Poppaea Sabina

Poppaea Sabina (* approx. 30/32 AD in Pompeii ; † summer 65 AD in Rome ) was the second wife of the Roman emperor Nero .

origin

Poppaea Sabina, born in Pompeii , was the daughter of Titus Ollius from Picenum and the older Poppaea Sabina . Her father was friends with the Praetorian Prefect Seian , who for years was the most powerful man in the empire under Emperor Tiberius . Sei's fall in 31 also meant the downfall for Titus Ollius, who never got beyond the office of quaestor .

His daughter, who until then had been called Ollia, later took the name of her maternal grandfather - Gaius Poppaeus Sabinus , consul of the year 9 and 26, awarded the triumphant insignia for a victory over the Thracians .

Marriages

First marriage: Rufrius Crispinus

Poppaea first married the Praetorian Prefect Rufrius Crispinus from a knightly estate. In 47 the two-time consul Valerius Asiaticus was accused by the notorious Suillius , on accusation of Empress Messalina , of having once committed adultery with Poppaea's mother. Claudius sent his Praetorian Prefect Rufrius, the accused's son-in-law, to Baiae to arrest the accused and bring him to Rome. Asiaticus was forced to commit suicide, Poppaea's mother of Messalina was also threatened to commit suicide, all of this according to Tacitus without the knowledge of the emperor. Rufrius Crispinus was removed four years later by Nero's mother Agrippina of his position as Praetorian prefect and replaced by Sextus Afranius Burrus , because she believed the prefect to be "devoted to the memory of Messalina and their children" .

In 58 Poppaea divorced Rufrius Crispinus. Rufrius Crispinus was later captured in 65 as part of the Pisonian conspiracy and sent into exile, Tacitus also suggesting Nero's personal motives for this banishment. A son from this marriage, who was probably born around the year 51 (or a little later) and whose name was Rufrius Crispinus, was drowned as a boy by Nero.

Second marriage: Otho

According to Tacitus, Poppaea started a relationship with Otho , Nero's friend and later emperor, during her marriage to Crispus , and married him after the divorce from Crispus.

The future emperor Otho was so reckless as to extol the virtues of his wife over Nero. Poppaea, too, set about arousing the prince's desires through skillful seduction and refusal. Eventually Otho was excluded from the confidentiality and sent by Nero to Lusitania (Portugal) as governor far from Rome .

The story of Plutarch is transmitted somewhat differently . Here Otho is originally just a straw man for Nero who fell in love with Poppaea. But since he was still married to Octavia and also feared his mother, he sent Otho ahead. But Otho did not want to share Poppaea with Nero after the wedding; Poppaea also played her own game, was not averse to Nero as a lover, but did not want to get involved in a wedding with Nero. Contrary to all expectations, Otho did not die in this network of relationships, but was sent to Lusitania on Seneca's advice .

Third marriage: Nero

In the year 59 Nero glowed in "daily more violent love for Poppaea" , which however "as long as Agrippina lived, could not hope for marriage with him and his divorce from Octavia." So Poppaea drove Nero with mockery to become independent from his mother and put Nero under pressure, in agreement with the court. What nobody had expected: Nero himself apparently saw no other way to free himself from his mother than to have her murdered in March 59.

It was only after the influential advisors Burrus and Seneca were sidelined in April 62 that Poppaea finally got Nero to divorce Octavia on the pretext that she was sterile. Nero now officially allied himself with Poppaea, whom Octavia had been accused of being a slave to the Alexandrian flute player Eucerus. Tigellinus acted as a willing torturer. The marriage with Nero was officially divorced, Octavia later exiled to Campania. But the negative reaction of the people to this measure seems to have been so urgent that Nero brought Octavia back as his wife.

However, Poppaea, who had since noticed her pregnancy, got Nero to accuse Octavia of another adultery. Octavia was exiled to the Pontine island of Pandateria and murdered there on June 7th, 62. "Her head was cut off and taken into town and Poppaea looked at it."

Twelve days after the divorce from Octavia, Nero married Poppaea.

The daughter: Claudia Augusta

Probably on January 21, 63 , a daughter was born in Antium , the birthplace of Nero, named by Nero Augusta , after he had already given Poppaea the title Augusta . To celebrate, prayers of thanks were said, a temple was praised for fertility, a fighting game based on the actual celebration and other festivities were decided. But the daughter died in the fourth month of life.

“Now the flatteries rose again from those who applied for the honor of a goddess, an offering table, a temple and a priest for her. Nero himself behaved as in joy, so in sorrow without measure. "

personality

Appearance

Poppaea was - like her mother - one of the most beautiful women of her time. According to Pliny, her hair was red-gold and her skin was white, which she tried to promote by bathing in donkey milk.

Due to the damnatio memoriae that began after Nero's death, only a few statues or portraits of Poppaea have survived , which can often only be assigned to her with certainty. Her image has been passed down mainly through coins.

Education and language

Poppaea apparently had a very good education for a woman of the time. A contemporary epigram even praises her wisdom (“sophia”) . That this cannot be fully booked as the usual flattery towards an empress is shown by the judgment of Tacitus, who otherwise reports little flattery about Poppaea, but allows her a friendly speech and a not uneducated mind.

Tacitus, who gives us her way of speaking very vividly, particularly emphasizes her flirtatious, questionable irony. He quotes her verbatim, as if he had known the letters she wrote to Nero in the years 59 and 62:

“Because why would the marriage with her be postponed? Certainly their figure and their ancestors adorned with triumph are displeasing, or is their fertility and straightforward sense feared? "

“By the way, what is your crime? How did she offend anyone? Is it because she would give the Caesar Penates a real offspring? Would the Roman people prefer that the offspring of an Egyptian flute player achieve imperial sovereignty? "

Character and habits

Poppaea's reputation was determined by voluptuousness and calculation, she appeared with a half-veiled face, "so as not to give full satisfaction to the eye," perhaps just to maintain the elegant paleness for which she was famous. She took no account of her reputation and pursued her own advantage when she used her sensuality. She devoted the greatest effort to her beauty alone and expressed the wish “to be allowed to die before it withers”.

Sometimes she flattered Nero and praised his beauty, sometimes she reproached him, called him “underage” and “unfree”. Their anger and cruelty were feared. Her death was "joyful to all who remembered her unchastity and cruelty."

Wealth, luxury and cosmetic refinements

Tacitus knew of her fortune that it matched the fame of her gens . Among other things, she used it to give her already luxurious body care a special accent. So she usually always carried 500 female donkeys who had recently been foaled and bathed in their milk to give the skin paleness and firmness. But she had gold shackles put on the donkeys. The satirist Juvenal made fun of this luxurious fad of the Poppaea in his famous women's satire.

Even Cassius Dio denounced their extravagant expenses:

“The unprecedented luxury that this woman allowed herself should be summarized in a nutshell: She had the mules that pulled her cart put on gold-plated shoes and five hundred female donkeys, who had just foaled, milked daily to bathe in their milk to be able to. "

religiousness

Astrologers

Although quite a few Romans have already been condemned and banished for astrology, Poppaea kept a whole staff of astrologers and their inclination for astronomy was well known and tolerated. The astronomer and epigrammatist Leonidas of Alexandria gave Poppaea a celestial globe for her birthday:

“For your birthday take this image of the heavens as a gift

graciously from the son of the Nile, your Leonidas,

Empress, wife of Zeus, Poppaea! Rejoice in the globe,

that you deserve through your husband and through your knowledge. "

Poppaea and the Jews

The Jew Flavius ​​Josephus reports in his Jewish Antiquities that Agrippa II had erected a tall building in Jerusalem in the year 62 from which the temple could be observed. The “nobles” of the city now built a wall that prevented any insight, but also barred control from the Romans. When the governor Festus wanted to have the wall torn down, the noble citizens obtained permission to send a delegation to Rome to present the matter to Nero. The result of the granted audience was the concession to be allowed to keep the building, which Nero allowed for the sake of Poppaea, because according to Josephus she was "a godly woman" who therefore stood up for the Jews. However, Poppaea retained high priest Ishmael and the temple treasurer Helkias from the delegation as hostages.

In his autobiography, which was written a little later, Josephus reports on a personal meeting with Poppaea, at which he obtained the release of some imprisoned priests and received generous gifts from her.

Death and Damnatio memoriae

The ancient records agree that Poppaea died of a kick Nero during the preferred Neronia in the summer of 65. Nero had kicked the pregnant woman - probably in an argument after Poppaea had reproached him - even if there were rumors of a poisoning.

Contrary to tradition, Poppaea's corpse was not cremated but embalmed and buried in the Augustus mausoleum . Nero gave the funeral oration during the funeral service and praised her beauty and recalled that she was "the mother of a divine child"

Nero tried to find a replacement after the loss of Poppaea, first taking in a woman who was like her, later a freed man named Sporus , whom he had neutered and kept in place of his deceased wife. After Cassius Dio, Sporus was called "Sabina" by Nero. Sporus wore the regalia of the empresses. There was even a formal marriage, which Tigellinus , the Praetorian prefect of Nero, arranged.

After Nero's death in June 68, the memory of Poppaea also fell to the damnatio memoriae . But at the beginning of 69, Otho , who had just been proclaimed emperor, "not even now forgetting his love affairs, had the statues of Poppaea erected again by means of a senate resolution."

Artistic designs

• In the tragedy Octavia , supposedly written by Seneca, but probably by a student of the Stoic, her beauty is emphasized, Poppaea herself appears as the role.

• Poppaea's rise to empress inspired Claudio Monteverdi to write the opera L'incoronazione di Poppea .

• Poppaea appears in two of Handel's operas, Agrippina and Nero , the music of which has not survived.

• In the monumental film Quo Vadis? the actress Patricia Laffan plays a very calculating poppaea who uses Nero's mental insecurity to promote her own ambitions. Contrary to history, she does not die pregnant; rather, when a revolt broke out at the end of the film due to the riot over the murder of the Christians, she is strangled by Nero, who blames her for the loss of his rule.

literature

• Werner Eck : The Julian-Claudian family. Women next to Caligula, Claudius and Nero . In: Hildegard Temporini-Countess Vitzthum (Hrsg.): Die Kaiserinnen Roms. From Livia to Theodora . CH Beck, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-406-49513-3 , p. 103-163, especially 156-163 .
• Bettina Goffin: Poppaea [2]. In: The New Pauly (DNP). Volume 10, Metzler, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-476-01480-0 , column 149 f.
• Franz Holztrattner: Poppaea Neronis potens. The figure of Poppaea Sabina in the Nero books of Tacitus (=  Graz contributions . Supplementary volume 6). Horn, Graz 1995.
• Linda Simonis, Ramona Schermer: Poppaea. In: Peter von Möllendorff , Annette Simonis, Linda Simonis (ed.): Historical figures of antiquity. Reception in literature, art and music (= Der Neue Pauly . Supplements. Volume 8). Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2013, ISBN 978-3-476-02468-8 , Sp. 781-788.
• Gerhard Winkler : Poppaeus 4. In: The Little Pauly (KlP). Volume 4, Stuttgart 1972, column 1055.

Web links

Commons : Poppaea Sabina  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Remarks

1. ↑ The Poppaei family owned the so-called Casa del Menandro in Pompeii (I, 10, 4), named after a portrait of the Greek comedy poet Menander , where 115-piece silver cutlery was also found around 1930 (now in the museum in Naples ). The villa of Oplontis , 3 km from Pompeii and by the sea, also has a close connection to Poppaea . Poppaea also supported their birthplace, Pompeii, in attempting to be recognized as a colony .
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Tacitus , Annalen 13, 45.
3. ↑ ^{a b} Suetonius , Nero 35, 1.
4. ^ Tacitus, Annals 4, 46.
5. ↑ ^{a b} Tacitus, Annalen 11, 1f.
6. ↑ Tacitus, Annals 11, 2.
7. ^ Tacitus, Annals 12, 42.
8. ↑ Tacitus, Annalen 15, 71.
9. ^ Suetonius, Nero 35.
10. ↑ Tacitus, Annalen 13, 45.
11. ↑ Tacitus, Annalen 13, 46.
12. ↑ Plutarch, Galba 19 f .; Seneca had already taken an active part in Nero's love life through the introduction of the Claudia Acte (see Tacitus, Annalen 14, 2).
13. ^ Tacitus, Annals 14, 1.
14. ↑ ^{a b} Tacitus, Annalen 14, 59.
15. ↑ Tacitus, Annalen 14, 59 f.
16. ↑ Tacitus, Annalen 14, 61. Since the daughter was born on January 21, 63, the conception should have taken place 9 months earlier, around April 21. Poppaea should therefore have noticed her pregnancy at the beginning of May at the earliest.
17. ↑ Suetonius, Nero 35, 3.
18. ↑ The Arval Brothers kept their vows for a happy birth that day: CIL 6, 2043 .
19. ↑ ^{a b} Tacitus, Annalen 15, 23.
20. ↑ Tacitus, Annalen 15, 23; see. Suetonius, Nero 35: "From her [Poppaea] he [Nero] had a daughter, Claudia Augusta, who he lost again when she was a child."
21. ↑ Tacitus, Annalen 13, 45; see. Tacitus, Annals 16, 6: [Nero] laudavitque ipse apud rostra formam eius .
22. ↑ Pliny, Naturalis historia 37, 50.
23. ↑ Pliny, Naturalis historia 11, 238; see. 28, 183.
24. ↑ Anthologia Palatina 9, 355.
25. ↑ Tacitus, Annalen 13, 45.
26. ↑ There can be "no doubt that Tacitus had a large number of primary documentary sources at his disposal: minutes, reports, edicts, court judgments, decisions, speeches, letters (cf. Tac. Hist. 4,25,2 [...]), Inscriptions and […] messages from the acta diurna. ”(Stefan Schmal: Tacitus (Hildesheim, 2005) p. 110.)
27. ^ Tacitus, Annals 14, 1.
28. ↑ quod alioquin suum delictum? quam cuiusquam openensionem? an quia veram progeniem penatibus Caesarum datura sit? malle populum Romanum tibicinis Aegyptii subolem imperatorio fastigio induci? (Tacitus, Annals 14, 61).
29. ↑ Tacitus, Annalen 13, 45.
30. ↑ Cassius Dio 62, 28, 1.
31. ↑ Tacitus, Annalen 13, 46.
32. ^ Tacitus, Annals 14, 1.
33. ↑ Tacitus, Annalen 14, 61.
34. ↑ Mortem Poppaeae […] recordantibus laetam ob impudicitiam eius saevitiamque (Tacitus, Annalen 16, 7; German transl . W. Boetticher / A. Schaefer)
35. ↑ Tacitus, Annalen 13, 45.
36. ↑ Pliny, Naturalis historia 11, 238; 28, 183.
37. ↑ Pliny, Naturalis historia 33, 140.
38. ↑ Juvenal 6, 462-469; The Scholiast on Juvenal 6, 462 also comments on donkey milk baths (cf. Edward Champlin: Nero. Harvard 2005, p. 297, note 46).
39. ↑ Cassius Dio 62, 28, 1; Translation: Otto Veh (Zurich / Munich 1987).
40. ↑ For example, in the year 49 Lollia was banned because of her “dealing with Chaldeans and magicians” (Tacitus, Annalen 12, 22). In the year 52 the astrologers were "banished from all Italy and their followers punished" by Claudius (Cass. Dio 61.33.3b)
41. ^ Tacitus, Histories 1, 22.
42. ↑ Anthologia Palatina 9, 355; Dietrich Ebener (Ed.): The Greek Anthology , Vol. II (Berlin 1991) 355. “Yet she was as intelligent as she was beautyful. The poet Leonides of Alexandria gave to Poppaea Augusta a globe of the heavens as a birthday present because, as he says in the accompanying epigram, she enjoyed gifts worthy of her marriage-bed (as the 'wife of Zeus') and of her learning (sophie). "(Edward Champlin, Nero , Harvard 2005, p. 104.)
43. ^ Flavius ​​Josephus, Jüdische Antiquities 20, 8, 11.
44. ↑ Flavius ​​Josephus, Vita 3.
45. ↑ Tacitus, Annals 16, 6; Suetonius, Nero 35; Cassius Dio 62, 28, 1.
46. ^ Tacitus. Annals 16: 6-7.
47. ↑ Greek sporos = "seed", "offspring".
48. ^ Cassius Dio 62, 28, 2.
49. ↑ Cassius Dio 63, 12, 3; 13, 1.
50. ^ Suetonius, Nero 28; see. Cassius Dio 63, 12, 2: "In addition to other titulatures, the latter [= Sporus!] Was referred to as mistress, empress and mistress."
51. ↑ Cassius Dio 63, 13, 1; this corresponds to the note in Suetonius that Nero took Sporus to Greece as empress in 67 (Suetonius, Nero 28). In any case, the annals of Tacitus, which end in 66, do not yet mention Sporus. Sporus was his companion when Nero died (Suetonius, Nero 49).
52. ↑ Tacitus, Historien 1, 78; (German translation W. Bötticher / A. Schaefer)
53. ↑ Seneca, Octavia 199-200; 544-546