Some of the rowers rushed to one side of the ship, hoping in that manner to sink it, but here too their councils were divided and confused.

Acerronia, in the selfish hope of securing assistance, exclaimed that she was Agrippina, and was immediately despatched with oars and poles; Agrippina, silent and unrecognized, received a wound upon the shoulder, but succeeded in keeping herself afloat till she was picked up by fishermen and carried in safety to her villa.
The hideous attempt from which she had been thus miraculously rescued did not escape her keen intuition, accustomed as it was to deeds of guilt; but, seeing that her only chance of safety rested in dissimulation and reticense, she sent her freedman Agerinus to tell her son that by the mercy of heaven she had escaped from a terrible accident, but to beg him not to be alarmed, and not to come to see her because she needed rest.
The news filled Nero with the wildest terror, and the expectation of an immediate revenge.

In horrible agitation and uncertainty he instantly required the presence of Burrus and Seneca.

Tacitus doubts whether they may not have been already aware of what he had attempted, and Dion, to whose gross calumnies, however, we need pay no attention, declares that Seneca had frequently urged Nero to the deed, either in the hope of overshadowing his own guilt, or of involving Nero in a crime which should hasten his most speedy destruction at the hands of gods and men.
In the absence of all evidence we may with perfect confidence acquit the memory of these eminent men from having gone so far as this.
It must have been a strange and awful scene.

The young man, for Nero was but twenty-two years old, poured into the ears their tumult of his agitation and alarm.