The first woman who took the place which Octavia never held in Nero's affections was the Greek freedwoman Acte. The wild young emperor would have divorced his wife and married the Greek forthwith, but he was still under the domination of the powerful Agrippina. This first thwarting of the imperial will was the beginning of Agrippina's downfall. It was not long before she and the young wife saw a fearful presage of their own fate when the young Britannicus fell dead upon the banquet floor, poisoned by the diabolical art of Nero's instrument, Locusta. Octavia, though so young, was not entirely ignorant as to what the perils of her situation demanded. She had received early lessons in a terrible school. Consequently, when Nero declared to the alarmed guests that her brother was habitually afflicted with the falling sickness, she disguised her sisterly grief and composedly retained her place at the banquet. But the time came when Agrippina had also fallen a victim to her son's inhumanity, and Nero, responsible to no human being, had become enamored by the more attractive fascinations of a more unprincipled woman than Acte. "Why does not Nero," the tyrant asks of himself, "banishing all fear, set about expediting his marriage with Poppæa? Why not put away his wife Octavia, although her conduct is that of a modest woman, since the name of her father and the affection of the people have made her an eyesore to him?" With Poppæa urging him on and the villainous Tigellinus exercising his diabolical ingenuity to find a plausible excuse, it was not long before the courage of Nero was equal to the audacious act of driving from the imperial palace the woman through connection with whom he had his right of tenure there. Octavia was divorced by process of law, under the allegation that she was barren. At first she was awarded the house of Burrhus and the estate of Plautus, whom Nero had recently put to death. The divorce being sought by her husband for no fault of hers, he was obliged, if the strict letter of the law had been observed, to give up with her the whole of her dowry; but for men like Nero, who execute the laws, a mere pretence of legality suffices. Poppæa had brazenly endeavored to trump up a far more serious charge against the woman she injured; but it could not be made to hold. She bribed one of Octavia's domestics to assert that her mistress had participated in an amour with Eucerus, an Alexandrian flute player; but this accusation was so preposterously inconsistent with Octavia's well-known character that, even though they tortured her servants, they could gain no evidence which they dared to set before the people in substantiation of the charge. There could be no stronger testimony to the amiability and lovableness of Octavia, as well as to the purity of her character, than the fidelity with which her servants defended her reputation from all aspersions, even while they were undergoing the most intense torture.