appeal shall be to science. Poisoning plays | is doubly interesting. It is one of the most a great part in all ancient annals, and natu-"notorious" of murders; and has, I berally we meet with it in the charges against lieve, never until this day found any one to Nero. The ignorance of ancient writers excuses statements which in our days would be inexcusable; but their credulity is no excuse for ours; what they believed, we ought to have seen at once to be incredible. In the Middle Ages, when an epidemic raged, it was usually asserted that the Jews had poisoned the wells. When a king, or eminent person, died suddenly without ostensible cause, a suggestion of poison naturally arose to explain the death. We are slower in making such accusations now; not because poisoning has become less frequent, but because the public has become more enlightened. Yet-and the remark is curious our enlightenment is rarely brought to bear upon the past; and we suffer statements respecting historical persons to pass unchallenged which if advanced respecting contemporaries would excite contempt. No physiologist of the present day would listen without a smile to people who assured him that Louis Napoleon preserved himself by antidotes against attempts at poisoning; it would be as easy to believe in the virtue of amulets. Yet even physiologists read statements of this nature in history with passive acquiescence, owing to that lethargy of credulity which, as I have said, comes over them when they are listening to narratives of the past. Thus, to cite but one example, in an elaborate treatise on poisons,* by one of the first toxicologists of our day, may be found repeated the nonsense of Tacitus and Suetonius about Locusta (hereafter to be exhibited), without a hint of its being incredible, without a remark on its contradiction to all scientific knowledge. Had I sufficient leisure I would collect together some of the most famous cases of poisoning recorded in history, and convict them of manifest falsehood from the very details circumstantially narrated; just as one may dissipate such fables as those of Caligula and Cleopatra, who are said to have shown their reckless extravagance by dissolving in their wine pearls of great price, by simply mentioning the fact that pearls are not soluble in wine. But for the present we have only to deal with the poisoning of Britannicus. The case *VAN HASSELT: Handbuch der Giftlehre, aus dem Hollandischen von J. B. Henkel. 1862. question it since Tacitus and Suetonius first circumstantially related the details. Yet a verdict more flagrantly in defiance of common sense and science has seldom been given. Nero, we are told, hated Britannicus because of his sweet voice, and feared him as a possible pretender to the throne. Here are the motives imagined; let us now see them in operation. The tyrant, we are told, unable to bring any accusation against him (which in those days of conspiracy was surely strange), secretly resolved to murder him; and this secret resolve becomes known to the narrators, but how they gained the knowledge is not mentioned. It was confided to Julius Pollio, tribune of a prætorian cohort, who at that moment held in prison, under sentence of death, Locusta, notorious for her crimes-multa scelerum fama. She was ordered to prepare a poison; this poison was administered to Britannicus; but it was too slow in its operation; and Nero, sending for her, beat her, and vowed that she had supplied an antidote. Whereupon she prepared before his own eyes, and in his own room, a deadly poison, the strength of which was essayed on a pig, whose instant death satisfied Nero that now he had got what he desired. The banquet was prepared. Britannicus was seated at a separate table magnificently served, in presence of his relatives and several young nobles. A slave stood at his side to taste of every dish and every beverage, as a precaution against poison; and this slave it was necessary to spare, otherwise his death, occurring at the same time, would betray the murder. To avoid this betrayal the following expedient was imagined. A beverage was presented to Britannicus, after having been been tasted too hot to be drunk; to cool it, a little cold water was poured in, and this cold water contained the poison. No sooner had the prince tasted it than he fell lifeless. The guests were alarmed; some rose to fly; but those who clearly understood it all sat still their eyes fixed on Nero, who quietly assured them that it was only an attack of the epileptic fits to which Britannicus was subject, and that it would soon be over. "After a while the gayety of the banquet was resumed: post breve silentium repetita convivii lætitia." Britannicus was hastily buried the next day. According to Dion Cassius the face of the corpse had become quite black from the poison; to conceal this Nero whitened it with chalk, but the falling rain washed away this chalk and disclosed the crime which had thus clumsily been concealed. As for Locusta, she was not only rewarded with a free pardon and a grant of land, but "Nero placed some disciples with her to be instructed in her art!" This is the story. The first remark which science suggests is that the sudden death of Britannicus may very probably have been due to epilepsy, but cannot have been due to poison, since there was no poison known to the ancients capable of producing such instantaneous effects. In our own days the only poisons known to take effect in a few seconds are prussic acid, oxalic acid, strychnine, woorara, and the venom of certain snakes; and these were not known in Rome. Aconite, which on good grounds is believed to have been a common poison employed in Rome, requires from one to three hours to produce fatal effects; and the majority of mineral poisons require several hours. Secondly, science knows of no poison which instantaneously blackens the face of the victim. There are certain mineral poisons which, taken slowly, will slowly discolor the skin, but not one which, acting rapidly on the organism, rapidly betrays its presence by such discoloration. Having dismissed science, we now request common sense to step into the witness box, and she plainly tells us that, as Nero, Locusta, and Pollio were too deeply interested in these transactions to have volunteered a confession of their acts, and as no such confession was publicly extorted from them, there is some difficulty in ascertaining from whom such circumstantial narratives were obtained, and what guarantee they offer for the truth of their narratives. Moreover, supposing it to be a fact that Locusta was pardoned, and had a grant of land—a fact which requires proof-the fiction which connects her with Nero's criminal purposes is betrayed in the mythical addition of the disciples placed with her to be instructed in her art. Had Nero been the monster he is painted, he would not have hesitated to destroy such colleagues when their work was done, and when their testimony might be dangerous. It is thus perfectly clear that, according to any evidence now accessible, Britannicus was not poisoned, or, if he were poisoned, it was under very different circumstances from those narrated; and it is no less clear that Nero's supposed share in the murder rests on nothing but the general suspicion that he may have wished for the young man's death. With regard to the accusation of Nero having murdered his mother, science and common sense are not less conspicuously adverse to it. Suetonius assures us that thrice Nero attempted to poison Agrippina, but thrice was foiled by her having had the precaution to prepare against such attempts by taking an antidote. To the ancient mind this was eminently credible. To moderns it is eminently ridiculous. Ancient physiology having no distinct idea of the nature of poisons, and how they affect the organism, found no difficulty in believing in the existence of an universal antidote. Modern physiology smiles when an antidote is mentioned, except as a specific remedy under certain specific conditions, and for specific poisons. To enable the reader thoroughly to understand the extent of the ancient ignorance, and the precision with which modern science limits the idea of antidotes, it is necessary to range the various known poisons under the heads of their peculiar effects on the organism. Various classifications have been proposed; the following seems to me the most serviceable. Poisons may be ranged under three classes: 1. As irritant, that is to say, exaggerating the vital activity of an organ or system, by its stimulus, and thus producing a disturbance of the organic equilibrium, which may be fatal when carried beyond a certain limit. 2. As narcotic, that is to say, depressing the vital activity by its effects on the nervous centres, and when carried beyond a certain limit admitting of no recovery from the depression. 3. As corrosive or histolytic, that is to say, destroying the tissues with which it is in contact. dif The reader perceives at once that these different effects must be produced by very erent substances, and require very different substances as remedies. Each class of poisons calls for a specific class of antidotes. The wrong antidotes will either aggravate the evil, or remain inoperative. To give the right antidote it is requisite first that we know what the poison is which has been ad ministered, and next, what the substance is which neutralizes that poison. Suppose sulphuric acid has been administered; if we know this to be the fact, either from the presence of the poison, or its bottle, or from our skill in recognizing its effect, we have mastered the initial difficulty, and one rarely to be mastered in cases of secret poisoning. Now comes the more important step of choosing the antidote; if we try brandy, or laudanum, we only increase the evil; but if we have sufficient knowledge to recognize the nature of the action which sulphuric acid effects on the tissues, namely, corrosive, we see at once that to annihilate its corrosive properties, we must cause it to combine with some substance which will make it harmless. We know that the sulphate of lime is harmless, and we know that chalk converts sulphuric acid into this harmless compound; we therefore administer chalk, and, if not too late, we counteract the poison. Further observe, that a remedy which, when administered rapidly after the poison has been taken, will, to a great extent, counteract the effect of that poison, is no remedy when administered beforehand. The ancient idea of an antidote, which would protect a man against an anticipated attempt at poisoning, is more irrational than the idea of a healthy man protecting himself against some unknown disease by taking a medicine believed to be effective in the case of a known disease. Such being the state of the case, the reader at once sees the preposterousness of the ancient idea of antidotes when chemistry was not in existence, and when toxicology was undreamed of; and he will perceive that when he is called upon to believe in Agrippina having fortified herself against attempts at poison by the precautionary measure of swallowing antidotes, he might as rationally believe that a man escaped the perils of drowning, fire, sunstroke, and fever, by wearing a breastplate. Agrippina could not divine what poison could be employed against her; nor could she anticipate the discoveries of chemistry by a knowledge of what substances counteracted the effects of these poisons, or rendered them inoperative. Fiction the first having been thus exposed, let us ask why Agrippina, with the full knowledge of her son's attempts at poisoning, should not have guarded herself against him in other directions? The historians are silent on this point. They gravely narrate how, when Nero had failed with poison, he had recourse to melo-dramatic contrivances, such, for example, as loosening the floor over her bedchamber, so that its fall might crush her. This also failed. She would not be crushed. Whereupon Anicetus, the naval prefect, who detested Agrippina, offered his services. Here a juryman would assuredly ask how this offer became known, and whether Anicetus had himself publicly confessed his share in the crime; or even whether he had been publicly accused of it. But history is a Muse, and is less troubled with fastidious doubts on matters of detail. She narrates, she does not undertake to prove: scribere ad narrandum non ad probandum. Her narrative runs thus : Anicetus constructed a vessel, which, when out at sea, was suddenly to collapse, as if by accident, and every one on board would then perish. Nero, says Tacitus, smiled at the ingenuity of the plan-placuit solertia; and we may smile at the credulity of the historian. The plan, with all its pleasant ingenuity, turned out an ignoble failure; the old cat was not thus to be drowned, but swam ashore, and when on terra firma, as the sole means of escape was to pretend to no suspicion," she despatched Agerinus, one of her freedmen, with a message to Nero, narrating her accident, and assuring him of her escape, at the same time requesting her son not to come to her, for she needed quiet and repose. thus was Nero to be deceived. He knew that his attempt had been discovered; and in terror lest she should excite the wrath of senate and soldiers against him, he sent for Seneca and Burrhus. Tacitus does not pretend that these men were aware of the attempt, but he does pretend to a knowledge of what passed at the interview, and what passed in their minds, and this it is: "They both remained silent for. a long while, fearing lest they should not be attended to. They also thought that Nero would perish unless his mother perished. At length Seneca asked Burrhus if the order should be given to the soldiers to put her to death. Burrhus replied that the troops were I too much attached to the house of Cæsar; and he thought, therefore, that it now remained with Anicetus to execute his threats. Anicetus with alacrity begged to be permit 66 Not Here the difficult juryman, disrespectful to history, requires to know how Tacitus came by this knowledge. It is not the revelation which any one of the conspirators would spontaneously have made; and although both Seneca and Burrhus subsequently perished by Nero's order, neither of them accused Nero in the exasperation of their defeat. Whence then these details, so important, so precise? Nor does Tacitus stop here. He knows that Anicetus by way of pretext prepared a scene, and a very clumsy scene. When Agerinus arrived with the message from Agrippina, Anicetus threw a sword between his feet, and then pretending to have surprised him with this weapon, accused him of being an assassin sent by Agrippina. The purpose of this comedy was to make it believed, that Agrippina, on the discovery of her attempt, had committed suicide.* ted to complete his crime (nihil cunctatus pos- | declared that he was haunted by his mother's cit summam sceleris). Nero joyously con- ghost, and persecuted by the Furies with sented." whips and burning torches. He even attempted to soften her rage, by bringing up her ghost by magical arts." This remorse of Nero is painted by Tacitus in his Caravaggio style; but he does not claim any "good authority" for what he says, although one would be glad to know it. No historian pretends to explain how the senate and people could celebrate with magnificent rejoicings the escape of their emperor from his mother's plots; nor how they could continue to serve and flatter him, if Nero openly declared himself terror-stricken by remorse. That the senate was servile is credible; but there are limits even to servility; and the moral indifference of this senate needs explanation. It is true that Tacitus remarks on the indifference of the gods who permitted the reign of such a monster to be prolonged; and this is the more noticeable, because we are told in the next sentence that the gods were scandalized, and showed their wrath in prodigies; the sun was eclipsed, thunderbolts fell in all the fourteen districts of the city, and a woman gave birth to a serpent. How are we to explain the death of Agrippina? For myself I confess an inability to shape the story in any reliable sequence of events. The evidence is wanting. All that is indisputable is that. Agrippina was said by Seneca, in a letter written to the senate, to have plotted against her son, and to have committed suicide on learning that the plot had been detected. This the senate and the people believed, or pretended to believe. I think it most probable that they did believe it, and not without good grounds; for Agrippina had once before been accused of such a plot, which Nero was made to believe. It It is characteristic of the supreme disregard of probability with which these narrations are conducted, that Tacitus, immediately after expounding the secret schemes of Anicetus, and asserting, as if it were a notorious fact, that Anicetus wished the death of Agrippina to be publicly accepted as a suicide, proceeds to tell how the troops were led to the attack of Agrippina's palace by this very Anicetus, making their murderous way through the crowd which had assembled there to congratulate her on her escape from drowning. So little is the pretext of suicide attended to, that the troops force their way into her chamber, and there butcher her. "These facts," he adds, "are undisputed. Some say that Nero examined the corpse and admired its beauty; others deny this." It is pleasant to find even so faint a gleam of skepticism is quite possible that Agrippina was calumas this; especially when we read in Suetonius such other circumstances which are related upon good authority" (only the authority is never given), as that " he went to view her corpse, and, handling her limbs, disparaged some and praised others, and then called for drink. Nevertheless, he was never able to bear the pangs of conscience, though he was supported by the congratulations of the soldiers and the senate. He frequently *Suetonius makes Nero drop the sword, and order the arrest of Agerinus, inventing also the story of his mother's suicide. niated; but if Nero believed the calumny, even for a day, the senate and people may have believed it. Moreover, the character of Burrhus and of Seneca ought to have sɔme weight with us. If they were not faultless, at least they were admirable men. To bclieve that they abetted the murder of a mother by her own son would require cogent evidence; and we have absolutely no evidence, positive or presumptive, on which to found such a suspicion. In conclusion, be it observed, that I am not called upon to clear up a transaction so obscurely reported, but only to point out the incredibility of the reports. | even wreaking their vengeance on the attendNero may, in his alarm, have ordered his ants! mother's arrest; she may have lost her life in the struggle of resisting such an order; or may have committed suicide. In after years public rumor, never nicely discriminating, may have transformed this into a belief of Nero's having murdered her. But as to evidence, there is simply none. The narrative of historians is baseless and inept. Where so much is flagrantly absurd we may doubt if any part be true. Suetonius, in a previous chapter, has recorded of Nero that he ordered piazzas to be erected before all the houses, great and small, in order that in case of fire there might be a commanding position for extinguishing the flames; and these piazzas were constructed at his expense: so little did he disregard the interests of his subjects! Tacitus, a graver writer, tells the story with less manifest fiction. He says that the fire was by some attributed to accident, and by others to the wickedness of Nero; adding, only returned to Rome on the day when the flames approached his own palace, which he had built to join the palace of Augustus with the garden of Mecænas. This palace and all the buildings around it were burned. To console the people, wardering and houseless, he opened the Campus Martius, and the monuments of Agrippa, as well as his own gardens. Here sheds were hastily constructed to shelter the poorest. Furniture was fetched from Ostia, and the price of corn was considerably reduced." Let us now turn our eyes upon Rome in flames. That Britannicus died suddenly, is a fact; that he was poisoned, we have scien-" Nero at that time was at Antium, and tific reasons for disbelieving; that Nero was the poisoner is without a shadow of proof stronger than idle suspicion. But although fiction has woven its tangled threads round a nucleus of fact, there are among these threads two of some strength, namely, the motive which might have prompted the crime, and the presence of Nero at the fatal banquet. It is otherwise with the fiction surrounding the historical fact of Rome in flames. There is no assignable motive which can point suspicion at Nero; and he happened to be absent from Rome when the fire broke out. The silly credulity which for centuries has accepted this story, with its mythical embellishment of Nero in mad exultation at the success of his wantonness fiddling above the burning ruins, is a striking example of what will pass as history. Suetonius gravely relates that some one having quoted a Greek verse, the meaning of which is, "After my death I care not if the world perish in flames," Nero exclaimed, Nay, let it perish while I live.' "And," adds the historian," he acted accordingly; for, pretending to take offence at the ugliness of the old buildings and the narrowness of the streets, he set the city on fire; and this was done so openly that several consulars found tow and torches in the houses of his attendants, but were afraid to meddle with them. He knocked down the walls of the granaries, which were of stone, in order that the flames might spread. The fire he beheld from a tower on the top of the villa of Mecænas, and being hugely diverted with the splendors of the flames, he sang the Destruction of Troy in the dress worn by him on the stage." Yet the people patiently submitted to be ruined, and thus openly mocked, not Thus the public acts of Nero are not only those of one innocent of the imputed crime, but are those of an emperor really concerned for the misfortunes of his people. It is quite possible that such acts may have been mere hypocritical attempts to disarm suspicion; and if the crime were proven, or even probable, such an interpretation might pass. But what evidence, what probability is there, to justify such an accusation? The vague rumors of an exasperated people. How these arise, and how supremely they dispense with evidence, need not be told. Have we not in our own time known the famine in Ireland boldly assigned to the wrath of heaven because the words Defensor Fidei accidentally were omitted in a new issue of silver coin? and this accusation proceeding, not from ignorant and turbulent mobs, but from the ignorant and bigoted "religious world," as it unjustifiably calls itself. Jurymen accustomed to deliver verdicts in cases brought by Fire Insurance Offices must know the kind of evidence which they demand, before they believe that a fraudulent tradesman has set fire to his own premises. I ask if they can see anything of this kind in the accusation against Nero? Without de |