Nero - 1904 Author:Jacob Abbott Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: The atrocity of Noro's crime in murdering Agiipplna. Chapter IX. Extreme Depravitt. fTlHERE was nothing in the attendant cir- -- cumstances that were conn... more »ected with the act of Nero in murdering his mother, which could palliate or extenuate the deed in the slightest degree. It was not an act of self- defense. Agrippina was not doing him, or intending to do him any injury. It was not an act of hasty violence, prompted by sudden passion. It was not required by any political necessity as a means for accomplishing some great and desirable public end. It was a cool, deliberate, and well-considered crime, performed solely for the purpose of removing from the path of the perpetrator of it an obstacle to the commission of another crime. Nero murdered his mother in cool blood, simply because she was in the way of his plans fjor divorcing his innocent wife, and marrying adulterously another woman. For some time after the commission of this Nero's messages to the senate. Action of the senate. great crime, the mind of Nero was haunted by dreadful fears, and he suffered continually, by day and by night, all the pangs of remorse and horror. He did not dare to return to Rome, not knowing to what height the popular indignation, that would be naturally ex cited by so atrocious a deed, might rise; or what might be the consequences to him if he were to appear in the city. He accordingly emained for a time on the coast at Neapolis. .he town to which he had retired from Baias. From this place he sent various communications to the Eoman Senate, explaining and justifying what he called the execution of his mother. He pretended that he had found her guilty of treasonable conspiracies against him and against the state, and that her death had been imperiously demanded, as the only means of s...« less