woman above all others destined to make the people
forget Messalina and to reestablish among the masses respect for the
family of Augustus, now seriously compromised by many scandals and
dissensions. Furthermore, she did not seem to suffer too much by
comparison with Livia.

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 spir