In all its galleries history has no other portrait such as hers.
Caligula's sister, his mistress as well, exiled by him and
threatened with death, her eyes dazzled and her nerves unstrung by
the impossibilities of that fabulous reign, it was not until
Claud, her uncle, recalled her and Messalina disappeared, that the
empress awoke. She too, she determined, would rule, and the jus
osculi aiding, she married out of hand that imbecile uncle of
hers, on whose knee she had played as a child.
The day of the wedding a young patrician, expelled from the
senate, killed himself. Agrippina had accused him of something not
nice, not because he was guilty, nor yet because the possibility
of the thing shocked her, but because he was betrothed to Octavia,
Claud's daughter, who, Agrippina determined, should be Nero's
wife. Presently Caligula's widow, an old rival of her own, a lady
who had thought she would like to be empress twice, and whom Claud
had eyed grotesquely, was disencumbered of three million worth of
emeralds, with which she heightened her beauty, and told very
civilly that it was time to die. So, too, disappeared a Calpurina,
a Lepida; women young, rich, handsome, impure, and as such
dangerous to Agrippina's peace of mind. The legality of her crimes
was so absolute that the mere ownership of an enviable object was
a cause for death. A senator had a villa which pleased her; he was
invited to die.
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