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Sunday, August 22, 2010 - 7:49 PM
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
He then enriched his most powerful friends with liberal presents.
Some there were who reproached men of austere professions with having on
such an occasion divided houses and estates among themselves, like so much
spoil. It was the belief of others that a pressure had been put on them
by the emperor, who, conscious as he was of guilt, hoped for merciful consideration
if he could secure the most important men by wholesale bribery. But his
mother's rage no lavish bounty could allay. She would clasp Octavia to
her arms, and have many a secret interview with her friends; with more
than her natural rapacity, she clutched at money everywhere, seemingly
for a reserve, and courteously received tribunes and centurions. She honoured
the names and virtues of the nobles who still were left, seeking apparently
a party and a leader. Of this Nero became aware, and he ordered the departure
of the military guard now kept for the emperor's mother, as it had formerly
been for the imperial consort, along with some German troops, added as
a further honour. He also gave her a separate establishment, that throngs
of visitors might no longer wait on her, and removed her to what had been
Antonia's house; and whenever he went there himself, he was surrounded
by a crowd of centurions, and used to leave her after a hurried
kiss.
Of all things human the most precarious and transitory is a reputation
for power which has no strong support of its own. In a moment Agrippina's
doors were deserted; there was no one to comfort or to go near her, except
a few ladies, whether out of love or malice was doubtful. One of these
was Junia Silana, whom Messalina had driven from her husband, Caius Silius,
as I have already related. Conspicuous for her birth, her beauty, and her
wantonness, she had long been a special favourite of Agrippina, till after
a while there were secret mutual dislikes, because Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
, a
noble youth, had been deterred from marrying Silana by Agrippina, who repeatedly
spoke of her as an immodest woman in the decline of life, not to secure
Africanus for herself, but to keep the childless and wealthy widow out
of a husband's control. Silana having now a prospect of vengeance, suborned
as accusers two of her creatures, Iturius and Calvisius, not with the old
and often-repeated charges about Agrippina's mourning the death of Britannicus
or publishing the wrongs of Octavia, but with a hint that it was her purpose
to encourage in revolutionary designs Rubellius Plautus, who his mother's
side was as nearly connected as Nero with the Divine Augustus; and then,
by marrying him and making him emperor, again seize the control of the
State. All this Iturius and Calvisius divulged to Atimetus, a freedman
of Domitia, Nero's aunt. Exulting in the opportunity, for Agrippina and
Domitia were in bitter rivalry, Atimetus urged Paris, who was himself also
a freedman of Domitia, to go at once and put the charge in the most dreadful
form.
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