Poppaea was already married, divorced, and remarried when Nero fell for her, and she had a young son from her first marriage. It seems that Otho, her second husband and Nero’s close friend, first brought Poppaea and the emperor together, though just how is unclear. Tacitus gives two different reports, one making Otho the instigator of the affair—he boasted of Poppaea’s beauty so ardently that Nero had to see for himself—the other suggesting that Nero wanted Poppaea all along and got Otho to marry her as a cover. Whatever the circumstances, Otho ended up far from Rome, dispatched to a
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