But if Agrippina would bear no daughter-in-law who was not virulently opposed to her son, she desired to be sent to Otho. She was ready to withdraw to any quarter of the earth, rather than behold the emperor's degradation." Otho, in order that he might be out of the way, had been appointed Governor of Lusitania. It was some time after the death of Agrippina before Octavia was removed, first by repudiation and then by death. We shall have occasion to notice the character of this estimable woman in a later chapter. In the meantime, the emperor did not have to wait wholly unrewarded by the favors of Poppæa. He was entirely under her influence; but the memory of the remorse which had seized him after the murder of his mother restrained him, for a while, from adding to that crime another of equal atrocity. Again, however, Poppæa cunningly worked upon his fears, insinuating that unless he reinstated Octavia, whom he hated, as empress, the people would give her another husband, whom they would make emperor. This sealed Octavia's doom; shortly afterward, her head was brought to Rome and laid at the feet of her infamous successor, Poppaea was at last the empress in name as well as in fact; and when she presented Nero with a daughter, he made a mockery of the title by naming ner, as well as the child, Augusta. But the little one soon died, and the Senate was obliged to console the father by decreeing that his infant daughter had become a goddess. All the historians agree that subsequent to his connection with Poppæa, Nero deteriorated in his character, or at least in his conduct. The influence of the woman seemed to bring out and encourage the worst that was in him. For Poppæa, however, there was compensation; her principal gain, in her own estimation, may perhaps be best typified by the palace which Nero built. She cared little for political power; imperial magnificence was the attraction that enticed her. Surely never did woman have her wish in this respect so completely gratified as did the wife of Nero! He built himself a house, having first destroyed many another in order to furnish a site. The author of _Rome of To-day and Yesterday_ says: "It was upon the palace for the emperor that Severus and Celer, the first architects ever mentioned by name in Roman history, lavished all the resources of his boundless wealth and their skill. It seems so extravagant to say that the Golden House extended over an area of nearly a square mile in the very midst of the city, that if there had not been left, from point to point, remains of it over a considerable part of this area, the statement of the old writers to that effect would not have seemed worthy of belief." By the Golden House is, of course, not meant one continuous building; but there was an enclosure by means of three colonnades, each a mile in length, and an entrance portico somewhat narrower on the side opposite the Forum. Within this enclosure