it, and the
moment she appeared, all hopes were centered in her. Although she was
a sort of feminine Tiberius, and in the purity of her life resembled
her mother and her great-grandmother Livia, Tacitus nevertheless
maligns her for her relationships with Pallas and Seneca. The fact
that Messalina, even with her implacable hatred, failed to bring about
her downfall under the _Lex de adulteriis_, proves the unreliability of
these statements, and Tacitus proves it himself when he says that she
suffered no departure from chastity unless it helped her power (_Nihil
domi impudicum nisi dominationi expediret_). This means that Agrippina
was a lady of irreproachable life; for if there is one thing which
stands out clearly in the history of this remarkable woman, it is that
both her rise and her fall depended upon causes of such a nature that
not even her womanly charms could have increased her power or retarded
her ruin. All hearts were therefore filled with hope when they saw
this respectable, active, and energetic woman take her place at the
side of Claudius the weakling, for she brought back the memory of the
most venerated personages of the family of Augustus.

[Illustration: The Emperor Nero.]

The new empress, encouraged by this show of favor, applied herself with
all the strength of her impassioned nature to the task of again making
operative in the state those traditional ideas of the nobility in which
Livia had educated first Tiberius and Drusus, then Germanicus, and then
Agrippina herself. In this descendant of hers the spirit of the
great-grandmother finally reappeared, for it had been eclipsed by the
fatal and terrible struggle between Tiberius and Agrippina, by the
madness of Caligula, and the comic scandals of the first part of the
reign of Claudius. All this served to bring back into the state a
little of that authoritative vigor which the nobility in the time of
its splendor had considered the highest ideal of government. Tacitus
says of her rule that it was as rigid as if a man's (_adductum et quasi
virile_). This signifies that under the influence of Agrippina the
laxity and disorder of the first years of Claudius's reign gave place
to a certain order and discipline. Severity there was, and more often
haughtiness (_palam severitas ac saepius superbia_). The freedmen who
had formerly been so powerful and aggressive, now stepped aside, which
is an evident sign that their petulance had now found a chec