To obtain this end, she spared, he says, neither intrigues, fraud, nor deceit; she had Seneca recalled from exile and appointed tutor of her child.  She removed from office the two commanders of the pretorian guard, who were creatures of Messalina, and in their stead she had elected one of her own, a certain Afranius Burrhus.  She laid pitfalls for Britannicus and surrounded him with spies, and in the year 50, by dint of much intrigue and many caresses, she finally succeeded in having Claudius adopt her son.  But this whole story is merely a complicated and fantastic romance, embroidered about a truth which in itself is comparatively simple.  Tacitus himself tells us that Agrippina was a most exacting mother; that is, a mother of the older Roman type—­in his own words, trux et minax.  She did not follow the gentle methods of the newer education, which were gradually being introduced into the great families, and she had brought up her son in the ancient manner with the greatest simplicity.  It is well to keep in mind, furthermore, that neither Britannicus nor Nero had any right to the throne of Claudius.  The hereditary principle did not yet exist in the imperial government:  the senate was free to choose whomsoever it wished.  To be sure, up to that time the choice had always fallen upon a member of the Augustan family; but it had only been because it was easier to find there persons who were known and respected, who commanded the admiration of the soldiers in distant regions, and who had received a certain preparation for the diverse and often difficult duties of their office.  And it was precisely for this reason that Augustus and Tiberius had always sought to prepare more than one youth for the highest office, both in order that the senate might have a certain freedom of choice, and also that there might be some one in reserve, in case one of these young men should disappoint the hopes of the empire or should die prematurely, as so many others had died.  That she should have persuaded Claudius to adopt her son does not mean, therefore, that she wished to set Britannicus aside and give the advantage to Nero.  It merely proves that she did not wish the family of Augustus to lose the supreme power, and for this reason she intended to prepare not only one successor, but two possible successors, to Claudius, just as Augustus had for a long time trained both Drusus and Tiberius.

[Illustration:  Britannicus.]

In order to understand how wise and reasonable the conduct of Agrippina really was, we must also remember that Nero was four years older than Britannicus, and that, therefore, in the year 50, when Nero was adopted, Britannicus was a mere lad of nine.  As Claudius was already sixty, it would have been most imprudent to designate a nine-year-old lad as his only possible successor, when Nero, who was four years his senior, would have been better prepared than Britannicus to take up the reign.  There is a further proof