Seneca - College of Stoic Philosophers

52, SENECANero was twelve years old when adopted byClaudius ; Britannicus, the emperor's son, threeyears younger. They were now brothers in theeye of the law, and Nero as the elder was givenClaudius announced the adoption inprecedence.a speech to the Senate, defending it on groundssuggested to him by Pallas as a step taken inthe public interest with a view to the lighteningof his own labours and the provision of a supportfor the childhood of Britannicus. He cited theprecedents of Augustus, who, in the lifetime ofhis grandsons, had shared his power with hisstepsons, and of Tiberius, who had adopted hisnephew Germanicus and placed him on an equalitywith his own son Drusus.^In the year 51 Nero, then at the beginning ofhis fourteenth year, assumed the toga virilis— athe lifeceremonial event of much importance inof a young Roman of distinction, for it markedthe close of his childhood and his entrance intopublic life. The usual time for this step was thebeginning of the fifteenth year, but Nero's powerfulprotectors, anxious by his early advancementto forward his succession to the principate,anticipated by a year the natural period of hismajority. The Senate, with characteristic subservience,at once petitioned the emperor byaddress that Nero might be empowered to enteron the consulship in his twentieth year, that inthe meantime as consul designate he might be1 The contemporary genealogists observed that the adoptionof Nero was the first instance of an adoption into the Claudiangens although the patrician family of the Claudii was one ofthe oldest in Rome.