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The letters of Cicero prove to us that Caesar was not the first to think that Rome, having its hands tied for the moment in the East, ought to interfere in the affairs of Gaul. The man who first had the idea of a Gallic policy was Quintus Metellus Celerus, husband of the famous Clodia, and consul the year before Caesar. Taking advantage of certain disturbances arisen in Gaul from the constant wars between the differing parts, Metellus had persuaded the Senate to authorise him to make war on the Helvetians. At the beginning of the year 59, that is, the year in which Caesar was consul, Metellus was already preparing to depart for the war in Gaul, when suddenly he died; and then Caesar, profiting by the interest in Rome for Gallic affairs, had the mission previously entrusted to Metellus given to himself and took up both Metellus's office and his plan. Here you see at the beginning of this story the first accident,--the death of Metellus. An historian curious of nice and unanswerable questions might ask himself what would have been the history of the world if Metellus had not died. Certainly Rome would have been occupied with Gallic concerns a year sooner and by a different man; Caesar would probably have had to seek elsewhere a brilliant proconsulship and things Gallic would have for ever escaped his energy.

However it be, charged with the affairs of Gaul accidentally and unexpectedly, Caesar went there without well knowing the condition of it, and, in fact, as I think I proved in a long appendix published in the French and English editions of my work, he began his Gallic policy with a serious mistake; that is, attacking the Helvetians. A superior mind, Caesar was not long in finding his bearings in the midst of the tremendous confusion he found in Gaul; but for this, there is no need to think that he carried out in the Gallic policy vast schemes, long meditated: he worked, instead, as the uncertain changes of Roman politics imposed. I believe that there is but one way to understand and reasonably explain the policy pursued by Caesar in Gaul, his sudden moves, his zigzags, his audacities, his mistakes; that is, to study it from Rome, to keep always in mind the internal changes, the party struggle, in which he was involved at Rome. In short, Gaul was for Caesar only a means to operate on the internal politics of Rome, of which he made use from day to day, as the immediate interest of the passing hour seemed to require.

I cite a single example, but the most significant. Caesar declared Gaul a Roman province and annexed it to the Empire toward the end of 57 B.C.; that is, at the end of his second year as proconsul, unexpectedly, with no warning act to intimate such vigorous intent,--a surprise; and why? Look to Rome and you will understand. In 57 B.C., the democratic party, demoralised by discords, upset by the popular agitation to recall Cicero from unjust exile, discredited by scandals, especially the Egyptian scandals, seemed on the point of going to pieces. Caesar understood that there was but one way to stop this ruin: to stun public opinion and all Italy with some highly audacious surprise. The surprise was the annexation of Gaul. Declaring Gaul a Roman province after the victory over the Belgae, he convinced Rome that he had in two years overcome all Gallic adversaries. And so, the conquest of Gaul--this event that was to open a new era, this event, the effects of which still endure--was, at the beginning in the mind that conceived and executed it, nothing but a bold political expedient in behalf of a party, to solve a situation compromised by manifold errors.

But you will ask me: how from so tiny a seed could ever grow so mighty a tree, covering with its branches so much of the earth? You know that at the close of the proconsulship in Gaul, there breaks out a great civil war; this lasts, with brief interruptions and pauses, until the battle of Actium. Only toward 30 B.C., is the tempest lulled, and during this time Gaul seems almost to disappear; the ancient writers hardly mention it, except from time to time for a moment to let us know that some unimportant revolt broke out, now here, now there, in the vast territory; that this or that general was sent to repress it.

The civil wars ended, the government of Rome turns its attention to the provinces anew, but for another reason. Saint Jerome tells us that in 25 B.C., Augustus increased the tribute from the Gauls: we find no difficulty in getting at the reason of this fact. The thing most urgent after the re-establishment of peace was the re-arrangement of finance; that signified then, as always, an increase of imposts: but more could not be extorted from the Oriental provinces, already exhausted by so many wars and plunderings; therefore the idea to draw greater revenues from the European provinces of recent conquest, particularly from Gaul, which until then had paid so little. So you see a-forging one link after another in the chain: Caesar for a political interest conquers Gaul; thirty years afterward Augustus goes there to seek new revenues for his balance-sheet; thence-forward there are always immediate needs that urge Roman politics into Gallic affairs: and so it is that little by little Roman politics become permanently involved, by a kind of concatenation, not by deliberate plan.

We can easily follow the process. Augustus had left in Gaul to exact the new tribute, a former slave of Caesar's, afterward liberated,--a Gaul or German whom Caesar had captured as a child in one of his expeditions and later freed, because of his consummate administrative ability. It appears, however, that, for the Gauls at least, this ability was even too great. In a curious chapter Dion tells us that Licinius, this freedman, uniting the avarice of a barbarian to the pretences of a Roman, beat down everyone that seemed greater than he; oppressed all those who seemed to have more power; extorted enormous sums from all, were they to fill out the dues of his office, or to enrich himself and his family. His rascality was so stupendous that since the Gauls paid certain taxes every month, he increased to fourteen the number of the months, declaring that December, the last, was only the tenth; consequently it was necessary to count two more, one called Undecember and another, Duodecember.

I would not guarantee this story true, since, when there is introduced into a nation a new and more burdensome system of taxes, there are always set in circulation tales of this kind about the rapacity of the persons charged with collecting them: but true or false, the tale shows that the Gauls were much irritated by the new tribute; indeed this irritation increased so much that in the winter from the year 15 till the year 14 B.C., Augustus, having to remain in Gaul on account of certain serious complications, arisen in Germany, was obliged to give his attention to it during his stay. The prominent men of Gaul presented vigorous complaints to him against Licinius and his administration. Then there occurred an episode that, recounted three centuries later with a certain na?vet? by Dion Cassius, has been overlooked by the historians, but which seems to me to be of prime interest in the history of the Latin world. Dion writes:

This chapter of Dion allows us also to affirm that he who first realised the value of Gaul and opened the eyes of Augustus, was no great personage of the Roman aristocracy whose names are written in such lofty characters on the pages of history, whose images are yet found in marble and bronze among the museums of Europe; no one of those who ruled the Empire and therefore according to reason and justice had the responsibility of governing it well: it was, instead, an obscure freedman, whose ability the masters of the Empire scorned to exploit except as to-day a peasant uses the forces of his ox, hardly deigning to look at him and yet deeming all his labour but the owner's natural right.

So stands the story. The Gallic freedman observed, and understood, and was forgotten; posterity, instead, has had to wonder over the profound wisdom of the Roman aristocrat, who understood nothing. Moreover, if in 14 B.C. Licinius had to make an effort to persuade the surprised and diffident Augustus that Gaul was a province of great future, it is clear that Gaul must already have begun to grow rich by itself without the Roman government's having done anything to promote its progress.

From what hidden sources sprang forth this new wealth of Gaul? All the documents that we possess authorise us to respond that Gaul--to begin from the time of Augustus--was able to grow rich quickly, because the events following the Roman conquest turned and disposed the general conditions of the Empire in its favour. Gaul then, as France now, was endowed with several requisites essential to its becoming a nation of great economic development: a land very fertile; a population dense for the times, intelligent, wide-awake, active; a climate that, even though it seemed to Greeks and Romans cold and foggy, was better suited to intense activity than the warm and sunny climate of the South; and finally,--a supreme advantage in ancient civilisation,--it was everywhere intersected, as by a network of canals, by navigable rivers. In ancient times transport by land was very expensive; water was the natural and economic vehicle of commerce: therefore civilisation was able to enter with commerce into the interior of continents only by way of the rivers, which, as one might say, were to a certain extent the railroads of the ancient world.

To these advantageous conditions, which, being physical, existed before the Roman conquest, the conquest added some others: it broke down the political barrier that previously cut off these convenient means of penetration, the rivers; it suppressed the wars between the Gallic tribes, the privileges, the tyrannies, the tolls, the monopolies; it saved the enormous resources that were previously wasted in these constant drains; it put again the hoe, the spade, the tools of the artisan, into hands that had before been wielding the sword; and finally, it consolidated the jurisdiction of property. When Caesar invaded Gaul, the great landowners still cultivated cereals and textile plants but little; they put the greater part of their fortune into cattle, exactly because in that regime of continual war and revolution lands easily kept changing proprietors. Furthermore, the more frequent contact with Rome acquainted the Gauls with Roman agriculture and its abler methods, with Latin life and its studied order.

The new and more stable jurisdiction of the landed proprietary generated another most important effect; it promoted rapidly the cultivation of cereals and textile plants, of wheat and flax. "All Gaul produces much wheat," says Strabo, and we read his notice without surprise, because we know that France is, even to-day, the region of Europe most fertile in cereals. There is no reason to suppose that it must have been barren of them twenty centuries ago. Other documentary evidence, particularly inscriptions, confirms Strabo, informing us that, especially in the second century, Rome bought the customary grain to feed the metropolis not only in Egypt, but also in Gaul. In short, Gaul seems to have been the sole region of Europe fertile enough to be able to export grain, to have been for Rome a kind of Canada or Middle West of the time, set not beyond oceans but beyond the Alps.

The cultivation of flax, to the ancient world what cotton is to-day, progressed rapidly in Gaul along with that of wheat, so that Gaul was early able to rival Egypt also in this respect. That Gaul and Egypt should have so much in common at the same time, was something so interesting and seemed so strange that Pliny himself wrote:

Flax is sowed only in sandy places and after a single ploughing. Perhaps Egypt may be pardoned for sowing it, because with it she buys the merchandise of India and Arabia. But, look you!--even Gaul is famous for this plant. What matters it, if huge mountains shut away the sea; if on the ocean side it has for confines what is called emptiness? Notwithstanding that, Gaul cultivates flax like Egypt: the Cadurci, the Caleti, the Ruteni, the Biturigi, the Morini, who are considered tribes of the ends of the earth ... but what am I saying? All Gaul makes sails,--till the enemies beyond the Rhine imitate them, and the linen is more beautiful to the eyes than are their women.

These descriptions show Gaul to be one of the new countries, like the Argentine Republic or the United States, in which the land has still almost its natural pristine fecundity and brings forth a marvellous abundance of plants that clothe and nourish man. We know that in Gaul under the Empire there were immense fortunes in land in face of which the fortunes of wealthy Italian proprietors shrink like the fortunes of Europe when compared with the great ranch fortunes of the Argentine Republic or the United States. Twenty years ago they began to excavate in France the ruins of the great Gallo-Roman villas: these are constructed on the plan of the Italian villa, decorated in the same way, but are much larger, more sumptuous, more sightly; one feels in them the pride of a new people which has adopted the Latin civilisation, but has infused into that, derived from the wealth of their land, a spirit of grandeur and of luxury that poorer and older Latins did not know, exactly as to-day the Americans infuse a spirit of greater magnitude and boldness into so many things that they take from timid, old Europe. Perhaps there was also in this Gallic luxury, as in the American, a bit of ostentation, intended to humiliate the masters remaining poorer and more modest.

They had mastered weaving, but they did not stop there; they invented new methods of dyeing, using vegetable dyes instead of the customary animal colours of the Orient. Pliny says:

The Gaul imitates with herbs all colours, including Tyrian purple; they do not seek the mollusk on the sea bottom; they run no risk of being devoured by sea monsters; they do not exploit the anchorless deep to multiply the attractions of the courtesan, or to increase the powers of the seducer of another's wife. They gather the herbs like cereals, standing on the dry ground; although the colour that they derive does not bear washing. Luxury could thus be gratified with greater show at the cost of fewer dangers.

It is clear, then, according to Pliny, at one time, it was believed that the competition of Gallic dyers might have ruined the Oriental, and would have done so, had the tenacity of their vegetable colouring equalled its beauty. In another passage Pliny tells us that these Gallic stuffs were used especially by the slaves and the populace.

The wool industry made no less progress in Gaul than weaving and dyeing. From numerous passages in Juvenal and Martial it appears that the woollen clothing worn by the populace of Rome in the second century was woven in Gaul, particularly in the districts to-day known as Arras, Langres, Saintonge. Pliny attributes to the Gauls the invention of a wool, that, soaked in acid, became incombustible, and was used to make mattresses.

Glass-making was another art carried from the East across the Mediterranean into Gaul. Still another industry, metallurgy, after weaving, contributed greatly to enrich Gaul. Undoubtedly even before the Roman conquest, Gaul worked gold mines; it seems, however, that silver mines remained untouched until about the time of Augustus. At any rate, the discovery of some deposits of gold and silver then gave a spur to several flourishing industries; jewelry-making, and--an original Gallic industry of much importance--silver-plating and tinning. Here is another extract from Pliny, from which you will see that in those times they already made in France "Christofle" silver-plate:

We might almost say that Gallic industry did to the old industries of the ancient world what German wares have done compared with older and more aristocratic products of France, of England, popularising objects of luxury for the many and the merely well-to-do.

Finally, if any one hesitated to trust fully these very important passages in Pliny, he would be quite convinced by reading the great work of Dechelette. This author, studying with Carthusian patience and the ablest critical acumen the Gallic ceramics to be found scattered among the museums, has demonstrated most commendably that in the first century of the Empire many manufactories of ceramics were opened and flourished in Gaul, especially in the valley of the Allier, and that they sold their vases in Spain, in the Danube regions, to the Germans, and in Italy.

Dechelette has proved that many ceramics found among the ruins of Pompeii, now admired in the museums of Pompeii and Naples, were made in Gaul,--discoveries most noteworthy, which, in connection with the extracts from Pliny, disclose in essence that real Roman Gaul whose sumptuous relics but half tell the tale of its wealth.

This tremendous development of Gaul was without doubt an effect of the Roman conquest; but an effect that neither Caesar, nor any other man of his times had foreseen or willed, but which Augustus was first to recognise in the winter of 15-14 B.C., and to which, astute man that he was, he gave heed as he ought; that is, not as due his own merit, but as an unexpected piece of good fortune. I have already said that one of the greatest cares of Augustus, as soon as the civil wars were finished, was to reorganise the finances of the Empire; that to find new entries for the treasury, he had turned his attention in 27 B.C. to the province conquered by his father, regarding it merely from the common point of view, as poor and of little worth like the other European territories. Then, at a stroke, he realised that that territory so lightly valued, was producing grain like Egypt, linen like Egypt; that the arts of civilisation for which Egypt was so rich and famous were beginning to prosper there! Augustus was not the man to let slip so tremendous a piece of good luck. Until then he had hesitated, like one who seeks his way; in that winter from 15-14 B.C., he found finally the grand climax of his career, to make Gaul the Egypt of the West, the province of the greatest revenues in Europe. From that time on to the end of his life, he did not move from Europe; he lived between Italy and Gaul. Like him, Tiberius, Drusus, all the men of his family, devoted all their efforts to Gaul, to consolidating Roman dominion there, to advancing its progress, to increasing the revenues, to making it actually the Occidental Egypt. From Velleius we learn that under Tiberius Gaul rendered to the Empire as much as did Egypt, and that Gaul and Egypt were considered alike the two richest imperial provinces.

As a political interest had at first impelled Caesar to annex Gaul, an immediate financial interest urged Augustus to continue the work, to take care of the new province. Then the historic law that I have already enunciated to you, the law by which the efforts of men result far differently from that which they had intended, was verified anew by Augustus also, and in a new form. He had created his Gallic policy to augment the revenues of the Empire; the consequences of this fiscal policy, necessity-inspired, were greater than he and his friends ever dreamed. The winter of 15-14 B.C. is a notable date in the story of Latin civilisation, for then the destiny of the Empire was irrevocably settled; the Roman Empire will be made up of two parts, the Oriental and the Occidental, each part sufficiently strong to withstand being overcome by the other; it will be neither an Asiatic, nor a Celtic-Latin, but a mixed Empire: between both parts, Italy will rule for two centuries more, and Rome, an immense city, at once Oriental and Latin, will keep the metropolitan crown won from the enfeebled East, and dominate the immature barbarian West.

Speaking of Cleopatra, I have shown you how great was the Oriental peril that threatened in the last century of the Republic to wipe out Rome. What miraculous force saved it? Gaul. Suppose that the army of Caesar had been exterminated at Alesia; suppose that Rome, discouraged, had abandoned its Gallic enterprise as it had done with Persia, after the disaster of Crassus and the failure of Antony; or suppose that Gaul had been a poor province, sterile and unpopulous, like many a Danube district; Rome could not have held out long as the seat of imperial government, just as to-day the capital of the Russian Empire could not maintain itself at Vladivostok or Harbin. It would have been necessary to move the metropolis to a richer and more populous region. That Gaul grew rich and was Romanised, changed the state of things. When Rome possessed beyond the Alps in Europe a province as large and as full of resources as Egypt; when there was the same interest in defending it as in defending Egypt, Italy was well placed to govern both. The Egypt of the Occident counterbalanced the Egypt of the Orient, and Rome, half way between, was the natural and necessary metropolis of the wide-spread Empire. Gaul alone, revived, so to speak, the Empire in the West and prevented the European provinces--even Italy itself--from becoming dead limbs safely amputable from the Oriental body. Gaul upheld Italy and Rome in Europe for three centuries longer; Gaul stopped it on the way to the Asiatic conquests run through by Alexander. Had it not been for Gaul, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt would have formed the real Empire of Rome, and Italy would have been lost in it: without Gaul, the Orientalised Empire would have tried to conquer Persia and probably succeeded in doing so, abandoning the poor and unproductive lands of the untamed Occident. In short, Gaul created in the Roman Empire that duality between East and West which gives shape to all the history of our civilisation; it kept the artificial form of the Empire, circular about an island sea; it inspired the Empire with that double self-contradictory spirit, Latin and Oriental, at once its strength and its weakness.

Next time I will show you the continuation of this struggle of two minds, in a characteristic episode, the story of the Emperor Nero. Now, before closing, let me set before you briefly some general considerations drawn from the history of Roman Gaul which are applicable to universal history.

The ancients understood that peoples, like individual men, can regulate their destiny only in part; that about us, above us, are forces complex and obscure, which we can hardly comprehend, which invest us, seize us, impel us whither we had not thought to go, now to shipwreck on the rocks of misadventure, now to the discovery of islands of happiness, or to find, like Columbus, an America on the way to India. The Greeks called this power; the Latins, Fortuna, and deified it; erected temples and made sacrifices to it; dedicated to it a cult, of which Augustus was a devotee, and which contained more secret wisdom of life than all the superb theories on human destiny conceived by European genius in the delirium of this quarter-hour of measureless might in which we are living. No, man is not the voluntary artificer of his whole destiny; fortune and misfortune, triumph and catastrophe, are never entirely proportioned to personal merit or blame; every generation finds the world organised in a certain order of interests, forces, traditions, relations, and as it enjoys the good that preceding generations have accomplished, so in part it expiates the errors they have committed; as it draws advantage from beneficent forces acting outside of it and independent of its merit, so it suffers from the sinister forces that it finds--even though blameless itself--acting through the great mass of the world, among men and their works. From this relation to the unseen follows a rule of wisdom that modern men, full of unbounded pride, and persuaded that they are the beginning and end of the universe, too often forget: we must indeed press on with all our powers to the accomplishment of a great task, for although our destiny is never entirely made by our own hands, there is no destiny on the earth for the lazy; but, since a part of what we are depends not on ourselves, but upon what the ancients called Fortune, we dare never be too much elated over success, nor abased by failure. The wheel of destiny turns by a mysterious law, alike for families and for peoples: those in high position may fall; those in low, may rise.

Certainly Caesar never suspected when he was fighting the Gauls, that the great-grandsons of the vanquished would live in villas modelled on the Roman, but more sumptuous; that the great Gallic nobles would have the satisfaction of parading before the people that conquered them a latinity more impressive and magnificent; and that some day the Gaul put by him to fire and sword would get the better, in empire, in wealth, in culture, of even Italy.

Nero

On the 13th of October of 54 A.D., when Emperor Claudius died, the Senate chose as his successor his adopted son, Nero, a young man of seventeen, fat and short-sighted, who had until then studied only music, singing, and drawing. This choice of a child-emperor, who lacked imperial qualities and suggested the child kings of Oriental monarchies, was a scandalous novelty in the constitutional history of Rome. The ancient historians, especially Tacitus, considered the event as the result of an intrigue, cleverly arranged by Nero's mother, Agrippina, a daughter of Germanicus and granddaughter of Agrippa, the builder of the Pantheon. According to these historians, Agrippina, a highly ambitious woman, induced Claudius to marry her after Messalina's death, although she was a widow and had a child, and as soon as she entered the emperor's mansion she began to open the way for the election of her son. In order to exclude Britannicus, the son of Messalina, from succession, she persuaded Claudius to adopt Nero; then, with the help of the two tutors of the young man, Seneca and Burrhus, created in the Senate and among the Praetorians, a party favourable to her son; no sooner did she feel that she could rely on the Senate and the Praetorians, than she poisoned Claudius.

Too many difficulties prevent our accepting this version. To cite one of them will suffice: if Agrippina wished--as she surely did--that her son should succeed Claudius, she must also have wished that Claudius would live at least eight or ten years longer. As a great-grandson of Drusus, a grandson of Germanicus and the last descendant of his line, the only line in the whole family enjoying a real popularity, Nero was sure of election if he were of age at the death of Claudius. After the terrible scandal in which his mother had disappeared, Britannicus was no longer a competitor to be feared. There was only one danger for Nero, if Claudius should die too soon, the Senate might refuse to trust the Empire to a child.

I believe that Claudius died of disease, probably, if we can judge from Tacitus's account, of gastroenteritis, and that Agrippina's coterie, surprised by this sudden death, which upset all their plans, decided to put through Nero's election in spite of his youth, in order to insure the power to the line of Drusus, which had so much sympathy among the masses. As a matter of fact, the admiration for Drusus and his family triumphed over all other considerations: Nero became emperor at seventeen; but when the election was over, Rome--again according to the tales of the ancient historians--saw a still greater scandal than his election. The young man--and this is credible--hastened to engage as his master the first zither-player of Rome, Terpnos; continued his study of singing; and bought statues, pictures, bronzes, beautiful slaves, while his mother seized the actual control of the State.

Agrippina insisted on being kept informed of all affairs; directed the home and foreign policy; and if she did not reach the point of partaking in the sessions of the Senate, which would have been the supreme scandal, she called it to meet in her palace and, concealed behind a black curtain, listened to its discussions. In short, the Empire fell into the hands of a woman; Rome saw the evolution of customs, through which woman had for four centuries been freeing herself from her ancient slavery, suddenly a fact accomplished by her visible intervention in politics--the intervention that the great keepers of tradition, first among them Cato, had always decried as the most frightful cataclysm that could menace the city.

This story is also the exaggeration of a simpler truth. Even if Nero had been a very serious young man, at his age he could not by himself have governed the Empire; it would have been necessary for him to serve a long apprenticeship and to listen to experienced counsellors. Burrhus and Seneca, his two teachers, were naturally destined to be his counsellors; but why should not his mother also have helped him? Like all the women of her family, Agrippina was of superior mind, of high culture, and, as Tacitus himself admits, led a most respectable life, at least to the time of her marriage with Claudius. Brought up, as she was, in that family which for eighty years had been governing the Empire, she was well informed about affairs of State. Is it possible to suppose that such a woman would shut herself up in her home to weave wool, when, with her talent, her energy, her experience, she could be of so much service to her son and to the State? We do not need to attribute to Agrippina a monstrous ambition, as does Tacitus, in order to explain how the Empire was ruled during the first two years, by Seneca, Burrhus, and Agrippina; it was a natural consequence of the situation created by the premature death of Claudius. Tacitus himself is forced to recognise that the government was excellent.

Helping her son in the apprenticeship of the Empire, Agrippina did her duty; but during restless times when misunderstanding is almost a law of social life, it is often very dangerous to do one's duty. The period of Agrippina and Nero was full of confusion; though apparently quiet, Italy was deeply torn by the great struggle that gives the history of the Empire its marvellous character of actuality, the struggle between the old Roman military society and the intellectual civilisation of the Orient.

The ancient aristocratic and military Roman society had had so great and world-wide a success, that the ideas, the institutions and the customs, that had made it a perfect model of State, considered as an organ of political and military domination, exercised a great prestige on the following generations. Even during the time of which we speak, every one was forced after eight years of peace, to admit that the Empire had been created by those ideas, those institutions and those customs; that for the sake of the Empire they must be maintained, and alike in family as in State, must be opposed all that forms the essence of intellectual civilisation; that is to say, all that develops personal selfishness at the expense of collective interest--luxury, idleness, pleasure, celibacy, feminism, and at the same time, all that develops personality and intelligence at the expense of tradition--liberty of women, independence of children, variety of personal tendencies, and the critical spirit in all forms.

In spite of the resistance offered by traditions, peace and wealth favoured everywhere the diffusion of the intellectual civilisation of the Hellenised Orient. The woman now become free, and the intellectual man now become powerful, were the springs to set in motion this revolution. Under Claudius, in vain had they exiled Seneca, the brilliant philosopher and the peace-advocating humanitarian, who had diffused in high Roman society so many ideas and sentiments considered by the traditionalists pernicious to the force of the State; he had come back far more powerful, and ruled the Empire. Husbands, burdened by the excessive expenses, by the too frequent infidelities, by the tyrannical caprices of their wives, in vain regretted the good old time when husbands were absolute masters; the invading feminism weakened everywhere the strength of the aristocratic and military traditions.

So contradiction was everywhere. The Republic had still its old aristocratic constitution, but the nobility was no longer spurred by that absorbing and exclusive passion for politics and war, which had been its power. Society life, pleasure, amateur philosophy and literature, mysticism, and, above all, sports, dissipated in a thousand directions its energy and activity. Too many young men were to be found in the nobility who, like Nero, preferred singing, dancing, and driving, to caring for their clients or enduring the troubles of public office.

These contradictions, and the psychological disorder that followed, explain the discords and struggles very soon raging around the young Emperor. The public began to feel shocked by the attention that Agrippina gave to State affairs, as by a new and this time intolerable scandal of feminism. Agrippina was not a feminist, as a matter of fact, but a traditionalist, proud of the glory of her family, attached to the ancient Roman ideas, desirous only of seeing her son develop into a new Germanicus, a second Drusus. Solely the necessity of helping Nero had led her to meddle with politics. But not in vain had Cato declaimed so loudly in Rome against women who pretend to govern states; not in vain had Augustus's domination been at least partly founded on the great antifeminist legend of Antony and Cleopatra, which represented the fall of the great Triumvir as the consequence of a woman's influence. The public, although willing to give all possible freedom to women in other things, still remained quite firm on this point: politics must remain the monopoly of man. So to the popular imagination, Agrippina soon became a sort of Roman Cleopatra. Many interests gathered quickly to reinforce this antifeminist reaction, which, although exaggerated, had its origin in sincere feeling.

Agrippina, as a true descendant of Drusus, meant to prepare her son to rule the Empire according to the principles held by his great ancestors. Among these principles was to be counted not only the defence of Romanism and the maintenance of the aristocratic constitution, but also a wise economy in the management of finances. Agrippina is a good instance of that well-known fact--the British have noticed it more than once in India--that in public administration discreet and capable women keep, as a rule, the spirit of economy with which they manage the home. This is why, especially in despotic states, they rule better than men. Even before Claudius's death, Agrippina had vigorously opposed waste and plunder; it also appears that the reorganisation of finances after Messalina's death was due chiefly to her.

The continuation under Nero of this severe r?gime displeased a great number of persons, who dreamed of seeing again the easy sway of Messalina. From the moment they were satisfied that Agrippina, like Augustus and Tiberius, would not allow the public money to be stolen, many people found her insistent interference in public affairs unbearable. In short, Agrippina became unpopular, and, as always happens, because of faults she did not have. A noble deed, which she was trying to accomplish in defence of tradition, definitively compromised her situation.

The threat was, or appeared to be, so serious to Nero, that it made him step over the threshold of crime. One day during a great dinner to which he had been invited by Nero, Britannicus was suddenly seized with violent convulsions. "It is an attack of epilepsy," said Nero calmly, giving orders to his slaves to remove Britannicus and care for him. The young man died in a few hours and every one believed that Nero had poisoned him.

This dastardly crime aroused at first a sense of horror and fright among the people, but the impression did not last long. In spite of all his faults, Nero was liked. In Rome they had respected Augustus and hated Tiberius; they had killed Caligula and jeered at Claudius; Nero seemed to be the first of the Roman Emperors who stood a chance of becoming popular. Contrary to Agrippina's ideas, it was his frivolity that pleased the great masses, because this frivolity corresponded to the slow but progressive decay of the old Roman virtues in them. They expected from Nero a less hard, less severe, less parsimonious government--in a word, a government less Roman than the rule of his predecessors, a government which, instead of force, glory, and wisdom, meant pleasure and ease.

So it happened that many soon forgot the unfortunate Britannicus, and some even tried to justify Nero by invoking State necessity. Agrippina alone remained the object of the universal hatred, as the sole cause of so many misfortunes. Implacable enemies, concealed in the shadow, were subtly at work against her; they organised a campaign of absurd calumnies in the Court itself, and it is this campaign from which Tacitus drew his material.

Some wretches finally dared even accuse her of conspiracy against the life of her son. Agrippina, refusing to plead for herself, still weathered the storm, because Nero was afraid of her, and though he tried to escape from her authority, did not dare to initiate any energetic move against her. To engage in a final struggle with so indomitable a woman, another woman was necessary. This woman was Poppaea Sabina, a very handsome and able dame of the great Roman nobility. Poppaea represented Oriental feminism in its most dangerous form: a woman completely demoralised by luxury, elegance, society life, and voluptuousness, who eluded all her duties toward the species in order to enjoy and make others enjoy her beauty.

Corrupted as that age was, Poppaea was more corrupt. As soon as she observed the strong impression she had made on Nero, she conceived the plan of becoming his wife; her beauty would then be admired by the whole Empire, would be surrounded by a luxury for which the means of her husband were not sufficient, and with which no other Roman dame could compete. There was one obstacle--Agrippina.

Agrippina protected Octavia, a true Roman woman, simple and honest: Agrippina would never consent to this absolutely unjustifiable divorce. To force Nero to a decisive move against his mother, Poppaea had her husband sent on some mission to Lusitania and became the mistress of the Emperor. From that point the situation changed. Dominated by Poppaea's influence, Nero found the courage to force Agrippina to abandon his palace and seek refuge in Antony's house; he took from her the privilege of Praetorian guards, which he himself had granted her; he reduced to a minimum the number and time of his visits, and carefully avoided being left alone with her. Agrippina's influence, to the general satisfaction, rapidly declined, while Nero gained every day in popularity. Agrippina, however, was too energetic a woman peaceably to resign herself: she began a violent campaign against the two adulterers, which deeply troubled the public. In Rome, where Augustus had promulgated his stern law against adultery; in Rome, where Augustus himself had been obliged to submit to his own law, when he exiled his daughter and his grand-daughter and almost exterminated the whole family; in Rome, a young man of twenty-two dared all but officially introduce adultery and polygamy into the Palatine! In her struggle against Nero, Agrippina once more stood on tradition: and Nero was afraid.

Poppaea was probably the one who suggested to Nero the idea of killing Agrippina. The idea had been, as it were, floating in the air for a long time, because Agrippina was embarrassing to many persons and interests. It was chiefly the party that wanted to sack the imperial budget, to introduce the finance of great expenditure, which could not tolerate this clever and energetic woman, who was so faithful to the great traditions of Augustus and Tiberius, who could neither be frightened nor corrupted. One should not consider the assassination of Agrippina as a simple personal crime of Nero, as the result of his and Poppaea's quarrels with his mother. This crime, besides personal causes, had a political origin. Nero would never have dared commit such a misdeed, in the eyes of the Roman almost a sacrilege, if he had not been encouraged by Agrippina's unpopularity, by the violent hatred of so many against his mother.

Nero hesitated long; he decided only when his freedman, Anicetus, the commander of the fleet, proposed a plan that seemed to guarantee secrecy for the crime: to have a ship built with a concealed trap. It was the spring of the year 59 A.D.; the Court had moved to Baiae, on the Gulf of Naples. If Nero succeeded in getting his mother on board the vessel, Anicetus would take upon himself the task of burying quickly below the waves the secret of her death; the people who hated Agrippina would easily be satisfied with the explanations to be given them.

Nero executed his part of the plan in perfect cold-blood. He made believe he had repented and was anxious for a reconciliation with his mother; he invited her to Baiae and so profusely lavished kindnesses and amiabilities upon her, that Agrippina finally believed in his sincerity.

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