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THE ROMAN EMPERORS IN MARBLE. I O5
hatred of " Agrippina’s government," and could send him
a decoyer, his former teacher Anicetus, who out of the
friendship of his boyhood forged the weapon against the
source of his being ; and when the hour had come, laid
before him a plan by which Agrippina might disappear
and not a bubble on the stream of time betray in what
manner.
If the Roman official journal, Acta Diurna, were now
to be consulted, in the collection for the year 59, one
might perhaps read that " a murderer, Agerinus, (one of
Agrippina’s confidential servants) had been captured
sword in hand near the person of Csesar, and that his
mistress, from pangs of conscience at the crime she had
planned, had herself expiated her fault."’ In other words :
Agrippina was dead, and all good citizens were made to
believe that after an attempt to murder her son, she had
taken her own life. But the Roman historians have
something of another kind to relate.
Nero and his court were present at the feast of Min-
erva, in Bajae. Agrippina was invited thither, and the
emperor had the country-house Bauli, in the neigh-
borhood of the cape of Misenae, put in order for her.
His mother came ; Nero went to meet her, and gave
a feast in her honor that lasted into the night. She
was afterwards escorted on board of a magnificent ship,
which was to carry her to Bauli. The ship was so built
that it could be without difficulty sunk. The starlit
night and stillness of the sea, however, would have made
a shipwreck suspicious ; so they took another method,
and loaded the roof over her cabin so heavily that it burst.
A courtier who accompanied her, was crushed ; a lady
who was seated at the feet of the princess, fell by a lurch
of the ship into the water, and was beaten to death with
5*
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