We are now approaching the generation in which the great historian lived, and we are considering the very woman whose memoirs furnished him with his more serious charges against her rivals and predecessors. It may therefore seem strange that, if we are to follow our authorities with docility, we must ascribe a very vicious and unscrupulous character to Agrippina herself. We have rejected the rumour that she poisoned her second husband, but that is by no means the only charge that is brought against her before she married Claudius. The authorities uniformly assert that she had had incestuous relations with Caligula in her early teens, had been notorious for her amours during the life of Messalina, and now very flagrantly placed such honour as she had at the disposal of Claudius. These charges we cannot control. We shall find even more serious accusations against her later, and shall have to regard them with reserve or frank incredulity. It was the literary fashion to make a consort of the Cæsars imperial in her vices. On the whole, however, we are compelled to think that the eldest daughter of Agrippina and Germanicus had the taint of her stock. She inherited the virile ambition of her mother, and she had even less scruple in pursuing it. The best that can be said for her is that she aimed rather at making the future of her son than her own. And when that son proves to be the Emperor Nero, the murderer of his mother, we are disposed to read her record with the lenient eye of pity. When the elder Agrippina had been banished by Tiberius, as we saw, in the year 12 A.D., her children were brought up in the house of their grandmother Antonia. In this plain home of old Roman virtue Caligula is said to have infected and corrupted all his sisters. Agrippina left it, in her thirteenth year, to marry Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus. As the authorities are sharply divided in regard to his character, we cannot trace his influence in the development of her character. He died in the year 40, leaving her with a three-year-old boy, Lucius Domitius. Agrippina was still a young and beautiful woman, and is said to have availed herself of the loose morals of Roman society until, as we saw, the attitude of Messalina forced her to marry. She was soon a widow for the second time, with considerable wealth. Her ambition revived at the death of Messalina, and she paid the most winning and flagrant attentions to Claudius. We should go beyond the letter of the chronicles if we suggested that she bribed Vitellius and Pallas to promote her suit. It is enough to say that they overcame the reluctance of Claudius, and they profited materially by her accession to the throne.