Poppaea Sabina

In the past few months, for no apparent reason, I have been captivated by the image and story of the Roman empress, Poppaea Sabina. What led me to this strange preoccupation? Well, I was reading about the life of the Emperor Nero by Tacitus and Suetonius, and listening to one of Monteverdi's operas, L'incoronazione di Poppaea, a romanticized version of how Poppaea schemed against Nero's first wife Octavia to gain the crown. The historian Tacitus reviled her as an ambitious and ruthless woman, marrying Otho to get close to Nero and become his paramour. Further, he says that Poppaea convinced Nero to murder his own mother, Agrippina the Younger, because she opposed their adulterous relationship. Tacitus also claimed that, since she was pregnant, Poppaea enticed Nero to divorce his barren wife Octavia and then arranged for her murder. But in turn, Poppaea was herself murdered by the mad emperor, who kicked her in the belly causing a miscarriage and ultimately her demise. Nero was repentant of his actions, and ordered that Poppaea be deified through the title “Augusta.”

The story of the Julio-Claudian dynasty is rife with stories rivaling that of the Greek tragedies. Maybe someday, I should try to mine these histories for a good yarn to retell as fiction.