Note 28 — Chapter XX · The Burning of Rome

—page 149. “Married, but not mated,” could not have been said of Nero, at least in the later years of his life. He had early married Octavia, the daughter of Claudius, his adopted father; but afterward became enslaved by the charms of a mistress, Acte, a beautiful freedwoman, who was content to be merely the Emperor’s plaything. In the year 58, Poppæa Sabina took the place of Acte. The new favorite was not satisfied, however, to be merely the plaything of Nero; she was resolved to be his wife. With consummate skill she set herself at once to remove the obstacles that stood in her way. By playing upon the passions and fears of Nero she accomplished her diabolical purposes. She wrought him up to a passion of hatred against Agrippina, his mother, and she was murdered. The trusted advisers of the Emperor were one by one made way with. Octavia, his wife, daughter of Claudius, now long neglected, was divorced, banished, and barbarously murdered. Poppæa’s triumph was now complete. “She was formally married to Nero; her head appeared on the coins side by side with his; and her statue appeared in the public places of Rome.” Her career shows her to have been anything but a “dove in a vulture’s talons.” Poppæa died in the autumn of the year 65, just after the great conflagration, and a little before the great pestilence consequent upon it.