then in that of her son, no mean share in the absolute government of the Roman world.  But meanwhile that same unerring retribution, whose stealthy footsteps in the rear of the triumphant criminal we can track through page after page of history, was stealing nearer and nearer to her with uplifted hand.  When she had reached the dizzy pinnacle of gratified love and pride to which she had waded through so many a deed of sin and blood, she was struck down into terrible ruin and violent shameful death, by the hand of that very son for whose sake she had so often violated the laws of virtue and integrity, and spurned so often the pure and tender obligations which even the heathen had been taught by the voice of God within their conscience to recognize and to adore.

Intending that her son should marry Octavia, the daughter of Claudius, her first step was to drive to death Silanus, a young nobleman to whom Octavia had already been betrothed.  Her next care was to get rid of all rivals possible or actual.  Among the former were the beautiful Calpurnia and her own sister-in-law, Domitia Lepida.  Among the latter was the wealthy Lollia Paulina, against whom she trumped up an accusation of sorcery and treason, upon which her wealth was confiscated, but her life spared by the Emperor, who banished her from Italy.  This half-vengeance was not enough for the mother of Nero.  Like the daughter of Herodias in sacred history, she despatched a tribune with orders to bring her the head of her enemy; and when it was brought to her, and she found a difficulty in recognizing those withered and ghastly features of a once-celebrated beauty, she is said with her own hand to have lifted one of the lips, and to have satisfied herself that this was indeed the head of Lollia.  To such horrors may a woman sink, when she has abandoned the love of God; and a fair face may hide a soul “leprous as sin itself.”  Well may Adolf Stahr observe that Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth and husband-murdering Gertrude are mere children by the side of this awful giant-shape of steely feminine cruelty.

Such was the princess who, in the year A.D. 49, recalled Seneca from exile.[33] She saw that her cruelties were inspiring horror even into a city that had long been accustomed to blood, and Tacitus expressly tells us that she hoped to counterbalance this feeling by a stroke of popularity in recalling from the waste solitudes of Corsica the favourite philosopher and most popular author of the Roman world.  Nor was she content with this public proof of her belief in his innocence of the crime which had been laid to his charge, for she further procured for him the Praetorship, and appointed him tutor and governor to her youthful son.  Even in taking this step she did not forget her ambitious views; for she knew that Seneca cherished a secret indignation against Claudius, and that Nero could have no more wise adviser in taking steps to secure the fruition of his imperial hopes.  It