he Roman laws.

(M1074) The fourth wife of the emperor transcended the third in intrigue
and ambition, and her marriage, at the age of thirty-three, was soon
followed by the betrothal of her son, L. Domitius, a boy of twelve, with
Octavia, the daughter of Claudius and Messalina. He was adopted by the
emperor, and assumed the name of Nero. Henceforth she labored for the
advancement of her son only. She courted the army and the favor of the
people, and founded the city on the Rhine which we call Cologne. But she
outraged the notions and sentiments of the people more by her unfeminine
usurpation of public honors, than by her cruelty or her dissoluteness. She
seated herself by the side of the emperor in military festivals. She sat
by him at a sea-fight on the Lucrine Lake, clothed in a soldier's cloak.
She took her station in front of the Roman standard, when Caractacus, the
conquered British chief, was brought in chains to the emperor's tribunal.
She caused the dismissal of the imperial officers who incurred her
displeasure. She exercised a paramount sway over her husband, and
virtually ruled the empire. She distracted the palace with discords,
cabals, and jealousies.

How the bad influence of these women over the mind of Claudius can be
reconciled with the vigilance, and the labors, and the beneficent measures
of the emperor, as generally admitted, history does not narrate. But it
was during the ascendency of both Messalina and Agrippina, that Claudius
presided at the tribunals of justice with zeal and intelligence, that he
interested himself in works of great public utility, and that he carried
on successful war in Britain.

(M1075) In the year A.D. 54, and in the fourteenth of his reign, Claudius,
exhausted by the affairs of State, and also, it is said, by intemperance,
fell sick at Rome, and sought the medicinal waters of Sinuessa. It was
there that Agrippina contrived to poison him, by the aid of Locusta, a
professed poisoner, and Xenophon, a physician, while she affected an
excess of grief. She held his son Britannicus in her arms, and detained
him and his sisters in the palace, while every preparation was made to
secure the accession of her own son, Nero. She was probably prompted to
this act from fear that she would be supplanted and punished, for Claudius
had said, when wine had unloosed his secret thoughts, "that it was his
fate to suffer the crimes of his wives, but at last to punish them." She
also was eager