Sporus "Mistress". Suetonius quotes one Roman who lived around this time who remarked that the world would have been better off if Nero's father Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus had married someone more like the castrated boy. Suetonius places his account of the Nero–Sporus relationship in his scandalous accounts of Nero's sexual aberrations, between his raping a vestal virgin and committing incest with his mother. Some think that Nero used his marriage to Sporus to assuage the feelings of guilt he felt for kicking his pregnant wife Poppaea to death. Dio Cassius, in a more detailed account, writes that Sporus bore an uncanny
Poppaea (gens) evidence of the Poppaei prior to the first century, but from inscriptions the family seems to have been concentrated in Campania. The surname "Sabinus" suggests that they claimed Sabine ancestry. The region of Campania where the greatest number of Poppaei are found was associated with the Samnites, an Oscan-speaking people who also claimed Sabine descent. The chief praenomina of the Poppaei were "Gaius" and "Quintus". A few of the family used other names, such as "Publius, Lucius, Sextus", and "Titus". All of these were common names throughout Roman history. Poppaea (gens) The gens Poppaea was a minor plebeian family at