Agrippina, however, was an energetic woman, not easily discouraged, and she continued the struggle.  Consequently for two years longer, even in the midst of strife, intrigues, and suspicions, she preserved a considerable influence, and was able to check the progress of the government in its new direction.  This was either because Nero, though no longer exactly obedient to his mother’s will, was still too weak, too undecided, and too deeply involved in the ideas of his earlier education to attempt an open revolt against her, or it was because Seneca and Burrhus wisely sought to conciliate the ultra-conservative ideas of the mother with the newer tendencies of the son.

The definitive break with his mother and with her political ideas,—­that is, with the ideas which had been professed by her ancestors,—­came in 58, when Nero forgot Acte for Poppaea Sabina.  The latter belonged to one of those great Roman families into which the new spirit and the new customs had most deeply penetrated.  Rich, beautiful, avaricious of luxuries and pleasures, possessed of an unbridled personal ambition, she had attracted Nero to herself, and, in order to become empress, gave the uncertain youth the decisive impulse which was to transform the disciple of Agrippina and the grandson of Germanicus into the prodigal and dissolute emperor of history.  She encouraged in him his desire to please the populace, and certainly never checked his love for Greece and the Orient, which resulted finally in his mania of everywhere imitating the example of Asia and of taking up again, though to be sure less wildly, the policies of Caligula.  Tacitus tells us that she continually reproved Nero for his simple customs, his inelegant manners, and his rude tastes.  She held up to him, both as an example and as a reproach, the elegance and luxury of her husband, who was indeed one of the most refined and pompous members of the degenerate Roman nobility.  Poppaea, in short, gave herself up to the task of reshaping the education of Nero and of destroying the results of Agrippina’s patient labor.  Nor was this all.  She even became, with her restricted intelligence, his adviser in politics.  She persuaded him that the policy of authority and economy which his mother had desired was rendering him unpopular, and she suggested the idea of a policy of liberality toward the people which would win him the affection of the masses.  After he had fallen in love with Poppaea Sabina, Nero, who up to that time had shown no considerable initiative in affairs of state, elaborated and proposed to the senate many revolutionary projects for favoring the populace.  He finally proposed that they abolish all the vectigalia of the empire; that is, all indirect taxes, all tolls and duties of whatever sort.  The measure would certainly have been most popular, and there was much discussion about it in the senate; but the conservatives showed that the finances of the empire would be ruined and persuaded Nero not to insist.  Nero, however, wished to bring about some reform which would help the masses, and he gave orders in an edict that the rates of all the vectigalia be published; that at Rome the pretor, and in the provinces the propretor and proconsul, should summarily decide all suits against the tax-farmers and that the soldiers should be exempt from these same vectigalia.