Irritated by her reproaches, Nero at last went so far as to give orders for her death. Anicetus, commander of the fleet at Misenum, formed a plot to assassinate the empress. On the pretext of a reconciliation she was invited to go to Baiæ, and was put on a vessel so built as to part asunder when out at sea. Agrippina saved herself by swimming and reached the neighbouring coast, where she took refuge in her villa at the Lucrine Lake. Nero caused her to be stabbed, and proclaimed that she had killed herself after a freedman sent by her had been caught in an attempt to kill him (59 A.D.). Such was the fate of this woman, a granddaughter of Augustus, and sister, wife, and mother, to three emperors. But revengeful furies pursued the parricide in spite of the congratulations which Burrus was base enough to offer him in the name of the soldiers and the thanks rendered to the gods in all parts of the city at Seneca’s suggestion. He sought to stifle his remorse by plunging into gross and insensate debauchery. His most unworthy follies date from this time. The Romans blushed to see him driving a chariot in the arena and mounting the stage to sing and play the lyre. We may imagine he stifled his conscience, but not that he found rest. In Greece, he dared not enter the Eleusinian temple of which the herald’s voice bid the impious and parricides avaunt.[b] During the last two proconsulates the prefecture of Syria had acquired its greater extension. On the death of Herod Agrippa in 44, his kingdom of Judea had been definitively annexed to the empire, and was subjected, as once before, to an imperial procurator, who, while he derived his fiscal and civil authority directly from the emperor, and acted in a manner as his viceroy, was nevertheless placed under the military control of the proconsul. Under court protection some of the Judean procurators, especially the infamous Felix, the brother of Pallas, and his partner in the favour of Claudius, had indulged in every excess, till the spirit of revolt already roused by the threats of Caligula broke out in fierce but desultory acts of violence. These indeed had been repressed with the sternness of Rome, not unmingled with some features of barbarity peculiar to the East. Nevertheless the government had resented the tyranny of its own officers, which had caused this dangerous insubordination, and Quadratus, the proconsul, had himself condemned from his tribunal the indiscretion of the procurator Cumanus. While, however, the authority of the Syrian proconsul was thus extended over the region of Palestine in the south, a portion of his northern dependencies was taken from him, and erected for a time into a separate prefecture. CORBULO AND THE EAST [Sidenote: [54-60 A.D.]]