Poppæa Sabīna

, a celebrated Roman matron, daughter of Titus Ollius. She married a Roman knight called Rufus Crispin us, by whom she had a son. Her personal charms, and the elegance of her figure, captivated Otho, who was then one of Nero’s favourites. He carried her away and married her; but Nero, who had seen her, and had often heard her accomplishments extolled, soon deprived him of her company, and sent him out of Italy, on pretence of presiding over one of the Roman provinces. After he had taken this step, Nero repudiated his wife Octavia, on pretence of barrenne , and married Poppæa. The cruelty and avarice of the emperor did not long permit Poppæa to share the imperial dignity, and though she had already made him father of a son, he began to despise her, and even to use her with barbarity. She died of a blow which she received from his foot when many months advanced in her pregnancy, about the 65th year of the christian era. Her funeral was performed with great pomp and solemnity, and statues were raised to her memory. It is said that she was so anxious to preserve her beauty and the elegance of her person, that 500 a es were kept on purpose to afford her milk in which she used daily to bathe. Even in her banishment she was attended by 50 of these animals for the same purpose, and from their milk she invented a kind of ointment or pomatum, to preserve beauty, called poppæanum from her. Pliny , bk. 11 , ch. 41 .— Dio Ca is us , bk. 65 .— Juvenal , satire 6.— Suet on i us , Nero & Otho .— Tacitus , ♦ Annals , bks. 13 & 14.――A beautiful woman at the court of Nero. She was mother to the preceding. Tacitus , Annals , bk. 11 , ch. 1 , . ♦ Book title omitted in text