Death and Afterlife

Abstract This chapter discusses Poppaea’s death in the summer of 65, during her second pregnancy. The sources claim that Nero returned from his games and kicked her to death in a drunken rage after she nagged him. Nero sponsored an extravagant funeral and compelled the Senate to declare his dead wife a goddess, only the fourth woman to receive this honor. A recently discovered short poem provides further evidence for Poppaea’s divinization and its reception in the eastern Roman empire. Nero furthermore attempted to replace his lost wife with living substitutes, first actresses who wore Poppaea masks, and then by his castrated freedman Sporus/“Poppaea.” As emperor, Poppaea’s former husband Otho compelled the Senate to order the restoration of Poppaea’s images. Vespasian actively sought to discredit his predecessor Nero, however. Poppaea’s images presumably disappeared, and the literary sources that are largely hostile to her began to be composed.