Poppaea Sabina

Poppaea Sabina (30-65) was a Roman Empress and second wife of the Roman Emperor Nero. The historians of Antiquity see in her few good qualities apart from her beauty and focus on her intrigues to become empress. Fifteen centuries later, Claudio Monteverdi in his last opera, L'incoronazione di Poppea (The coronation of Poppea), depicted her in a more favorable way, highlighting her love for the emperor.

Life

Ancestry and Early Life

Poppaea was the only child and daughter to Titus Ollius and an elder Poppaea Sabina. Titus Ollius was a quaestor in the reign of the Roman Emperor Tiberius. Ollius’ friendship with notorious Imperial palace guardsman’s Lucius Aelius Sejanus ruined him, before gaining public office. Titus Ollius was from Picenum (modern Marche and Abruzzo, Italy) and he was an unknown minor character in Imperial Politics. Her mother an elder Poppaea Sabina was a distinguished woman, whom the Roman Historian Tacitus praises as a wealthy woman and a woman of distinction. Tacitus describes her as ‘the loveliest woman of her day’. In 47, she committed suicide as an innocent victim of the intrigues of the Roman Empress Valeria Messalina.

The father of the elder Poppaea was Gaius Poppaeus Sabinus. This man of humble birth was consul in 9. During his consulship, the future Roman Emperor Vespasian was born. During the reign of the Roman Emperor Tiberius, he received a military triumph, for ending a revolt in Thrace in 26. From 15 until his death, he served as Imperial Proconsul (or Governor) of Greece and in other provinces. This competent administrator enjoyed the friendship of the Roman Emperors. He died in the final days in 35, of natural causes. After her maternal grandfather died, Poppaea assumed the name of her maternal grandfather. Roman coinage of Sabinus can be seen here.

Poppaea’s father died in 31. Her mother remarried Publius Cornelius Lentulus Scipio (I). Lentulus Scipio was a divisional commander in 22, consul in 24 and later a senator. Publius Cornelius Lentulus Scipio (II), was most probably Poppaea's step brother, he was a consul in 56 and later served as a senator. Poppaea was born and raised in Rome.

Marriage to Rufrius Crispinus

Poppaea's first marriage was to Rufrius Crispinus, a man of equestrian rank. They married in 44. He was the leader of the Praetorian Guard during the reign of the Emperor Claudius. In 51, Agrippina the Younger, then married to Claudius and Empress, removed him from this position, as she regarded him loyal to Messalina's memory and replaced him with Sextus Afranius Burrus. Later under Nero he was executed. Poppaea had borne him a son a younger Rufrius Crispinus, who later after her death, would be drowned on a fishing trip by the Emperor Nero.

Marriage to Otho

Poppaea then married Otho, a good friend of Emperor Nero. Nero fell in love with Poppea and she became Nero's mistress. She divorced her husband Otho in 58 and focused her attentions solely on becoming empress of Rome. Otho was ordered away to be governor of Lusitania (a decade later he became emperor briefly after Nero's death in succession to Galba).

Empress

According to Tacitus, Poppaea was ambitious and ruthless. He reported that Poppaea married Otho to get close to Nero and then, in turn, became Nero's favourite mistress. It is said that Nero's mother Agrippina the Younger, saw the danger and tried to persuade Nero to get rid of her. This dispute over Poppaea was one of the reasons that saw Nero finally murdered his mother. With Agrippina gone, Poppaea's influence over Nero became so great that due to the pressure she put on him, he divorced (and later executed) his first wife Claudia Octavia in order to marry Poppaea in 62. Octavia was initially dismissed to Campania, and then imprisoned on the island of Pandateria (a common place of banishment for members of the Imperial family who fell from favour), on a charge of adultery. In some Church sources it is claimed that it was Poppaea and not Nero who instigated the persecutions against Christians, in order to cover up her murderous deeds.

The historian Josephus, on the other hand, tells of a very different Poppea. He calls her a deeply religious woman (perhaps privately a Jewish proselyte) who urged Nero to show compassion, namely to the Jewish people.

She bore Nero one daughter, Claudia Augusta, born on 21 January 63, who died at only four months of age. At the birth of Claudia, Nero honored mother and child with the title of Augusta.

According to Suetonius, while she was awaiting the birth of her second child in the summer of 65, she quarreled fiercely with Nero over his spending too much time at the games. In a fit of rage, Nero kicked her in the abdomen, so causing her death. Many modern historians, though, assume Poppaea died due to miscarriage complications.

When Poppaea died in 65, Nero was in complete mourning. Her body was not cremated, it was stuffed with spices and embalmed and put in the Mausoleum of Augustus. Nero gave his second wife a state funeral. Nero praised her during the funeral eulogy and gave her divine honors. Nero's eulogy of Poppaea caused disgust among those who disliked her and remembered her for her cruelty and immorality.

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."

External Links:

Media related to Poppaea Sabina at Wikimedia Commons

• Poppea Sabina entry in historical sourcebook by Mahlon H. Smith