r of the palace guard, Cassius Chaerea by name, who
happened to have a weak voice, and whom Caligula frequently insulted in
public for this fault of nature. These insults in time grew heavier and
viler than the veteran could bear, and he organized a conspiracy with a
few others against the emperor's life. Meeting him without guards, the
conspirators assailed him with their daggers and put an end to his base
life.

Thus died, after twenty-nine years of life and four years of power, one
of the vilest, cruellest, and maddest of the imperial demons who so long
made Rome a slaughter-house and an abomination among the nations.

_THE MURDER OF AN EMPRESS._

Nero was lord of Rome. Chance had placed a weak and immoral boy in
unlimited control of the greatest of nations. Utterly destitute of
principle, he gradually descended into the deepest vice and profligacy,
which was soon succeeded by the basest cruelty and treachery. And one of
the first victims of his treachery was his own mother, who had murdered
her husband, the Emperor Claudius, to place him on the throne, and had
now committed the deeper fault of attempting to control her worthless
and faithless son.

She had threatened to replace him on the throne with his half-brother
Britannicus, and Nero had escaped this difficulty by poisoning
Britannicus. She then opposed his vicious passions, and made a bitter
foe of his mistress Poppaea, who by every artifice incensed the
weak-minded emperor against his mother, representing her as the only
obstacle to his full enjoyment of power and pleasure.

At length the detestable son was wrought up to the resolution of
murdering her to whom he owed his life. But how? He was too cowardly and
irresolute to take open means. Should he remove her by poison or the
poignard? The first was doubtful. Agrippina was too practised in guilt,
too accustomed to vile deeds, to be easily deceived, and had, moreover,
by taking poisons, hardened her frame against their effect. Nor could
she be killed by the knife and the murder concealed. The murder-seeking
wretch, who had no plan, and no stronger person than himself in whom he
could confide, was at a loss how to carry out his wicked purpose.

At this juncture his tutor Anicetus came to his aid. This villain, who
bitterly hated Agrippina, was now in command of the fleet that lay at
Misenum. He proposed to Nero to have a vessel built in such a manner
that it might give way in the open sea, and p