oman to understand that if she had
been able to abuse the weakness of Claudius with impunity while he had
been the most obscure member of the imperial family, it was a much more
difficult matter to continue to abuse it after he had become the head
of the state. It was from this error that all their difficulties
arose. Elated by her new position, Messalina more than ever took
advantage of her husband's infirmity. She began by starting new
dissensions in the imperial family. Claudius had recalled to Rome the
two victims of Caligula's Egyptian caprices, Agrippina and Julia
Livilla; but if the latter no longer found a brother in Rome to
persecute them, they did find their aunt, and they had gained but
little by the exchange. Messalina soon took umbrage at the influence
which the two sisters acquired over the mind of their weak-willed
uncle, and it was not long before Julia Livilla was accused under the
_Lex de adulteriis_, and exiled with Seneca, the famous philosopher,
whom they wished rightly or wrongly to pass off as her lover.
Agrippina, like her mother, was a virtuous woman, as is proved by the
fact that she could not be attacked with such weapons and was enabled
to remain in Rome; though she also had to live prudently and beware of
her enemy, and much the more as she had only recently become a widow
and could therefore not even count upon the protection of a husband.
Though Agrippina remained at Rome, she was isolated and reduced to a
position of helplessness.

Messalina alone, together with four or five intelligent and
unscrupulous freedmen, hedged Claudius about, and there began the
period of their common government--a government of incredible waste and
extortion. Among these freedmen there were, to be sure, men like
Narcissus and Pallas, intelligent and sagacious, who did not aim merely
at putting money into their purses, but who helped Claudius to govern
the empire properly. Messalina, on the other hand, thought only of
acquiring wealth, that she might dissipate it in luxury and pleasures.
The wife of the emperor had been selling her influence to the sovereign
allies and vassals, to all the rich personages of the empire, who
desired to obtain any sort of favor from the imperial authority; she
had been seen bartering with the contractors for public works, mingling
in the financial affairs of the state every time that there was any
occasion to make money. And with the money thus amassed she indulged
in oste