Whatever arts Agrippina employed in the struggle, she rapidly lost ground before so formidable a rival, and Poppæa incited Nero against her. He harassed her with lawsuits when she was in Rome, and sent men to insult her when she withdrew to her villa in the country. Before long Agrippina became sensible that her struggle for power had passed into the appalling experience of a struggle for life against her own son. Nero made several attempts to poison her, but she was on her guard against this familiar weapon. It is said that she had an antidote compounded of walnuts, figs, rue, and salt. Then a freedman in Nero’s suite suggested a more insidious scheme. Her country house was in repair, and Anicetus directed the workmen to saw through the heavy timber over her bed, so that the room would collapse when she went to rest. Agrippina was warned, however, and the plot was defeated. By the early spring of the year 59 Nero had fallen into a mood of the most sombre and bitter dejection. Poppæa continued to taunt him with his dependence on his mother, and to display her maddening charms just beyond the range of his eager arms. The better citizens of Rome, on the other hand, now perceived his horrible design, and watched the struggle with anxiety. As he sat at the theatre one day in this mood, his attention was caught by one of the elaborate mechanical spectacles which were often put on the stage at the time. A ship sailed into view of the spectators, fell into pieces, and disgorged a number of wild beasts upon the stage. Nero asked Anicetus, who was a skilful mechanic, whether he could build a ship that would thus fall to pieces on the water at a given moment. The man promised to do so, and Nero went down to the coast in more cheerful temper. It was the month of March, when wealthy Romans were wont to forsake the city for the marble villas which shone in the spring sun on the flowered hills about the northern corner of the Bay of Naples. The season began with the festival of Minerva on March 19th. With some surprise and suspicion, Agrippina, who had gone down to her villa, received an affectionate invitation to join her son at Baiæ for the celebration; and she heard from other quarters that he had announced a desire to be reconciled with her. She went on board the Liburnian galley which lay off the gardens of her villa at Antium, and sailed to Baiæ. Nero met her in the Imperial galley, kissed her affectionately, and invited her to a banquet which his friend Otho, the husband of Poppæa, would give that night in honour of their reconciliation. She consented, but it is clear that she wavered between her consciousness of the utter unscrupulousness of her son and the bright vision of a return to happiness which he held before her.