After Messalina's death, Claudius declared before the praetorians: "As I have been unhappy in my marriages, I am resolved henceforth to remain single; and if I should not, I give you leave to stab me." But he was not able to persist in this resolution; there were many women who, for the sake of bearing the name of empress, sought matrimonial union with him. Agrippina, however, had marked that position for her own, and she was intellectually the strongest, as well as one of the most beautiful women in Rome. She was now thirty-four years of age. It was no new undertaking for her to bestir herself in the search for a husband. At the age of thirteen she had been married to Cnæus Domitius Ahenobarbus; but he had died in A.D. 40, leaving her with Nero, their only child. On her retum from exile at the beginning of Claudius's reign, she had endeavored to form a union with a powerful patrician named Galba, who had a wife then living; but for her pains she got her face slapped by Galba's mother-in-law. She was soon married, however, to an orator called Passienus, who was a man remarkable for his wit, wealth, and good nature. He died before Agrippina had set her hopes upon a marriage with Claudius. It was Agrippina's determination to be empress, in order that her son might be emperor. Some years previous, an astrologer had said of the boy that he would reign, but that he would be the death of his mother. "Let me die, then," said she, "so he but reign." Her marriage with Claudius would be illegal and incestuous, he being her uncle. But Agrippina aroused the emperor's desire for the match by the endearments for which her relationship provided the opportunity, and the complacent Senate passed an enactment that henceforth such marriages should be lawful. Before the nuptials were celebrated, Agrippina obtained the promise of the hand of Octavia, the daughter of Claudius by Messalina, for her son, thus doubly securing her position; this was done despite the fact that Octavia had already been betrothed to another man. Being thus able to have her way before marriage, it is not wonderful that after that event Claudius should be wholly under his wife's rule. Tacitus says: "From this moment the city assumed a different character, and a woman had the control of everything. She, however, did not, like Messalina, mock and trample upon the interests of the State in the extravagance of her lewdness. The despotism exercised was as thorough as though it were under the direction of a man. In her public conduct she was grave and rigid, frequently haughty and overbearing. No departure was observable in her domestic deportment, unless it were necessary to support her power; but an insatiable thirst for money was veiled under the pretext of its being used to maintain the imperial authority."