her son, but without success. She attached
herself strongly to Octavia, the wife of Nero, and would have
defended her, if she could, from the injuries and wrongs which the
conduct of Nero as a husband heaped upon her.

At length the young emperor, in following his round of vicious
indulgence, formed an intimacy with a certain lady of the court
named Poppaea, the wife of Otho, one of Nero's companions in
pleasure. Nero sent Otho away on some distant appointment, in order
that he might enjoy the society of Poppaea without restraint. At
length Poppaea gained so great an ascendency over the mind of the
emperor as to seduce him entirely away from his duty to his wife,
and she proposed that they should both be divorced and then marry
one another. Nero was inclined to accede to this proposal, but
Agrippina strongly opposed it. For a time Nero hesitated between the
influence of Agrippina and the sentiment of duty, on the one hand,
and the enticements of Poppaea on the other. In addition to the
influence of her blandishments and smiles, she attempted to act upon
Nero's boyish pride by taunting him with what she called his
degrading and unmanly subjection to his mother. How long, she asked,
was he to remain like a child under maternal tutelage? She wondered
how he could endure so ignoble a bondage. He was in name and
position, she said, a mighty monarch, reigning absolutely over half
the world,--but in actual fact he was a mere nursery boy, who could
do nothing without his mother's leave. She was ashamed, she said, to
see him in so humiliating a condition; and unless he would take some
vigorous measures to free himself from his chains, she declared that
she would leave him forever, and go with her husband to some distant
quarter of the world where she could no longer be a witness of his
disgrace.

The effect of these taunts upon the mind of Nero was very much
heightened by the proud and imperious spirit which his mother
manifested toward him, and which seemed to become more and more
stern and severe, through the growing desperation which the conduct
of her son and her own hopeless condition seemed to awaken in her
mind. The quarrel, in a word, between the emperor and his mother
grew more and more inveterate and hopeless every day. At length he
shunned her entirely, and finally, every remaining spark of filial
duty having become extinguished, he began to meditate some secret
plan of removing her out of his way.

He revolved