nam dictator Caesar summis oratoribus aemulus et Augusto prompta ac profluens, quae deceret principem, eloquentia fuit. adnotabant seniores, quibus otiosum est vetera et praesentia contendere, primum ex iis qui rerum potiti essent Neronem alienae facundiae eguisse. 3 Die funeris laudationem eius princeps exorsus est, dum antiquitatem generis, consulatus ac triumphos maiorum enumerabat, intentus ipse et ceteri liberalium quoque artium commemoratio et nihil regente eo triste rei publicae ab externis accidisse pronis animis audita: postquam ad providentiam sapientiamque flexit, nemo risui temperare, quamquam oratio a Seneca composita multum cultus praeferret, ut fuit illi viro ingenium amoenum et temporis eius auribus accommodatum. Still, in public, every compliment was heaped upon the princess and when the tribune, following the military routine, applied for the password, her son gave: "The best of mothers." The senate, too, accorded her a pair of lictors and the office of priestess to Claudius, to whom was voted, in the same session, a public funeral, followed presently by deification.ġ3.
But neither was Nero's a disposition that bends to slaves, nor had Pallas, who with his sullen arrogance transcended the limits of a freedman, failed to waken his disgust. Each had to face the same conflict with the overbearing pride of Agrippina who, burning with all the passions of illicit power, had the adherence of Pallas, at whose instigation Claudius had destroyed himself by an incestuous marriage and a fatal adoption. Both guardians of the imperial youth, and - a rare occurrence where power is held in partnership - both in agreement, they exercised equal influence by contrasted methods and Burrus, with his soldierly interests and austerity, and Seneca, with his lessons in eloquence and his self-respecting courtliness, aided each other to ensure that the sovereign's years of temptation should, if he were scornful of virtue, be restrained within the bounds of permissible indulgence. The tendency, in fact, was towards murder, had not Afranius Burrus and Seneca intervened. With no less speed, Claudius' freedman Narcissus, whose altercations with Agrippina I have already noticed, was forced to suicide by a rigorous confinement and by the last necessity, much against the will of the emperor, with whose still hidden vices his greed and prodigality were in admirable harmony. By these poison was administered to the proconsul at a dinner, too openly to avoid detection. Such was the cause of death: the instruments were the Roman knight, Publius Celer, and the freedman Helius, who were in charge of the imperial revenues in Asia. It was not that he had provoked his doom by violence of temper, lethargic as he was, and do completely disdained by former despotisms that Gaius Caesar usually styled him "the golden sheep" but Agrippina, who had procured the death of his brother Lucius Silanus, feared him as a possible avenger, since it was a generally expressed opinion of the multitude that Nero, barely emerged from boyhood and holding the empire in consequence of a crime, should take second place to a man of settled years, innocent character, and noble family, who - a point to be regarded in those days - was counted among the posterity of the Caesars: for Silanus, like Nero, was the son of a great-grandchild of Augustus. The first death under the new principate, that of Junius Silanus, proconsul of Asia, was brought to pass, without Nero's cognizance, by treachery on the part of Agrippina.
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