mit to be thus supplanted. One day, when he and
Nero were both abroad, attending some public spectacle or
celebration, they met, and Nero accosted his cousin, calling him
Britannicus. Britannicus, in returning the salutation, addressed
Nero familiarly by the name Domitius;--Domitius Ahenobarbus having
been his name before he was adopted by Claudius. Agrippina was very
indignant when she heard of this. She considered the using of this
name by Britannicus, as denoting, on his part, a refusal to
acknowledge his cousin as the adopted son of his father. She
immediately went to Claudius with earnest and angry complainings.
"Your own edict," said she, "sanctioned and confirmed by the Senate,
is disavowed and annulled, and my son is subjected to public insult
by the impertinence of this child." Agrippina farther represented to
Claudius, that Britannicus never would have thought of addressing
her son in such a manner, of his own accord. His doing it must have
arisen from the influence of some of the persons around him who were
hostile to her; and she made use of the occasion to induce Claudius
to give her authority to remove all that remained of the child's
instructors and governors, who could be suspected of a friendly
interest in his cause, and to subject him to new and more rigorous
restrictions than ever.

One of the most imposing of all the spectacles and celebrations
which Claudius instituted during his reign, was the one which
signalized the opening of the canal by which the Fucine lake was
drained. The Fucine lake was a large but shallow body of water, at
the foot of the Appenines, near the sources of the Tiber.[A] It was
subject to periodic inundations, by which the surrounding lands were
submerged. An engineer had offered to drain the lake, in
consideration of receiving for his pay the lands which would be laid
dry by the operation. But Claudius, who seemed to have quite a taste
for such undertakings, preferred to accomplish the work himself. The
canal by which the water should be conveyed away, was to be formed
in part by a deep cut, and partly by a tunnel through a mountain;
and inasmuch as in those days the power now chiefly relied upon for
making such excavations, namely, the explosive force of gunpowder,
was not known, any extensive working in solid rock was an operation
of immense labor. When the canal was finished, Claudius determined
to institute a grand celebration to signalize the opening of it for
drawing