Messalina had proved this, for she had
committed every excess and abuse with impunity. Agrippina, protected
as she was by the respect of all, invested with honors that gave her
person a virtually sacred character, had nothing to fear either from
the weak Claudius or from his powerful freedmen.

This accusation of poisoning, therefore, seems to be of precisely the
same sort as, and not a whit more serious than, all those other similar
accusations which were brought against the members of the Augustan
family. Claudius, who was already sixty-four, in all probability died
a sudden but natural death, and from the point of view of the interests
of the house of Augustus, which Agrippina had strongly at heart, he
died much too soon. It was a dangerous and difficult matter to ask the
Roman senate to appoint one of these striplings commander of the armies
and emperor, even though they were the only survivors of the race of
Augustus. So true is this that Tacitus tells us that Agrippina kept
the death of Claudius secret for many hours and pretended that the
physicians were still struggling to save him, when in reality he was
already dead, _dum res firmando Neronis imperio componuntur_ (while
matters were being arranged to assure the empire to Nero).
Consequently, if everything had to be hurried through in confusion at
the last moment, it is plain that Agrippina herself must have been
taken by surprise by the illness and death of Claudius. She therefore
cannot be held responsible for having caused it.

It is not, however, difficult to reconstruct the course of events. On
the nights of the twelfth and thirteenth of October, soon after
Claudius had been suddenly stricken down by his violent malady, the
doctors announced to Agrippina that the emperor was lost. Agrippina
immediately understood that since the family of Augustus could at that
moment present no full-grown man as candidate for the imperial office,
there was grave danger that the senate might refuse to confer the
supreme power either upon Nero or Britannicus. The only means of
avoiding this danger was to bring pressure to bear upon the senate
through the pretorian cohorts, which were as friendly to the family of
Augustus as the senate was hostile. She must present one of the two
youths to the guards and have him acclaimed not head of the empire, but
head of the armies. The senate would thereby be constrained to
proclaim him head of the empire, as they had done in