Like any woman, Poppea was a bad influence in Tacitus’s eyes and he saw her as encouraging Nero’s worst excesses and impulses. That bad times were coming is obvious to Tacitus, who recounts the most terrifying portent so far. Opposite the Senate house there stood an 830-year-old tree, the tree which was believed to have sheltered Romulus and Remus as infants suckling on the wolf. It was a symbol of the city’s foundation, of its divine roots and its antiquity. As 58CE came to an end, that tree withered and died.
