Неронның екінші әйелі: Поппея Сабинаның өмірі мен тағдыры

Second wife of Emperor Nero

Poppaea Sabina (30 AD – 65 AD), also known as Ollia, was a Roman empress as the second wife of the emperor Nero. She had also been wife to the future emperor Otho. The historians of antiquity describe her as a beautiful woman who used intrigues to become empress. The large Villa Poppaea at Oplontis near Pompeii bears her name because of the archaeological finds there. It has been largely excavated and can be visited today.

Poppaea Sabina the Younger was born in Pompeii in AD 30 as the daughter of Titus Ollius and Poppaea Sabina the Elder. At birth and for most of her childhood she went by her proper patronymic nomen "Ollia", belonging to women of her father's gens, the Ollii, but at some point, probably before her first marriage, decided to start going by her mother's name instead, potentially due to her father's disgrace and suicide. It is very likely that Poppaea's family came from Pompeii, and the common belief is that they might have been the owners of the Casa del Menandro (a house in Pompeii named for the painting of the 4th century BC playwright Menander that is found there). Most evidence suggesting Poppaea's Pompeiian origins comes from the 20th century excavations of a town that was destroyed in the Eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79. For instance, legal documents found during excavations in nearby Herculaneum described her as being the owner of a brick or tile work business in the Pompeii area. In particular, the sumptuous Villa Poppaea at Oplontis near Herculaneum is thought to have been her main residence outside Rome.

Titus Ollius was a quaestor in the reign of the Emperor Tiberius. Ollius' friendship with the infamous praetorian prefect Lucius Aelius Sejanus ruined him before gaining public office. Titus Ollius was from Picenum (modern Marche and Abruzzo, Italy) and he was an unknown minor character in imperial politics. Titus Ollius died in 31AD. Poppaea Sabina the Elder, her mother, was a distinguished woman, whom Tacitus praises as wealthy and "the loveliest woman of her day". In 47 AD, she committed suicide as an innocent victim of the intrigues of the Roman Empress Valeria Messalina, having been charged with committing adultery with former consul Decimus Valerius Asiaticus. The father of Poppaea Sabina the Elder was Gaius Poppaeus Sabinus. This man of humble birth was consul in 9 AD and was the governor of Moesia from 12–35 AD.

Poppaea's first marriage was to Rufrius Crispinus, a man of equestrian rank. They married in 44 AD, when Poppaea was 14 years old. He was the leader of the Praetorian Guard during the first 10 years of the reign of the Emperor Claudius until 51 AD, when Claudius' new wife, Agrippina the Younger, removed him from this position. Agrippina regarded him as loyal to the deceased Messalina's memory and replaced him with Sextus Afranius Burrus. Later, under Nero, he was executed. During their marriage, Poppaea gave birth to his son, a younger Rufrius Crispinus, who, after her death, would be drowned by Nero while on a fishing trip.

Poppaea then married Otho, a good friend of the new Emperor Nero who was seven years younger than she was. According to Tacitus, Poppaea married Otho only to get close to Nero. Nero fell in love with Poppaea, and she became his mistress. Poppaea later divorced Otho and focused her attentions solely on becoming Nero's new wife. Otho was ordered away to be governor of Lusitania. (A decade later, after Nero's death, Otho became emperor, in succession to Galba.) Sources differ on when Poppaea divorced Otho: Tacitus dates the divorce to 58 AD, Suetonius dates it to after 59 AD.

Tacitus depicts Poppaea as inducing Nero to murder his mother, Agrippina in 59 AD so that she could marry him. Modern scholars, however, question the reliability of this story as Nero did not marry Poppaea until 62 AD and point to Suetonius's dating of the divorce from Otho. However, in 64, Poppaea secured the position of procurator of Judaea for Gessius Florus, her friend's husband, who was harmful to the Jews. Tacitus, on the other hand, places her death after the Quinquennial Neronia (in 65 AD) and claims Nero's kick was a "casual outburst". Tacitus also mentions that some writers claimed Nero poisoned her, though Tacitus does not believe them. Modern historians, though, keep in mind Suetonius's, Tacitus's, and Cassius Dio's severe biases against Nero, and hence recognize that Poppaea may have died due to complications of miscarriage or childbirth. Furthermore, a Greek poem encrypted on a frayed piece of papyrus reads that a deified Poppaea "made a loving farewell speech to Nero, before [ascending] off to heaven on a chariot driven by a goddess", indicating her death was not caused by an act of violence of Nero's. When Poppaea died in 65, Nero went into deep mourning. Per the Roman imperial tradition, Poppaea was given a state funeral. In a departure from this cultural norm, however, she was not only embalmed, but also given divine honours alongside her daughter Claudia Augusta. Tacitus writes that Poppaea was embalmed by having her body filled with various herbs and spices and was buried in the Tomb of the Julii, but her actual burial spot is unknown. Nero supposedly burned a year's worth of Arabia's incense production at her funeral. At the beginning of 66 AD, Nero married Statilia Messalina. After that, in 67 AD, Nero castrated and married a young freedman named Sporus. According to Cassius Dio, Sporus bore an uncanny resemblance to Poppaea, and Nero even called him by his dead wife's name.

Fifteen centuries after her death, Poppaea was depicted in Claudio Monteverdi's last opera, L'incoronazione di Poppea (The coronation of Poppaea) in 1642. Her story clearly was chosen to appeal to the titillation favoured in the nascent culture of the Venetian public opera theaters, and its prologue immediately explains that it is not a drama that promotes the triumph of virtue. Poppaea is portrayed as cynically plotting to become empress of Rome by manipulating the emperor Nero into marrying her, and her machinations include the execution of Seneca the Younger, who opposes her plans, which are successful at the end of the drama. Poppaea is a principal character also in Handel's 1709 opera Agrippina, but as a victim, not a perpetrator, of deceit and manipulation. Here the schemer is Agrippina, Nero's mother, intent on promoting her son's claim to the throne. Poppaea, the ingenue, is portrayed as the object of desire of Claudius, Nero, and Otho, each of whom served for a time as Roman Emperor, whose rivalries Agrippina attempts to leverage to her advantage. Once Poppaea sees through Agrippina's deceit, she responds in kind, but only in order to be united with Otho, portrayed as her one true love.

The Gothic metal band Theatre of Tragedy wrote a song titled "Poppæa", inspired by her story, on their myth based album Aégis.

Minaud, Gérard, Les vies de 12 femmes d’empereur romain Devoirs, Intrigues & Voluptés , Paris, L’Harmattan, 2012, ch. 4, La vie de Poppée, femme de Néron, p. 97 120. Donato, Giuseppe and Monique Seefried (1989). The Fragrant Past: Perfumes of Cleopatra and Julius Caesar. Emory University Museum of Art and Archaeology, Atlanta.