User:Bruisingspace01/Poppaea Sabina

Marriage to Nero and Empress of Rome[edit]
Tacitus depicts Poppaea as inducing Nero to murder his mother, Agrippina, in 59 so that she could marry him. Modern scholars, though, question the reliability of this story as Nero did not marry Poppaea until 62 and point to Suetonius's dating of the divorce from Otho. Some modern historians theorize that Nero's decision to kill Agrippina was prompted by her plotting to set Gaius Rubellius Plautus (Nero's maternal second cousin) on the throne rather than as a result of Poppaea's motives.[citation needed]

With Agrippina gone, Poppaea pressured Nero to divorce and later execute his first wife and stepsister Claudia Octavia in order to marry her. Octavia was initially dismissed to Campania, coincidentally the same general geographic area that Pompeii, Poppaea's place of birth, is located. She was then imprisoned on the island of Pandateria (modern Ventotene), a common place of banishment for members of the imperial family who fell from favor because of a charge of adultery.

During his eight-year marriage to Claudia Octavia, Nero produced no children, and in AD 62, Poppaea became pregnant. When this happened, Nero divorced Octavia, claimed she was barren, and married Poppaea 12 days after the divorce. She bore Nero one daughter, Claudia Augusta, born on 21 January 63, who died at four months of age. At the birth of Claudia, Nero honoured mother and child with the title of Augusta.

According to Cassius Dio, Poppaea enjoyed having milk baths. She would have them daily because she was once told "therein lurked a magic which would dispel all diseases and blights from her beauty."[citation needed]

Tacitus and Suetonius portray Poppaea as an ambitious and ruthless schemer. The Jewish historian Josephus paints a very different picture. He calls Poppaea a worshipper of God and urged Nero to show compassion to the Jewish people. In one account, Josephus shows how Poppaea advocated for Jewish priests when an issue was brought before Nero by Herod Agrippa II, who was the ruler of Jerusalem, concerning a wall that was built blocking Agrippa's view of the temple. She convinced Nero to not order the Jewish priests to tear down the wall and to leave the temple as is. However, in 64 she secured the position of procurator of Judaea for Gessius Florus, her friend's husband, who was harmful to the Jews.

Death[edit]
The cause and timing of Poppaea's death is uncertain. According to Suetonius, while she was awaiting the birth of her second child in the summer of 65, she quarrelled fiercely with Nero over his spending too much time at the races. In a fit of rage, Nero kicked her in the abdomen, causing her death. Tacitus, on the other hand, places the death after the Quinquennial Neronia (in 65 AD) and claims Nero's kick was a "casual outburst." Tacitus also mentions that some writers claimed Nero poisoned her, though he does not believe them. Cassius Dio claims Nero leapt upon her belly, but admitted that he did not know if it was intentional or accidental. Modern historians, though, keep in mind Suetonius's, Tacitus's, and Cassius Dio's severe biases against Nero and the impossibility of their knowing private events, and hence recognize that Poppaea may have died due to fatal complications of miscarriage or stillbirth.

When Poppaea died in 65, Nero went into deep mourning. Per the Roman Imperial tradition, Poppaea was given a state funeral. In a departure from this cultural norm, however, she was not only embalmed, but also given divine honours alongside her daughter Claudia Augusta. Tacitus writes that Poppaea was embalmed by having her body filled with various herbs and spices and was buried in the Tomb of the Julii, but her actual burial spot is unknown. Nero supposedly burned a year's worth of Arabia's incense production at her funeral.

After that in 67, Nero ordered Sporus, a young freedman, to be castrated and then married him; according to Cassius Dio, Sporus bore an uncanny resemblance to Poppaea, and Nero even called him by his dead wife’s name.