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98 DARKNESS AND DAWN
CHAPTER XIV
MOTHER AND SON
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Asper et immitis, breviter vis omnia dicam ?
Dispeream si te mater amare potest.'
SUETON. Tib. 59.
NERO was now firmly seated on the throne of the Empire.
Its cares sat lightly on him. The government went on
admirably without him. He had nothing to do but to glut
himself with enjoyments, and to make what he could of the
kingdoms of the world and the glory of them.
At first, like one dazed with a sudden outburst of light, he
had been unable to understand the immensity of his own
power. For the first month of his reign he could hardly
realise that he was more than a boy. He had always been
passionately fond of chariot races, which as a boy he had not
been permitted to frequent. One day, while at his lessons, he
had been deploring to his companions the fate of a charioteer
of the green faction who had been thrown out of his chariot
and dragged to death by his own horses. His master, overhearing
the conversation, reproved him, and the boy, with a
'
clever and ready lie, said, I was only talking about Hector
being dragged round the walls of Troy by Achilles.' And
now he might watch the races all day long and plunge into
the hottest rivalry of the factions, and neither in this pursuit
nor in any other was there a single human being to say him
nay
Ṫhe only thing which troubled him was the jealous interference
of his mother. Agrippina still clutched with desperate
tenacity at the vanishing fruits of the ambition for the sake of
which all her crimes had been committed. She had sold her
soul, and was beating back the conviction that she had sold it
for nought. How could that slight boy of seventeen, whom
as a child she had so often chastised with her own hand,
dream of resisting her ? Was not her nature, compared with