reat folly: to divorce Octavia and to
raise to her place a beautiful freed-woman called Acte. According to
one of the fundamental laws of the State, the great law of Augustus on
marriage, which forbade marriages between senators and freedwomen, the
union of Nero and Acte could be only a concubinage. Agrippina wanted
to avoid this scandal; and, as Nero persisted in his idea, it seems
that she actually thought of having him deposed and of securing the
choice of Britannicus, a very serious young man, as his successor. A
true Roman, Agrippina was ready to sacrifice her son for the sake of
the Republic.

The threat was, or appeared to be, so serious to Nero, that it made
him step over the threshold of crime. One day during a great dinner
to which he had been invited by Nero, Britannicus was suddenly seized
with violent convulsions. "It is an attack of epilepsy," said Nero
calmly, giving orders to his slaves to remove Britannicus and care
for him. The young man died in a few hours and every one believed that
Nero had poisoned him.

This dastardly crime aroused at first a sense of horror and fright
among the people, but the impression did not last long. In spite of
all his faults, Nero was liked. In Rome they had respected Augustus
and hated Tiberius; they had killed Caligula and jeered at Claudius;
Nero seemed to be the first of the Roman Emperors who stood a chance
of becoming popular. Contrary to Agrippina's ideas, it was his
frivolity that pleased the great masses, because this frivolity
corresponded to the slow but progressive decay of the old Roman
virtues in them. They expected from Nero a less hard, less severe,
less parsimonious government--in a word, a government less Roman than
the rule of his predecessors, a government which, instead of force,
glory, and wisdom, meant pleasure and ease.

So it happened that many soon forgot the unfortunate Britannicus, and
some even tried to justify Nero by invoking State necessity. Agrippina
alone remained the object of the universal hatred, as the sole cause
of so many misfortunes. Implacable enemies, concealed in the shadow,
were subtly at work against her; they organised a campaign of absurd
calumnies in the Court itself, and it is this campaign from which
Tacitus drew his material.

Some wretches finally dared even accuse her of conspiracy against
the life of her son. Agrippina, refusing to plead for herself, still
weathered the storm, because Nero was afraid of her, and