Deaths of Agrippina the Younger and Claudia Octavia Tacitus claims that Poppaea was the reason that Nero murdered his mother. Poppaea induced Nero to murder 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.Additionally, Suetonius mentions how Poppaea's husband, Otho, was not sent away until after Agrippina's death, which makes it very unlikely that an already married woman would be pressing Nero to marry her.Some modern historians, however, 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. Still, Tacitus claims that, with Agrippina gone, Poppaea pressured Nero to divorce and later execute his first wife and stepsister Claudia Octavia in order to marry Poppaea. Octavia was initially dismissed to Campania (which by coincidence is the same general geographic area that Pompeii, Poppaea's place of birth as noted above, is located in), and then imprisoned on the island of Ventotene (a common place of banishment for members of the Imperial family who fell from favor), on a charge of adultery. Once more, as with the death of Agrippina, modern historians question Poppaea's pressure as Nero's true motive. During his eight-year marriage to Claudia Octavia, Nero had produced no children, and in AD 62, around the time that he divorced Octavia, Poppaea was pregnant. When this happened, Nero divorced Octavia, claimed she was barren, and he married Poppaea two weeks after the divorce. The historian Josephus, on the other hand, tells us of a very different Poppaea. He calls her a deeply religious woman (perhaps privately a Jewish proselyte) who urged Nero to show compassion, namely to the Jewish people. However, in 64, she secured the position of procurator of Judaea for her friend's husband, Gessius Florus, who was harmful to the Jews. 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.

• published: 17 Sep 2013
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