Poppaea Sabina initially dismissed to Campania, coincidentally the same general geographic area that Pompeii, Poppaea's place of birth, is located. She was then imprisoned on the island of Pandateria (modern Ventotene), a common place of banishment for members of the imperial family who fell from favor because of a charge of adultery. During his eight-year marriage to Claudia Octavia, Nero produced no children, and in AD 62, Poppaea became pregnant. When this happened, Nero divorced Octavia, claimed she was barren, and married Poppaea 12 days after the divorce. The Jewish historian Josephus makes questionable claims of a very different Poppaea. He calls
Poppaea Sabina the Elder 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 daughter", Poppaea Sabina the Younger. She met her end as a victim of the empress Valeria Messalina, wife of Claudius. Poppaea Sabina was the daughter of Gaius Poppaeus Sabinus, "homo novus" and consul of AD 9. She had been the wife of Titus Ollius, who was a friend of the prefect of the Praetorian Guard Sejanus and