We must work through layers of fantasy in order to uncover the life of Poppaea Sabina (ca. 30–65 ce). As the ancient sources tell it, Poppaea pushed the young emperor Nero to murder his mother, execute his wife Octavia, marry her, and make her his empress—and then, a few years later, kick her to death in a drunken rage. Her brief marriage to the emperor Nero occasioned political, religious, and social innovation. Nero was the first emperor to represent his wife as a near-equal on his coinage, and the couple was also celebrated by a group of claquers called “Neropoppaeans.” Their daughter Claudia would be the first child to receive posthumous divine honors. Poppaea also received a unique form of posthumous commemoration. Nero castrated Sporus, one of his male slaves, and addressed them thereafter as “Poppaea”. For many scholars and creative artists, however, Poppaea’s brief life also epitomizes the scandal of Nero’s reign. Gossip about her began from the moment she appeared in the emperor’s court. Her scandalous parentage, affair with the emperor, implication in a murder plot, brief marriage, supposed interest in Judaism, death at her husband’s hands, and posthumous divinization presented an unforgettable narrative template. Poppaea, Nero, and Octavia recur throughout plays, operas, novels, and movies over the next two millenia. This book reads the ancient sources critically, with awareness of the ideological priorities that may have led to these distortions. The concluding chapters consider the numerous re-imaginings of Poppaea’s life from antiquity through the present day.