A G R A G R 419 During the next three years he was engaged in a military expedition to Catalonia, and then in the formation of a secret society of theosophists, the first of those alternations between the career of the knight and the career of the student in which his whole life was passed. In 1509 he went by invitation to the university of Dole in Burgundy, and read lectures on Reuchlin s De Verbo Mirifico, which gained for him the degree of doctor of divinity and a stipend. It was these lectures that first stirred against him that malignant hatred of the monks which embittered his life and blackened his memory. He was denounced as an impious and heretical cabalist by an obscure monk named Catilinet, in lectures delivered at Ghent (1510) before Margaret of Burgundy, and his hopes of securing the patronage of that princess were thus for the time dis appointed. To win her favour, he had composed (1509) and dedicated to her a treatise, De Nobilitate et Prcecel- lentia Fceminei Sexus, the publication of which was delayed from motives of prudence until 1532. For the same reason the same course was followed in regard to his treatise De Occulta Philosophic!, which, though completed in the spring of 1510, did not appear until 1531. In writing it he had the advice and assistance of the abbot Trithemius of Wiirzburg. Failing to receive encourage ment as a man of letters, Agrippa was forced again to enter the diplomatic service. In 1510 the emperor sent him on a mission to London, where he became the guest of Dean Colet at Stepney. Soon after his return home he was summoned to follow his imperial master to the war in Italy, where he won his spurs probably at the battle of Ravenna. In the autumn of 1511, on the invitation of the Cardinal de Santa Croce, he attended the schismatic council of Pisa as theologian, and by so doing still further provoked the hostility of the papal party. After a period spent in the service of the Marquis of Montferrat, during which he visited Switzerland, Agrippa was invited in 1515 to the university of Pavia, where he delivered lectures on the Pimander of Hermes Trismegistus, the first of which is preserved among his published works, and received a doctor s degree in law and medicine. He was still doomed, however, to a harassed, unsettled life. Three years were spent in the service of the Marquis of Montferrat and the Duke of Savoy. In 1518 he became syndic at Metz, where he was involved in disputes with the monks, and especially with the inquisitor Nicolas Savin, before whom he boldly and persistently defended a woman accused of witchcraft. He was, chiefly in consequence of this, com pelled to resign his office, and quitted Metz for Cologne in January 1520. After two years spent in seclusion in his native city, he went to Geneva, where he practised medicine for a short time. In 1523 he removed to Friburg, having been appointed town physician. In the following year he was induced to go to Lyons as court physician to the queen-mother, Louisa of Savoy, but the change did not better his condition, since, though he re ceived several empty honours, his salary remained unpaid. It was probably amid the privations of poverty that he composed, in 1526, his De Incertitudine et Vanitate Scien- tiarum et Artium atque Excellentia Verbi Dei Declamatio, which was first published in 1530. The work is remark able for the keenness of its satire on the existing state of science and the pretensions of the learned, and when published furnished fresh occasion for the malicious mis representation of his enemies. A quarrel with the queen compelled Agrippa to leave Lyons and betake himself to the Netherlands. In 1529 he was appointed historio grapher to the Emperor Charles V., and in that capacity wrote a history of the emperor s reign. The salary attached to the office was, however, left unpaid, and Agrippa was consequently imprisoned at Brussels, and afterwards banished from Cologne, for debt. He died at Grenoble in 1535. The character of Agrippa has been very variously repre sented. The earlier accounts are grossly disfigured by the calumnies of the Dominicans, whose hatred, following him even to the grave, placed over it an inscription that is probably unique in its spiteful malignity. In later times full justice has been done to his memory. A Life of Agrippa by Henry Morley (London 1856) contains a detailed analysis of his more important works. A com plete edition of his writings appeared in two volumes at Leyden in 1550, and has been several times republished. AGRIPPINA (THE ELDER), the virtuous and heroic but unfortunate offspring of M. Agrippa by a very abandoned mother, and herself the parent of a still more profligate and guilty daughter of the same name. She was early married to Germanicus, the son of Drusus and Antonia, the niece of Augustus. On the death of Augustus she joined her husband in his German campaigns, where she had several opportunities of showing her intrepidity, shar ing with Germanicus his toils and his triumphs. The love which the army showed for this leader was the cause of his recall from the Rhine by the suspicious Tiberius. He was soon afterwards sent into Syria, where he died at Antioch from the effects, as was believed, of poison ad ministered to him by Piso, the governor of Syria. On his deathbed Germanicus implored his wife, for the sake of their numerous children, to submit with resigna tion to the evil times on which they were fallen, and not to provoke the vengeance of the tyrant Tiberius. But, unhappily, this prudent advice was not followed by the high-spirited woman, who, on landing at Brundusium, went straight to Rome, entered the city bearing the urn of her deceased husband in her arms, and was received amid the tears of the citizens and the soldiery, to whom Germanicus was dear. She boldly accused Piso of the murder of her husband ; and he, to avoid public infamy, committed suicide. She continued to reside at Rome, watched and suspected by Tiberius, who for some time dreaded to glut his vengeance on the widow and family of so popular a prince as Germanicus. She soon had the temerity to upbraid the tyrant with his hypocrisy in pre tending to worship at the tomb of Augustus. He began by putting to death both men and women who had shown attachment to the family of Germanicus ; and finally he arrested Agrippina and her two eldest sons, Nero and Drusus, and transported them to the isle of Pandataria, where her mother Julia had perished ; and there she was starved, or starved herself, to death in the 33d year of our era. Tiberius also ordered the execution of her two eldest sons ; yet it is remarkable that by his will the emperor left her youngest son Caius, better known by the name of Caligula, as one of the heirs of the empire. AGRIPPINA, daughter of Germanicus and Agrippina the elder, sister of Caligula, and mother of Nero, was born about 15 A.D., at Oppidum Ubiorum, which was at that time the headquarters of her father s legions, and which was after her named Colonia Agrippina Ubiorum (now Cologne). She wrote memoirs of her times, which Tacitus quotes and Pliny commends; but her life is notorious for intrigue and perfidy. In 28 A.D. she became the wife of Cn. Dom. Ahenobarbus, who died 40 A.D. Her next husband was Crispus Passienus, whom some years afterwards she was accused of poisoning. For flagitious conduct, Caligula banished her to the isle of Pontia ; but on the accession of her uncle Claudius, 41 A.D., she was set free, and began to succeed in her ambitious schemes. After Messalina had been put to death, 48 A.D., Agrippina was raised by Claudius to her place as his imperial consort,
49 A.D. She prevailed upon him to discard Britannicus,
