Poppaea Sabina 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 opera "Agrippina" of 1709, 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
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