Corrupted as that age was, Poppaea was more corrupt.  As soon as she observed the strong impression she had made on Nero, she conceived the plan of becoming his wife; her beauty would then be admired by the whole Empire, would be surrounded by a luxury for which the means of her husband were not sufficient, and with which no other Roman dame could compete.  There was one obstacle—­Agrippina.

Agrippina protected Octavia, a true Roman woman, simple and honest:  Agrippina would never consent to this absolutely unjustifiable divorce.  To force Nero to a decisive move against his mother, Poppaea had her husband sent on some mission to Lusitania and became the mistress of the Emperor.  From that point the situation changed.  Dominated by Poppaea’s influence, Nero found the courage to force Agrippina to abandon his palace and seek refuge in Antony’s house; he took from her the privilege of Praetorian guards, which he himself had granted her; he reduced to a minimum the number and time of his visits, and carefully avoided being left alone with her.  Agrippina’s influence, to the general satisfaction, rapidly declined, while Nero gained every day in popularity.  Agrippina, however, was too energetic a woman peaceably to resign herself:  she began a violent campaign against the two adulterers, which deeply troubled the public.  In Rome, where Augustus had promulgated his stern law against adultery; in Rome, where Augustus himself had been obliged to submit to his own law, when he exiled his daughter and his grand-daughter and almost exterminated the whole family; in Rome, a young man of twenty-two dared all but officially introduce adultery and polygamy into the Palatine!  In her struggle against Nero, Agrippina once more stood on tradition:  and Nero was afraid.

Poppaea was probably the one who suggested to Nero the idea of killing Agrippina.  The idea had been, as it were, floating in the air for a long time, because Agrippina was embarrassing to many persons and interests.  It was chiefly the party that wanted to sack the imperial budget, to introduce the finance of great expenditure, which could not tolerate this clever and energetic woman, who was so faithful to the great traditions of Augustus and Tiberius, who could neither be frightened nor corrupted.  One should not consider the assassination of Agrippina as a simple personal crime of Nero, as the result of his and Poppaea’s quarrels with his mother.  This crime, besides personal causes, had a political origin.  Nero would never have dared commit such a misdeed, in the eyes of the Roman almost a sacrilege, if he had not been encouraged by Agrippina’s unpopularity, by the violent hatred of so many against his mother.

Nero hesitated long; he decided only when his freedman, Anicetus, the commander of the fleet, proposed a plan that seemed to guarantee secrecy for the crime:  to have a ship built with a concealed trap.  It was the spring of the year 59 A.D.; the Court had moved to Baiae, on the Gulf of Naples.  If Nero succeeded in getting his mother on board the vessel, Anicetus would take upon himself the task of burying quickly below the waves the secret of her death; the people who hated Agrippina would easily be satisfied with the explanations to be given them.