. The state finances and the fortune of the
imperial house were reorganized, for Agrippina, like Livia and like all
the ladies of the great Roman nobility, was an excellent administrator,
frugal, and ever watchful of her slaves and freedmen, and careful of
all items of income and expense. The Roman aristocracy, like all other
aristocracies, hated the parvenus, the men of sudden riches,
traffickers who had too quickly become wealthy, and all persons whose
only aim was to amass money. We know that Agrippina sought to prevent
as far as possible the malversations of public funds by which the
powerful freedmen of Claudius had been enriching themselves. After she
became empress we hear accounts of numerous suits instituted against
personages who had been guilty of wasting public treasure, while under
Messalina no such cases were brought forward. We know, furthermore,
that she reestablished the fortune of the imperial family, which in all
probability had been seriously compromised by the reckless expenditures
of Messalina. This is what Tacitus refers to in one of his sentences,
which, as usual, is colored by his malignity: _Cupido auri immensa
obtentum habebat quasi subsidium regno pararetur_ (She sought to enrich
the family under the pretext of providing for the needs of the empire).
What Tacitus calls a "pretext" was, on the contrary, the ancient
aristocratic conception of wealth, which in the eyes of the great
families was destined to be a means of government and an instrument of
power: the family possessed it in order to use it for the benefit of
the state.
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