It was rare for an imperial consort to come to other than a violent end; and Poppæa was no exception to the rule. Her death was the act, though unpremeditated, of her husband. One day, she found fault with him for returning later than she desired from a chariot drive. Angered by her upbraidings and brutal by nature, he kicked her, and, being in a condition of pregnancy at the time, she shortly afterward died of the blow. It is said that her body was not consumed by fire, as was the custom of the Romans, but embalmed in Jewish fashion and placed in the tomb of the Julian family. She was, however, given a splendid funeral; and there is no stronger witness to the terrible moral apathy which characterized the times than the fact that her murderous husband delivered on the occasion a laudatory oration. From the rostrum, he magnified "her beauty and her lot, in having been the mother of an infant enrolled among the gods." There being nothing else in her character to extol, he treated her gifts of fortune as having been so many virtues. It is impossible to doubt that the ancient historian is correct when he asserts that though the people were obliged to put on an appearance of mourning, they could but rejoice at the death of this woman, when they remembered her lewdness and her cruelty; and although, as Pliny tells us, all Arabia did not produce in a whole year as many spices as were consumed at the funeral of Poppæa, there was no incense, material or eulogistic, by which it was possible to overcome the evil odor of her life. The reign of Nero was typical of other ages that were to follow. The Roman people were to drink still deeper of the dregs of servility, and they were to become yet more morally apathetic, before they would awaken to better things. Poppæa was simply a woman of her time, and she was followed by generations of women, both of high and low degree, who were like-minded with herself. Imperial prostitutes and plebeian courtesans run riot through all the long drawn out decadence of the Roman Empire; but, although a veritable picture of the Roman woman could not be given without the inclusion of such types as those delineated in this and the preceding chapter, we will at least spare ourselves and the reader further recital of vice and crime by confining the exemplification to this one period. We have not refrained from including the worst features and employing the darkest colors that history warrants, in order that, to use the expression of Tacitus, we may not have to repeat instances of similar extravagance.