Poppaea Sabina Rome and Nero's new wife. Otho was ordered away to be governor of Lusitania. (A decade later, he became emperor briefly after Nero's death in succession to Galba.) Suetonius places these events after 59. According to Tacitus, Poppaea was ambitious and ruthless. He reports that Poppaea married Otho to get close to Nero, and then in turn, became Nero's favorite mistress. Tacitus claims that Poppaea was the reason that Nero murdered his mother. Poppaea induced Nero to murder Agrippina in 59 so that she could marry him. Modern scholars, though, question the reliability of this story as Nero did not
Mnester performance of “the same tragedy which the tragedian Neoptolemus had produced at the games during which King Philip of Macedon was killed.” During the reign of Caligula’s successor Claudius, Mnester retained the favor of the imperial court. Mnester was one of the lovers of Poppaea Sabina the Elder (mother of the empress Poppaea), and subsequently became the lover of Empress Messalina who was the wife of Claudius. Messalina had a statue of Mnester cast in bronze. At first he rejected Messalina's advances, but then she persuaded her way in to his heart. Mnester became her lover after Messalina convinced her