Poppaea Sabina: The Life and Afterlife of a Roman Empress

Like many famous figures from antiquity, we must work through layers of fantasy in order to uncover the life of Poppaea Sabina (c. 30-65 CE). As the ancient sources tell it, Poppaea pushed the young emperor Nero to murder his mother, execute his wife Octavia, marry her and make her his empress--and then, a few years later, kick her to death in a drunken rage. Poppaea's genuine motives and actions, however, cannot be easily recovered from the extant sources. Her narrative comes to us already...