Nero
was confounded at this, and as the day was near on which Britannicus would
complete his fourteenth year, he reflected, now on the domineering temper of
his mother, and now again on the character of the young prince, which a
trifling circumstance had lately tested, sufficient however to gain for him
wide popularity. During the feast of Saturn, amid other pastimes of his
playmates, at a game of lot drawing for king, the lot fell to Nero, upon
which he gave all his other companions different orders, and such as would
not put them to the blush; but when he told Britannicus to step forward and
begin a song, hoping for a laugh at the expense of a boy who knew nothing of
sober much less of riotous
society, the lad with perfect coolness commenced some
verses which hinted at his expulsion from his father's house and from
supreme power. This procured him pity, which was the more conspicuous, as
night with its merriment had stript off all disguise. Nero saw the reproach
and redoubled his hate. Pressed by Agrippina's menaces, having no charge
against his brother and not daring openly to order his murder, he meditated
a secret device and directed poison to be prepared through the agency of
Julius Pollio, tribune of one of the prætorian cohorts, who had in his
custody a woman under sentence for poisoning, Locusta by name, with a vast
reputation for crime. That every one about the person of Britannicus should
care nothing for right or honour, had long ago been provided for. He
actually received his first dose of poison from his tutors and passed it off
his bowels, as it was rather weak or so qualified as not at once to prove
deadly. But Nero, impatient at such slow progress in crime, threatened the
tribune and ordered the poisoner to execution for prolonging his anxiety
while they were thinking of the popular talk and planning their own defence.
Then they promised that death should be as sudden as if it were the hurried
work of the dagger, and a rapid poison of previously tested ingredients was
prepared close to the emperor's chamber.
