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Sunday, August 08, 2010 - 3:47 PM
Vitellius accordingly, who used the name of censor to screen a
slave's trickeries, and looked forward to new despotisms, already impending,
associated himself in Agrippina's plans, with a view to her favour, and
began to bring charges against Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire, whose sister, Junia Calvina, a
handsome and lively girl, had shortly before become his daughter-in-law.
Here was a starting point for an accuser. Vitellius put an infamous construction
on the somewhat incautious though not criminal love between the brother
and sister. The emperor listened, for his affection for his daughter inclined
him the more to admit suspicions against his son-in-law. Silanus meanwhile,
who knew nothing of the plot, and happened that year to be praetor, was
suddenly expelled from the Senate by an edict of Vitellius, though the
roll of Senators had been recently reviewed and the lustrum closed. Claudius
at the same time broke off the connection; Silanus was forced to resign
his office, and the one remaining day of his praetorship was conferred
on Eprius Marcellus.
In the year of the consulship of Caius Pompeius and Quintus Veranius,
the marriage arranged between Claudius and Agrippina was confirmed both
by popular rumour and by their own illicit love. Still, they did not yet
dare to celebrate the nuptials in due form, for there was no precedent
for the introduction of a niece into an uncle's house. It was positively
incest, and if disregarded, it would, people feared, issue in calamity
to the State. These scruples ceased not till Vitellius undertook the management
of the matter in his own way. He asked the emperor whether he would yield
to the recommendations of the people and to the authority of the Senate.
When Claudius replied that he was one among the citizens and could not
resist their unanimous voice, Vitellius requested him to wait in the palace,
while he himself went to the Senate. Protesting that the supreme interest
of the commonwealth was at stake, he begged to be allowed to speak first,
and then began to urge that the very burdensome labours of the emperor
in a world-wide administration, required assistance, so that, free from
domestic cares, he might consult the public welfare. How again could there
be a more virtuous relief for the mind of an imperial censor than the taking
of a wife to share his prosperity and his troubles, to whom he might intrust
his inmost thoughts and the care of his young children, unused as he was
to luxury and pleasure, and wont from his earliest youth to obey the
laws.
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