Here was worshipful intelligence.
Could any man's temper be expected to stand such continued sieges? Money,
and trouble, and infinite contrivance, wasted upon one old woman, who
absolutely would not, upon any terms, be murdered! Provoking it certainly
was; and of a man like Nero it could not be expected that he should any
longer dissemble his disgust, or put up with such repeated affronts. He
rushed upon his simple congratulating friend, swore that he had come to
murder him, and as nobody could have suborned him but Agrippina, he
ordered her off to instant execution. And, unquestionably, if people will
not be murdered quietly and in a civil way, they must expect that such
forbearance is not to continue for ever; and obviously have themselves
only to blame for any harshness or violence which they may have rendered
necessary.
It is singular, and shocking at the same time, to mention, that, for this
atrocity, Nero did absolutely receive solemn congratulations from all
orders of men. With such evidences of base servility in the public mind,
and of the utter corruption which they had sustained in their elementary
feelings, it is the less astonishing that he should have made other
experiments upon the public patience, which seem expressly designed to try
how much it would support.
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