Cluvius relates that
Agrippina in her eagerness to retain her influence went so far that more
than once at midday, when Nero, even at that hour, was flushed with wine and
feasting, she presented herself attractively attired to her half intoxicated
son and offered him her person, and that when kinsfolk observed wanton
kisses and caresses, por-
[p. 321]
158
tending infamy, it was Seneca who sought a female's aid
against a woman's fascinations, and hurried in Acte, the freed girl, who
alarmed at her own peril and at Nero's disgrace, told him that the incest
was notorious, as his mother boasted of it, and that the soldiers would
never endure the rule of an impious sovereign. Fabius Rusticus tells us that
it was not Agrippina, but Nero, who lusted for the crime, and that it was
frustrated by the adroitness of that same freed girl. Cluvius's account,
however, is also that of all other authors, and popular belief inclines to
it, whether it was that Agrippina really conceived such a monstrous
wickedness in her heart, or perhaps because the thought of a strange passion
seemed comparatively credible in a woman, who in her girlish years had
allowed herself to be seduced by Lepidus in the hope of winning power, had
stooped with a like ambition to the lust of Pallas, and had trained herself
for every infamy by her marriage with her uncle.
