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his surrounding train to applaud him for the part he had played the last gleam of vain glorious ambition, the last tribute to human weakness. But there was a yet deeper feeling present in that moment of nature's final triumph over all factitious interests. Turning his eyes upon Livia, he drew her, in the grasp of death, still closer to him; and exclaiming, "Livia, be happy, and remember how we have loved," the monarch of the world died like a hero of romance.

CHAPTER III.

The Women of the Empire - Plancina-The first Agrippina.

WHATEVER were the faults of Livia, they appear to have mainly emanated from an intense maternal instinct. Ill-directed by circumstances, and by ambition, the master passion of the age, she suffered that most acute of all penalties under which the human heart can break - maternal disappointment: for the mother of Tiberius was eminently and fearfully taught to feel

"how much sharper than a serpent's tooth
Is an ungrateful child."

The son, pupil, and protégé of Livia, gave at first the happy promise of a benevolent reign, by an immediate acknowledgment that he owed his power to his mother, and by the prospective advantages he might derive from her experience.* Livia still held a place near the person of her imperial son, retained an influence over his actions, a voice in his councils; and while she continued to do so, the wisdom, policy, and liberality of his government were conspicuous. It was during this brief interval of sanity in the life of a maniac or a monster, that the Roman people, among other blessings, enjoyed a liberty, analogous to the free press of modern times-freedom of speech, the unrestrained expression of public opinion; "for, in a free city, (said the dissimulating expositor of his mother's wisdom,) in a free city, the tongue of every man should be free." Taxes, too, were gradually lessened, and luxury restrained by salutary regulations. At home all was peace; abroad all was victory: Germanicus conquered the barbarians of the north, and Tiberius won the hearts of the Romans.

Power, however, parasites, pleasure, and the outburst of passions, long checked but inherent, soon broke the restraints which early habits and education

* Tiberius (crammed probably by his mother and his tutor) pronounced a funeral oration over his father at nine years old. He also obtained a triumph in his early youth by his military exploits.

had imposed; and neither Rome nor Livia were long permitted to enjoy the illusion of this seeming virtue and borrowed wisdom. The control of the mother's more powerful mind soon became offensive and insupportable to the son; and, when she was removed from the councils of Tiberius, and banished from his society, her authority over him gave way to that of Plancina, his beautiful and artful mistress, and wife of the absent Piso, governor of Syria.

Plancina, either early perverted, or pre-eminently organized for evil, became the very soul of that faction which aimed at the ruin of Germanicus; and she executed the delicate mission of calumny against the most illustrious character of the age, with an address which gained for her the exclusive confidence of Tiberius. When, at length, the emperor had determined on the death of his too formidable kinsman, it was to her that he entrusted the conveyance of his secret orders to Piso, her husband, for the administration of poison; and her courage and dexterity in undertaking the perilous mission are evidences of the intellectual superiority of the bad woman, over the imperial tyrant,

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of whose devices she was probably the instigator, not less than the agent.

Opposed to Plancina, in the history of Rome's worst times, stands forward a woman, whose life and character were illustrations of all that is brightest in humanity, Agrippina, the widow of the murdered Germanicus, and granddaughter of Augustus Cæsar. Agrippina united to the beauty of Julia, (her unfortunate mother,) the firmness of purpose which distinguished her illustrious father; and she nobly maintained the glory of her descent, which her brothers and sisters had so deeply dishonoured. Proud of the blood of Augustus flowing in her veins, she aimed at representing his political wisdom.

In her devotion to her husband, Germanicus, she accompanied him in his arduous campaigns, sharing alike his dangers and his triumphs, and giving birth to her beautiful children amidst the unaccommodated vicissitudes of a camp. She thus rendered herself adored by the soldiery, and so respected by their officers, that, in the temporary absences of Germanicus, they consulted and obeyed her, as if the spirit and skill of the Cæsars were her natural inheritance.

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