himself in the unhappiness which had attended his
five experiments of matrimony, had made the strongest possible
asseverations that he would never again submit himself to such a yoke.
But he was so completely a tool in the hands of his own courtiers that
no one attached the slightest importance to anything which he had said.
The marriage of an uncle with his own niece was considered a violation
of natural laws, and was regarded with no less horror among the Romans
than it would be among ourselves. But Agrippina, by the use of means the
most unscrupulous, prevailed over all her rivals, and managed her
interests with such consummate skill that, before many months had
elapsed, she had become the spouse of Claudius and the Empress of Rome.
With this princess the destinies of Seneca were most closely
intertwined, and it will enable us the better to understand his
position, and his writings, if we remember that all history discloses to
us no phenomenon more portentous and terrible than that presented to us
in the character of Agrippina, the mother of Nero.
Of the virtues of her great parents she, like their other children, had
inherited not one; and she had exaggerated their family tendencies into
passions which urged her into every form of crime.
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