IN the year of the consulship of Caius Vipstanus and Caius
Fonteius, Nero deferred no more a long meditated crime. Length of power had
matured his daring, and his passion for Poppa daily grew more ardent.
As the woman had no hope of marriage for herself or of Octavia's divorce
while Agrippina lived, she would reproach the emperor with incessant
vituperation and sometimes call him in jest a mere ward who was under the
rule of others, and was so far from having empire that he had not even his
liberty. "Why," she asked, "was her marriage put off? Was it, forsooth, her
beauty and her ancestors, with their triumphal honours, that failed to
please, or her being a mother, and her sincere heart? No; the fear was that
as a wife at least she would divulge the wrongs of the Senate, and the wrath
of the people at the arrogance and rapacity of his mother. If the only
daughter-in-law Agrippina could bear was one who wished evil to her son, let
her be restored to her union with Otho. She would go anywhere in the world,
where she might hear of the insults heaped on the emperor, rather than
witness them, and be also involved in his perils."
These and the like
complaints, rendered impressive by tears and by the cunning of an
adulteress, no one checked, as all longed to see the mother's power broken,
while not a person believed that the son's hatred would steel his heart to
her murder.
