for his successor her son Nero, and to supersede his own son by another wife, Britannicus. Symptoms of repentance for this unnatural act appearing in her husband, she called to her aid a noted artist in poisoning named Locusta, and the administration of her drug "was intrusted to Halotus, one of the emperor's eunuchs, whose office it was to serve up the emperor's repasts, and prove the viands by tasting them."
"In fact," continues Tacitus, "all the particulars of this transaction were soon afterwards so thoroughly known, that the writers of the times are able to account how the poison was poured into a dish of mushrooms of which he was particularly fond; but whether it was that his senses were stupefied, or from the wine he had drunk, the effect of the poison was not immediately perceived. Agrippina was dismayed; and summoned to her assistance Zenophon, a physician, whom she had already involved in her nefarious schemes. It is believed that he, as if purposing to aid Claudius in his efforts to vomit, put down his throat an envenomed feather."[1] Whatever was done was effective; and Claudius, who all his lifetime was scarcely considered to be a man, was in a few days pronounced, by a decree of the senate, to be a god, and honoured with a pompous funeral.
With some precautions, for she was not sure that the Roman people would quietly submit to the disinheriting of Britannicus, Agrippina presented her son at first to the prætorians; and when, by the promise of a donation, their assent had been secured, a decree of the senate pronounced him emperor. There was no op-
- ↑ Annals, xii. ch. 67.
