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90 position on the part of the provinces, long accustomed to accept the choice of the capital. To rule in the name of her son was Agrippina's purpose; to him she left the pleasures, for herself she reserved the toils, of government. Under this arrangement things went on smoothly for a few years, and the "Quinquennium Neronis" became in after-times a common phrase for expressing a happy and well-ordered administration.

The young Cæsar enjoyed many advantages that had been denied to his predecessor. Claudius, who had a sincere relish for research, was permitted to pursue his own studies, and to write books, which have all perished, and which probably no one except himself ever read. But Nero had been carefully trained in his childhood, and there is reason to believe that his talents were naturally good, although his taste in poetry was, by unanimous consent of his contemporaries, abominable. He was an only, but not a spoilt child. His mother provided him with the best tutors she could find; and his studies were superintended by the foremost man of the age in literature, the philosopher Seneca. In one branch of learning he appears to have made little progress; and his incompetence was the more marked at the time, because ability to address an audience was an almost universal accomplishment in young Romans of rank. "Old men," says Tacitus, "who make it their recreation to compare the present and the past, took notice that Nero was the first Roman emperor who required the aid of another's eloquence." It may have been that Agrippina hoped the studies her son most delighted in—music and poetry—would always divert his attention from affairs of State, and leave herself and her favorites free to