re during
his reign. To write a panegyric upon such a man as Claudius had
been, must surely have proved a somewhat difficult task; but Seneca
accomplished it very adroitly, and the people, aided by the
solemnity of the occasion, listened with proper gravity, until at
length the orator began to speak of the judgment and the political
wisdom of Claudius, and then the listeners found that they could
preserve their decorum no longer. The audience looked at each other,
and there was a general laugh. The young orator, though for the
moment somewhat disconcerted at this interruption, soon recovered
himself, and went on to the end of his discourse.

After these funeral ceremonies had been performed, the Senate was
convened, and Nero appeared before them to make his inaugural
address. This address also, was of course prepared for him by
Seneca, under directions from Agrippina, who, after revolving the
subject fully in her mind, had determined what it would be most
politic to say. She knew very well that until the power of her son
became consolidated and settled, it became him to be modest in his
pretensions and claims, and to profess great deference and respect
for the powers and prerogatives of the Senate. In the speech,
therefore, which Nero delivered in the senate-chamber, he said that
in assuming the imperial dignity, which he had consented to do in
obedience to the will of his father the late emperor, to the general
voice of the army, and the universal suffrages of the people, he
did not intend to usurp the civil powers of the state, but to leave
to the Senate, and to the various civil functionaries of the city,
their rightful and proper jurisdiction. He considered himself as
merely the commander-in-chief of the armies of the commonwealth, and
as such, his duty would be simply to execute the national will. He
promised, moreover, a great variety of reforms in the
administration, all tending to diminish the authority of the prince,
and to protect the people from danger of oppression by military
power. In a word, it was his settled purpose, he said, to restore
the government to its pristine simplicity and purity, and to
administer it in strict accordance with the true principles of the
Roman Constitution, as originally established by the founders of the
commonwealth. The professions and promises which Nero thus made to
the Senate, or rather which he recited to them at the dictation of
his mother and of Seneca, gave great sat