Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero

by James Romm

While rubbing out successors whom he feared and dreaded, Nero also caused the death of one he desperately wanted. Poppaea was pregnant in the summer of 65, perhaps with the son who would cement Nero’s rule. But just after the second Neronia, the princeps, riding high on a wave of acclaim for his singing, threw a tantrum at Poppaea. Suetonius says she had carped at him for coming home late from the chariot races—an endearingly domestic vignette. Whatever the cause of his rage, Nero kicked his beloved wife hard enough to cause internal bleeding and the death of both mother and fetus. Nero never fathered another child. He tried to wed Antonia, daughter of Claudius, but she would not have him, and he killed her for intransigence. Instead he married Statilia Messalina, a noblewoman in her early thirties, with whom he had already carried on an affair. But Statilia never became pregnant.