ntinued the struggle. Consequently for two years longer, even in
the midst of strife, intrigues, and suspicions, she preserved a
considerable influence, and was able to check the progress of the
government in its new direction. This was either because Nero, though
no longer exactly obedient to his mother's will, was still too weak,
too undecided, and too deeply involved in the ideas of his earlier
education to attempt an open revolt against her, or it was because
Seneca and Burrhus wisely sought to conciliate the ultra-conservative
ideas of the mother with the newer tendencies of the son.

The definitive break with his mother and with her political
ideas,--that is, with the ideas which had been professed by her
ancestors,--came in 58, when Nero forgot Acte for Poppaea Sabina. The
latter belonged to one of those great Roman families into which the new
spirit and the new customs had most deeply penetrated. Rich,
beautiful, avaricious of luxuries and pleasures, possessed of an
unbridled personal ambition, she had attracted Nero to herself, and, in
order to become empress, gave the uncertain youth the decisive impulse
which was to transform the disciple of Agrippina and the grandson of
Germanicus into the prodigal and dissolute emperor of history. She
encouraged in him his desire to please the populace, and certainly
never checked his love for Greece and the Orient, which resulted
finally in his mania of everywhere imitating the example of Asia and of
taking up again, though to be sure less wildly, the policies of
Caligula. Tacitus tells us that she continually reproved Nero for his
simple customs, his inelegant manners, and his rude tastes. She held
up to him, both as an example and as a reproach, the elegance and
luxury of her husband, who was indeed one of the most refined and
pompous members of the degenerate Roman nobility. Poppaea, in short,
gave herself up to the task of reshaping the education of Nero and of
destroying the results of Agrippina's patient labor. Nor was this all.
She even became, with her restricted intelligence, his adviser in
politics. She persuaded him that the policy of authority and economy
which his mother had desired was rendering him unpopular, and she
suggested the idea of a policy of liberality toward the people which
would win him the affection of the masses. After he had fallen in love
with Poppaea Sabina, Nero, who up to that time had shown no
considerable initiative in affairs