of Agrippina the Younger, in the Capitoline
Museum, Rome.]

Agrippina, then, with the assistance of Seneca and Burrhus, had kept
the highest office in the state in the family of Augustus, and she had
done so by a bold move which had not been without its dangers. She was
too intelligent not to foresee that a seventeen-year-old emperor could
have no authority, and that his position would expose him to all sorts
of envy and intrigue, and to open as well as secret opposition. She
succeeded in mitigating this evil and in parrying this danger by
another very happy suggestion--the virtually complete restoration of
the old republican constitution. After the funeral of Claudius, Nero
introduced himself to the senate, and in a polished and modest
discourse, seemingly intended to excuse his youth, he declared that of
all the powers exercised by his predecessors he wished to keep only the
command of the armies. All other civil, judicial, and administrative
functions he turned over to the senate, as in the times of the republic.

This "restoration of the republic" was Agrippina's masterpiece, and
marks the zenith of her power. It followed, as a result of her
decision, that Nero, who was to go down to posterity as the most
terrible of tyrants, was that one of all the Roman emperors who had the
most limited power; and furthermore it was likewise the result of her
activity that the constitution of the empire had never been so close to
that of the ancient republic as under the government of Nero. Most
historians, hallucinated by Tacitus, have not noticed this, and they
have consequently not recognized that in carrying out this plan
Agrippina is neither more nor less than the last continuator of the
great political tradition founded by Augustus. In the minds of both
Augustus and Tiberius the empire was to be governed by the aristocracy.
The emperor was merely the depositary of certain powers of the nobility
conceded to him for reasons of state. If these reasons of state should
disappear, the powers would naturally revert to the nobles. It was
therefore expedient at this time to make the senate forget, in the
presence of a seventeen-year-old emperor, the pressure which had been
brought to bear upon it by the cohorts, and to wipe out the rancor
against the imperial power which was still dormant in the aristocracy.
This restoration was not, therefore, a sheer renunciation of privileges
and powers inherent in the sovereign autho