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Sunday, August 08, 2010 - 3:40 PM
The destruction of Messalina shook the imperial house; for a strife
arose among the freedmen, who should choose a wife for Claudius, impatient
as he was of a single life and submissive to the rule of wives. The ladies
were fired with no less jealousy. Each insisted on her rank, beauty, and
fortune, and pointed to her claims to such a marriage. But the keenest
competition was between Lollia Paulina, the daughter of Marcus Lollius,
an ex-consul, and Julia Agrippina, the daughter of Germanicus. Callistus
favoured the first, Pallas the second. Aelia Paetina however, of the family
of the Tuberones, had the support of Narcissus. The emperor, who inclined
now one way, now another, as he listened to this or that adviser, summoned
the disputants to a conference and bade them express their opinions and
give their reasons.
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire dwelt on the marriage of years gone by, on the tie of
offspring, for Paetina was the mother of Antonia, and on the advantage
of excluding a new element from his household, by the return of a wife
to whom he was accustomed, and who would assuredly not look with a stepmother's
animosity on Britannicus and Octavia, who were next in her affections to
her own children. Callistus argued that she was compromised by her long
separation, and that were she to be taken back, she would be supercilious
on the strength of it. It would be far better to introduce Lollia, for,
as she had no children of her own, she would be free from jealousy, and
would take the place of a mother towards her stepchildren.
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