Poppaea, celebrated by contemporaries for her beauty and cunning, had maneuvered her way from the wife of a future emperor's friend to Nero's own consort, allegedly encouraging his decision to have his first wife Octavia executed. Tacitus records that Nero, in a violent quarrel, kicked the pregnant Poppaea, causing her death—though ancient accounts of imperial scandal always demand skepticism.
Poppaea Sabina's rise through Roman high society reads like calculated ascent through a minefield. Married first to a Roman knight, she left him for Rufrius Crispinus, commander of the Praetorian Guard, and then left him for Marcus Otho, a close friend and drinking companion of the young Emperor Nero. It was likely through Otho that she caught the emperor's eye.
Nero, still married to his first wife Octavia, became infatuated. Ancient sources suggest Poppaea maneuvered Otho out of Rome by having Nero appoint him governor of a distant province, clearing her path to the emperor's bed. Once Nero had disposed of his mother Agrippina, an obstacle to the marriage, he divorced Octavia, exiled her, and eventually had her killed, marrying Poppaea in 62 AD.
Tacitus's account of her 65 AD death is brief but chilling: Nero, angered by some complaint she made about his coming home late from the races, kicked her while she was pregnant, and she died from the injury. Whether this is history or hostile rumor is impossible to know for certain—Tacitus loathed Nero and wrote decades after the events—but Nero's grief, real or performed, was reportedly enormous; he deified her and gave her a funeral of extraordinary extravagance, burning a year's supply of Arabian incense on her funeral pyre.
Key people: Poppaea Sabina, Nero