What could she, a lone woman do against an Emperor who did not stop even at the plan of murdering his mother?  She realised, during that awful night, that only one chance of safety was left to her—­to ignore what had taken place; and she sent her freedman with the message that meant forgiveness.  But fear kept Nero and his counsellors from understanding; and when they could easily have remedied the preceding mistake, they compromised all by a supreme error.  Finally Seneca, the pacificator and humanitarian philosopher, thought he had found the way of making half-openly the only suggestion which seemed wise to him:  he turned to Burrhus and asked what might happen, if an order were given the Praetorians to kill Nero’s mother.  Burrhus understood that his colleague, although the first to give the fatal advice, was trying to shift upon him the much more serious responsibility of carrying it out; since, if they reached the decision of having Agrippina disposed of by the Praetorians, no one but he, the commander of the guard, could utter the order.  He therefore protested with the greatest energy that the Praetorians would never lay murderous hands on the daughter of Germanicus.  Then he added cogitatively that, if it were thought necessary, Anicetus and his sailors could finish the work already begun.  Thus Burrhus gave the same advice as Seneca, but he, like his colleague, meant to pass on to some one else the task of execution.  He chose better than Seneca:  Anicetus, if Agrippina lived, ran a serious risk of becoming the scapegoat of all this affair.  In fact, as soon as Nero gave his assent, Anicetus and a few sailors hastened to the villa of Agrippina and stabbed her.

The crime was abominable.  Nero and his circle were so awed by it that they attempted to make the people believe that Agrippina had committed suicide, when her conspiracy against her son’s life had been discovered.  This was the official version of Agrippina’s death, sent by Nero to the Senate.  But this audacious mystification had no success.  The public divined the truth, and roused by the voice of their age-long instincts, they cried out that the Emperor no less than any peasant of Italy must revere his father and his mother.  Through a sudden turn of public feeling, Agrippina, who had been so much hated during her life, became the object of a kind of popular veneration; Nero, on the other hand, and Poppaea inspired a sentiment of profound horror.

If Nero had found the living Agrippina unbearable, he soon realised that his dead mother was much more to be feared.  In fact, scared as he was by the popular agitation, not only had he temporarily to give up the plan of divorcing Octavia and marrying Poppaea, but felt obliged to stay several months at Baiae, not daring to return to Rome.  He was, however, no longer a child:  he was twenty-three years old and had some talent.  Men of intelligence and energy were also not wanting in his entourage.  The first shock once over, the Emperor and his coterie