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.
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