The extraordinary and eloquent audacity of her defence created a
reaction in her favour, and secured the punishment of her accusers. But
the ties of affection could not long unite two such wicked and imperious
natures as those of Agrippina and her son. All history shows that there
can be no real love between souls exceptionally wicked, and that this is
still more impossible when the alliance between them has been sealed by
a complicity in crime. Nero had now fallen into a deep infatuation for
Poppaea Sabina, the beautiful wife of Otho, and she refused him her hand
so long as he was still under the control of his mother. At this time
Agrippina, as the just consequence of her many crimes, was regarded by
all classes with a fanaticism of hatred which in Poppaea Sabina was
intensified by manifest self-interest. Nero, always weak, had long
regarded his mother with real terror and disgust, and he scarcely needed
the urgency of constant application to make him long to get rid of her.
But the daughter of Germanicus could not be openly destroyed, while her
own precautions helped to secure her against secret assassination.
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