reportedly became his lover, and, in that dual role,  she developed into something of a nag. Nero did not take nagging well. According to Suetonius, Nero deprived his mother–lover of all honors and power before booting her out of the palace. After she moved, he sent people to her house to torment her with lawsuits and scream insults into her windows.
            Then he set out to kill her.
            Three times he tried poison, but she always seemed to have the antidote. He rigged her bedroom ceiling so it would collapse while she was sleeping, but someone warned her in advance. One time he had a boat sabotaged so it would fall to pieces and sink while Agrippina was sailing on it. Sure this plan would work, Nero happily accompanied his unsuspecting mother down the gangplank —kissing her breasts as she stepped aboard. She swam away from the wreck. Finally, he had her stabbed to death and exulted over her corpse.
            Nero’s other relationships fared no better than the one with mom. He tried strangling his first wife, Octavia, on several occasions because she bored him. Finally he simply divorced her and later had her executed. Twelve days after the divorce he married Poppaea Salina, the wealthy wife of a Roman knight whom Nero had to kill to make room for himself. Though he doted on her, Poppaea also proved to be a pest. When she had the temerity to complain when he returned home late from the races, the emperor kicked her to death. She was pregnant. Considering his track record, Claudius’s daughter Antonia refused an invitation to become the next Mrs. Nero. She was charged with attempted rebellion and summarily executed.
            Women! Who needed them anyway, especially when young men could fill the void quite nicely. Nero at one point had an adolescent boy castrated so he could take him as his wife. There was a wedding ceremony, complete with dowry and bridal veil. Then the emperor began squiring the unfortunate lad around Rome in the late empress’s clothes. Both men and women were lucky enough to participate in a novel game Nero invented. According to the rules, the frisky emperor would dress up in the skin of a wild animal and pace around in his cage. When the cage door was opened, he would bound out, run up to his playmates, who were tied up to stakes, and attack their private parts.
            Eventually, even Rome’s notoriously licentious citizenry had enough of Nero’s nonsense. He was hounded into suicide. Savage and nutty as he was, though, this emperor deserves a little credit. He did banish all mimes from Rome.