Sexuality in ancient Rome preoccupied with the risk of it. Cicero offers no examples in either the gossipy parts of his letters or in court cases where he attacks the reputation of a woman: he accuses Clodia of incest and of running her house like a brothel, but not of sleeping with slaves. Not even Messalina or Sallust's Sempronia is accused in the hostile sources of having sex with a slave. Sex with a slave was among the trumped-up charges against Claudia Octavia, the wife of Nero, when Poppaea Sabina campaigned to take her place, but mostly it was a matter for innuendo or
Poppaea Sabina the Elder Sabina and Asiaticus had been lovers, she directed her creature Suilius to accuse Asiaticus of treason and the pair of adultery. Asiaticus was tried in the emperor's private chambers, but instead of a guilty plea was allowed to commit suicide. Meanwhile, Messalina had agents harass Poppaea Sabina with threats of prison which led to her own suicide. Poppaea Sabina the Elder Poppaea Sabina the Elder was an aristocratic woman who lived during the Principate. During her lifetime she was famed for her beauty, but as Ronald Syme writes, her "fame and follies have been all but extinguished by her homonymous