Imagine, for a moment, that you could travel back in time and give your sixteen-year-old self the powers of a god. Imagine placing the lives and fates of millions into your trembling teenage hands. Would the result be a happier world, a utopia? Or would it lead to catastrophe for everyone involved, including your younger self?
In October 54 AD, the Roman Empire made this thought experiment a terrifying reality by elevating an emotionally unstable 16-year-old boy to the position of emperor. That boy’s name? Nero. The last of the Julio-Claudian emperors, Nero transformed the greatest empire the world had ever seen into a playground for his darkest desires. He had his own mother murdered, ordered Christians burned alive for entertainment, and indulged in behaviors so shocking they’d make anyone blush. Yet he died beloved by Rome’s commoners, convinced he was the greatest artist who had ever lived.
Join us today as we investigate the life of the most infamous Roman of all.
Nero, born Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus on December 15, 37 AD, was a member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, the family that had been ruling Rome for decades. His mother, Julia Agrippina, commonly known as Agrippina the Younger, was a direct descendant of the first emperor, Augustus. His uncle was the current emperor, Caligula, and his great-uncle was Claudius.
However, while that might sound like a ticket to a life of ease, Nero’s mother Agrippina could have told him differently. The Julio-Claudians enjoyed nothing more than fratricide. The rot had started way back when Agrippina was just a girl, growing up with her brother Caligula. Agrippina’s father, a popular general, was poisoned by her adopted grandfather, the emperor Tiberius, in 19 AD. This was just the first in a long line of Julio-Claudian family murders.
Jump ahead to 37 AD. Tiberius is dead, and Agrippina’s brother Caligula inherits the throne. At first, things were fine. It was during this period of calm that Agrippina gave birth to Nero. But then Caligula had one of his trademark moments of paranoia and decided Agrippina was plotting to kill him. He took all her property and banished her to a tiny island where she could have no contact with her son.
Young Nero was forced to make do with a dancer as a tutor. If that sounds somewhat acceptable, know that dancers, actors, and poets were considered the lowest of the low in Roman society. It seems likely Nero’s aunt felt there was no point in wasting good money on a boy who might not live long anyway.
Thank Jupiter, that miracle happened. On January 24, 41 AD, the elite Praetorian Guard assassinated Caligula. They then marched straight to Claudius and declared him the new emperor. Claudius was Nero’s great-uncle, which meant Agrippina was Claudius’s niece. Unlike Tiberius or Caligula, Emperor Claudius was all about not killing his relatives. No sooner had Claudius taken the throne than he recalled Agrippina from her exile.
At last reunited with her son Nero, Agrippina swore she would never again be left at the mercy of her cruel and capricious relatives. That meant building her own power base. But how was a penniless widow meant to do that in a patriarchal society like Rome? You leave that to Agrippina.
First, Agrippina pressured her uncle to find her a husband, so Claudius forced a consul to marry her. Next, Agrippina poisoned that consul and inherited all his wealth. Then came 48 AD, and Claudius’s execution of his wife. Barely was her body cold than Agrippina was seducing the emperor’s advisor and giving him an excellent plan. Why didn’t Claudius just marry Agrippina? The proposal was dressed up as a way of uniting the two Julio-Claudian branches and ending fratricides once and for all. But really, it was just an excuse for Agrippina to get closer to power while Claudius got to live out his fantasies.
On January 1, 49 AD, Agrippina became empress. One year later, Claudius adopted her son, Nero. In ten short years, Agrippina had taken herself and Nero from pariahs to the heart of imperial Rome. They had money and power. But never forget that Agrippina was from a family that prided itself on killing useless members. And what use did Empress Agrippina now have for her uncle Claudius?
By 51 AD, all was not well in Rome’s imperial palace. That same year, Agrippina had pressured Claudius into naming Nero his co-heir, alongside the emperor’s natural son, Britannicus. With Nero suddenly in line for half the throne, Claudius’s advisors were taking a closer look at him. They didn’t like what they saw. By now a teenager, Nero was a sulky, spoiled brat who would rather spend his time learning to play the lyre than learning how to rule. Worse still, the boy was developing a cruel streak.
One by one, people started to wonder if they might not have another Caligula on their hands. Yet they were powerless to stop Agrippina from building her son’s power base. In 53 AD, Agrippina forced Nero into marriage with Claudia Octavia, a daughter of Claudius. When we say “forced,” we really mean it. Claudia Octavia was being pursued by another suitor at the time. Agrippina wrecked that courtship and drove the suitor to suicide.
Yet even this marriage of convenience wasn’t enough to convince Agrippina that she was safe. The only way to ensure her safety was to make herself answerable to no one. On October 13, 54 AD, Emperor Claudius suddenly died. Ancient sources speculate that Agrippina bribed the emperor’s taster and slipped him poisoned mushrooms. Whether that’s true or not, the results were the same. Control of the empire went to Claudius’s heirs: Nero and Britannicus.
Or rather, it should have. At the moment Claudius died, only Nero was old enough to be considered an adult. Britannicus was still a child, legally incapable of ruling. So when Agrippina presented Nero alone to the Praetorian Guard and asked them to salute their new emperor, there was nothing Britannicus could do. Aged only 16, Nero was elevated to sole ruler of the world’s most powerful empire.
Let’s take a second to imagine how Agrippina must have felt that day. Against all the odds, she’d overcome a childhood of tragedy and an adulthood of exile to install herself at the heart of Rome. She’d manipulated and killed an emperor. And now her son was on the throne. We hope Agrippina savored that moment. Really, we do. Because it wasn’t destined to last long. Just as his mother had started to wonder if she really needed Claudius, the new Emperor Nero was starting to wonder if he really needed Agrippina.
Before long, Agrippina found herself being slowly pushed out of the corridors of power. Determined to fight, the wily strategist tried to ally herself with Britannicus, only for Nero to have his stepbrother poisoned. Not long after, Agrippina was moved out of the palace to a little villa on the outskirts of Rome. Even the precious marriage she’d secured for Nero with Claudia Octavia was destroyed, as Nero took up instead with Poppaea Sabina.
As a last-ditch effort, Agrippina made overtures to Nero’s cousin, suggesting they could depose the teenage emperor together. But Agrippina’s luck had already run out. In early 59 AD, Nero had Agrippina board a boat that was designed to sink. When she managed to survive the grueling swim to shore, her son simply ordered her stabbed to death. It’s said that as she realized what was about to happen, Agrippina pointed at her womb and screamed, “Stab me there, where the monster had been nurtured!”
Julia Agrippina died on March 23, 59 AD. After the news leaked out, Nero half-heartedly tried to tell everyone it had been a suicide. But no one in Rome was under any illusions. The young emperor had broken the greatest taboo, killing his own mother. Claudius’s advisors had been wrong. Nero wasn’t the next Caligula. He was something much, much worse.
You probably have a mental checklist prepared for the rest of this story. Fiddling as Rome burns: check. Persecuting the Christians: check. Well, don’t worry, we’ll get to those dubious highlights. But before we tell you about Nero the Crazy Emperor, we’ve got to tell you about Nero the Insanely Popular Emperor. That’s right: popular.
For all his name may now be synonymous with decadence, Nero started his reign actually being quite a cool sort of dude. Prior to Agrippina’s death, Nero had banned secret trials, cracked down on corruption, and handed powers back to the Senate. He also slashed taxes, banned capital punishment, granted more rights to slaves, banned animal bloodsports, and tried to phase out gladiatorial combat in favor of Greek wrestling. So popular were these measures that the great emperor Trajan would later declare Nero’s first five years the greatest reign in Roman history.
Here we finally reach one of the contradictions surrounding Nero. Despite all the mad stuff he did, he was beloved by his subjects. Nero had a common touch that other Roman elites lacked. After his death, a whole generation of ambitious provincials would claim to be Nero’s heirs as a shortcut to popularity. Why, then, do we only hear about the bad stuff?
Maybe because the common folk didn’t write the histories. Neither did the ambitious provincials, but the monied Roman elite. And those guys couldn’t stand the way Nero debased his office. The issue was that, unlike Augustus, Tiberius, or Caligula, Nero had never wanted to be emperor. It was Agrippina who had schemed him into the palace, into power. The other reluctant emperor, Claudius, had at least been old enough to understand the responsibilities of office. Nero was young enough to understand the responsibilities of office could be disregarded.
Not long after Agrippina’s death, Nero talked openly about giving up the throne to become a full-time poet. But the power that came with being a living God was simply too much fun, so instead Nero began to live an artist’s life parallel to his imperial one. The young emperor spent his spare time partying, carousing with actors, and hanging out with lowlifes. He liked to get drunk and appear on stage in theaters, sometimes in female roles.
Although given what happened next, a better monarchial comparison might be Henry VIII. In 62 AD, Nero’s mistress Poppaea Sabina became pregnant. Since Nero was still married to the popular Claudia Octavia, this caused a scandal. So Nero divorced Claudia and banished her into exile, an underhand move that was about to get even more underhanded. When the people of Rome protested her banishment, Nero had his ex-wife murdered. It was the second time he’d killed a close relative, and just as with Agrippina, Nero vaguely made it out like it had been a suicide. In reality, it was yet another bloodstain on the artist-emperor’s hands. It wouldn’t be the last.
By July 18, 64 AD, Emperor Nero’s initial popularity was in terminal nosedive. The same year Nero had Claudia murdered, the Praetorian Guard prefect Burrus had died. A natural moderate, he’d kept the emperor’s darkest desires in check. So what did Nero do? He replaced him with a guy called Tigellinus, who thought the best thing the emperor could do with his dark desires was let them loose.
Come that hot July of 64 AD, the people of Rome were fed up with their emperor and ready to believe anything about him. Into this tinderbox of resentment came a very real spark. The causes of the Great Fire of Rome are lost to history. All we know is that, on July 18, a conflagration swept through the Eternal City. At the time, Rome was a collection of wooden shacks that had been thrown up without any central plan. So when the inferno got going, it really got going. The fire burned for a week. By the time it fizzled, three of the city’s districts had been destroyed, and the imperial palace itself had been damaged.
And what was Emperor Nero doing while all this destruction took place? That’s absolutely wrong. Yep, the one thing everyone knows about Nero, that he fiddled as Rome burned, turns out to be total bunk. Nero wasn’t even in the city at the time. Far from regarding the fire as a source of amusement, Tacitus tells us Nero raced back to Rome and spearheaded the relief efforts. He even let hundreds of those left homeless by the disaster stay in the imperial palace.
This raises the question: why do we all think Nero fiddled as Rome burned? Two reasons. One involves a building, the other a group of people. Let’s tackle the building first. Once the fire was over, Nero pledged to rebuild Rome grander than before. In most respects, he succeeded, constructing a new city with streets wide enough to hinder future fires. However, he also decided to build a massive palace atop the rubble. A palace that included a 120-foot tall statue of himself.
For a Roman public that was already leaning anti-Nero, this was too much. Rumors started to swirl that Nero had set the fire himself, specifically so he could build his palace. Panicked, Nero decided he needed to find someone else to blame fast. His chosen scapegoats were a group known as the Christians.
In 64 AD, Rome’s Christians were a small sect, comprising non-citizens, refugees, and Greek-speaking outsiders. Like foreigners, refugees, and immigrants sadly discover all too frequently, that made them perfect targets. On Nero’s orders, prominent Christians were tortured until they confessed to starting the fire. Nero then set about having all of them rounded up and gruesomely executed. Unlike the tale of Nero fiddling, all the stories you’ve heard about his torture of the Christians are true. Christians really were torn apart by wild animals. Nero really did have them burned alive to illuminate his garden parties.
Perhaps it’s no wonder early Christians came to seriously hate Nero. There’s a theory that the Antichrist in the Book of Revelation was meant to symbolize the emperor. But it wasn’t just the Christians who disliked Nero’s persecution. The extreme tortures inflicted were disturbing even by Roman standards. In the Senate and the Praetorian Guard, people began to whisper that maybe things were getting out of hand. That it was time to get rid of their emperor.
When people want to prove just what a monster Nero was, they usually point to his actions in 64 AD: allegedly letting Rome burn and actually slaughtering the Christians. Really, they should point to the emperor’s antics the following year. If 64 AD was Nero at his most misunderstood, 65 AD was Nero at his psychotic peak.
It started when the Senate plot against Nero was discovered. What followed was a purge that saw 23 conspirators forced to commit suicide, among them the philosopher Seneca. But if 23 dead doesn’t sound so bad, know that this was just the warm-up act. In the wake of the conspiracy, Nero brought back the treason trials that had been such a feature of Tiberius and Caligula’s rules. Kangaroo courts that convicted and executed people on a whim, the treason trials were infamous for being an underhand way for the emperor to get rid of anyone he didn’t like.
Yet even this bloodshed doesn’t compare to Nero’s cruelest act that year. At some point that summer, Nero got in a blazing row with his wife, Poppaea Sabina. Remember her? The mistress who got pregnant, causing Nero to murder his previous wife? Well, Poppaea probably should have realized that ordering your wife’s assassination isn’t a great sign of mental stability. According to Tacitus, Nero, mad with rage, kicked Poppaea to death. The poor girl was pregnant at the time, and Nero made sure to aim his vicious kicks at her swollen stomach.
In the aftermath of this brutal act, Nero went insane. He had Poppaea embalmed and her corpse deposited in a mausoleum so he could visit it whenever he wanted. Freakier still, Nero caught sight of a 13-year-old boy a few weeks later who was the spitting image of his murdered wife. Known as Sporus, this unlucky boy was kidnapped by Nero’s men and castrated. Nero then forced Sporus to dress in clothes belonging to the dead Poppaea and married him in a bizarre service.
After that, Sporus could be seen, dressed and acting like the dead empress, sitting at Nero’s side as the deranged emperor kissed and fondled him. If this wasn’t already creepy enough, Nero himself took to wearing a Poppaea mask when he performed on stage, embodying the girl whose life he’d so viciously snatched away. Yet even as he drifted into a disturbing territory, Nero didn’t lose his common touch.
In 66 AD, he left on a tour of Rome’s eastern provinces, effectively giving himself a year’s break from running the empire. But rather than react to this creepy behavior the way the elites in Rome had, those in the east acted like Nero was an ancient rock star. The thing was, Nero knew how to play a crowd. In Greece, he dressed like an ascetic, with bare feet and flowing hair, and took an active interest in the country’s new religions. Wherever he went, he granted towns “free city” status, ensuring the inhabitants celebrated him. He was so popular that he even took
Engage in a role-playing debate where you will be assigned roles as either supporters or critics of Nero’s reign. Research and present arguments based on historical accounts, focusing on Nero’s policies, actions, and their impact on Roman society. This will help you understand the complexities of his leadership and the diverse perspectives of his contemporaries.
Write a fictional diary entry from Nero’s perspective on a significant day during his reign. Use historical facts to guide your narrative, but feel free to explore his emotions and motivations. This activity will encourage you to empathize with historical figures and consider the personal dimensions of historical events.
Conduct a comparative analysis of Nero and another Roman emperor of your choice. Create a presentation highlighting their leadership styles, achievements, and downfalls. This will help you identify patterns in Roman imperial leadership and understand Nero’s unique position in history.
Examine how Nero used art and public performances to shape his image. Create a visual or multimedia project that explores the role of propaganda in his reign. This activity will deepen your understanding of how leaders use media to influence public perception.
Participate in a philosophical discussion about the ethical implications of Nero’s actions as emperor. Consider questions of power, morality, and responsibility. This will encourage critical thinking about the moral challenges faced by leaders and the consequences of their decisions.
Imagine, for a moment, that you could travel backwards through time and give your sixteen-year-old self the powers of a God. Imagine placing the lives and fates of millions into your trembling teenage hands. Would the result be a happier world, a utopia? Or would it lead to catastrophe for everyone involved, including your younger self?
In October 54 AD, the Roman Empire made this thought experiment a terrifying reality by elevating an emotionally unstable 16-year-old boy to the position of emperor. That boy’s name? Nero. The last of the Julio-Claudian emperors, Nero transformed the greatest empire the world had ever seen into a playground for his darkest desires. He had his own mother murdered, ordered Christians burned alive for entertainment, and indulged in behaviors so shocking they’d make anyone blush. Yet he died beloved by Rome’s commoners, convinced he was the greatest artist who had ever lived.
Join us today as we investigate the life of the most infamous Roman of all.
**Family Ties**
If you were to take a quick glance at the background of Nero, you might assume he had a childhood of unparalleled luxury. Born Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus on December 15, 37 AD, Nero was a member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, the family that had been ruling Rome for decades. His mother, Julia Agrippina, commonly known as Agrippina the Younger, was a direct descendant of the first emperor, Augustus. His uncle was the current emperor, Caligula, and his great-uncle was Claudius.
However, while that might sound like a ticket to a life of ease, Nero’s mother Agrippina could have told him differently. The Julio-Claudians enjoyed nothing more than fratricide. The rot had started way back when Agrippina was just a girl, growing up with her brother Caligula. Agrippina’s father, a popular general, was poisoned by her adopted grandfather, the emperor Tiberius, in 19 AD. This was just the first in a long line of Julio-Claudian family murders.
Jump ahead to 37 AD. Tiberius is dead, and Agrippina’s brother Caligula inherits the throne. At first, things were fine. It was during this period of calm that Agrippina gave birth to Nero. But then Caligula had one of his trademark moments of paranoia and decided Agrippina was plotting to kill him. He took all her property and banished her to a tiny island where she could have no contact with her son.
Young Nero was forced to make do with a dancer as a tutor. If that sounds somewhat acceptable, know that dancers, actors, and poets were considered the lowest of the low in Roman society. It seems likely Nero’s aunt felt there was no point in wasting good money on a boy who might not live long anyway.
Thank Jupiter, that miracle happened. On January 24, 41 AD, the elite Praetorian Guard assassinated Caligula. They then marched straight to Claudius and declared him the new emperor. Claudius was Nero’s great-uncle, which meant Agrippina was Claudius’s niece. Unlike Tiberius or Caligula, Emperor Claudius was all about not killing his relatives. No sooner had Claudius taken the throne than he recalled Agrippina from her exile.
At last reunited with her son Nero, Agrippina swore she would never again be left at the mercy of her cruel and capricious relatives. That meant building her own power base. But how was a penniless widow meant to do that in a patriarchal society like Rome? You leave that to Agrippina.
First, Agrippina pressured her uncle to find her a husband, so Claudius forced a consul to marry her. Next, Agrippina poisoned that consul and inherited all his wealth. Then came 48 AD, and Claudius’s execution of his wife. Barely was her body cold than Agrippina was seducing the emperor’s advisor and giving him an excellent plan. Why didn’t Claudius just marry Agrippina? The proposal was dressed up as a way of uniting the two Julio-Claudian branches and ending fratricides once and for all. But really, it was just an excuse for Agrippina to get closer to power while Claudius got to live out his fantasies.
On January 1, 49 AD, Agrippina became empress. One year later, Claudius adopted her son, Nero. In ten short years, Agrippina had taken herself and Nero from pariahs to the heart of imperial Rome. They had money and power. But never forget that Agrippina was from a family that prided itself on killing useless members. And what use did Empress Agrippina now have for her uncle Claudius?
**Where the Monster was Nurtured**
By 51 AD, all was not well in Rome’s imperial palace. That same year, Agrippina had pressured Claudius into naming Nero his co-heir, alongside the emperor’s natural son, Britannicus. With Nero suddenly in line for half the throne, Claudius’s advisors were taking a closer look at him. They didn’t like what they saw. By now a teenager, Nero was a sulky, spoiled brat who would rather spend his time learning to play the lyre than learning how to rule. Worse still, the boy was developing a cruel streak.
One by one, people started to wonder if they might not have another Caligula on their hands. Yet they were powerless to stop Agrippina from building her son’s power base. In 53 AD, Agrippina forced Nero into marriage with Claudia Octavia, a daughter of Claudius. When we say “forced,” we really mean it. Claudia Octavia was being pursued by another suitor at the time. Agrippina wrecked that courtship and drove the suitor to suicide.
Yet even this marriage of convenience wasn’t enough to convince Agrippina that she was safe. The only way to ensure her safety was to make herself answerable to no one. On October 13, 54 AD, Emperor Claudius suddenly died. Ancient sources speculate that Agrippina bribed the emperor’s taster and slipped him poisoned mushrooms. Whether that’s true or not, the results were the same. Control of the empire went to Claudius’s heirs: Nero and Britannicus.
Or rather, it should have. At the moment Claudius died, only Nero was old enough to be considered an adult. Britannicus was still a child, legally incapable of ruling. So when Agrippina presented Nero alone to the Praetorian Guard and asked them to salute their new emperor, there was nothing Britannicus could do. Aged only 16, Nero was elevated to sole ruler of the world’s most powerful empire.
Let’s take a second to imagine how Agrippina must have felt that day. Against all the odds, she’d overcome a childhood of tragedy and an adulthood of exile to install herself at the heart of Rome. She’d manipulated and killed an emperor. And now her son was on the throne. We hope Agrippina savored that moment. Really, we do. Because it wasn’t destined to last long. Just as his mother had started to wonder if she really needed Claudius, the new Emperor Nero was starting to wonder if he really needed Agrippina.
Before long, Agrippina found herself being slowly pushed out of the corridors of power. Determined to fight, the wily strategist tried to ally herself with Britannicus, only for Nero to have his stepbrother poisoned. Not long after, Agrippina was moved out of the palace to a little villa on the outskirts of Rome. Even the precious marriage she’d secured for Nero with Claudia Octavia was destroyed, as Nero took up instead with Poppaea Sabina.
As a last-ditch effort, Agrippina made overtures to Nero’s cousin, suggesting they could depose the teenage emperor together. But Agrippina’s luck had already run out. In early 59 AD, Nero had Agrippina board a boat that was designed to sink. When she managed to survive the grueling swim to shore, her son simply ordered her stabbed to death. It’s said that as she realized what was about to happen, Agrippina pointed at her womb and screamed, “Stab me there, where the monster had been nurtured!”
Julia Agrippina died on March 23, 59 AD. After the news leaked out, Nero half-heartedly tried to tell everyone it had been a suicide. But no one in Rome was under any illusions. The young emperor had broken the greatest taboo, killing his own mother. Claudius’s advisors had been wrong. Nero wasn’t the next Caligula. He was something much, much worse.
**The Artistic Emperor**
You probably have a mental checklist prepared for the rest of this video. Fiddling as Rome burns: check. Persecuting the Christians: check. Well, don’t worry, we’ll get to those dubious highlights. But before we tell you about Nero the Crazy Emperor, we’ve got to tell you about Nero the Insanely Popular Emperor. That’s right: popular.
For all his name may now be synonymous with decadence, Nero started his reign actually being quite a cool sort of dude. Prior to Agrippina’s death, Nero had banned secret trials, cracked down on corruption, and handed powers back to the Senate. He also slashed taxes, banned capital punishment, granted more rights to slaves, banned animal bloodsports, and tried to phase out gladiatorial combat in favor of Greek wrestling. So popular were these measures that the great emperor Trajan would later declare Nero’s first five years the greatest reign in Roman history.
Here we finally reach one of the contradictions surrounding Nero. Despite all the mad stuff he did, he was beloved by his subjects. Nero had a common touch that other Roman elites lacked. After his death, a whole generation of ambitious provincials would claim to be Nero’s heirs as a shortcut to popularity. Why, then, do we only hear about the bad stuff?
Maybe because the common folk didn’t write the histories. Neither did the ambitious provincials, but the monied Roman elite. And those guys couldn’t stand the way Nero debased his office. The issue was that, unlike Augustus, Tiberius, or Caligula, Nero had never wanted to be emperor. It was Agrippina who had schemed him into the palace, into power. The other reluctant emperor, Claudius, had at least been old enough to understand the responsibilities of office. Nero was young enough to understand the responsibilities of office could be disregarded.
Not long after Agrippina’s death, Nero talked openly about giving up the throne to become a full-time poet. But the power that came with being a living God was simply too much fun, so instead Nero began to live an artist’s life parallel to his imperial one. The young emperor spent his spare time partying, carousing with actors, and hanging out with lowlifes. He liked to get drunk and appear on stage in theaters, sometimes in female roles.
Although given what happened next, a better monarchial comparison might be Henry VIII. In 62 AD, Nero’s mistress Poppaea Sabina became pregnant. Since Nero was still married to the popular Claudia Octavia, this caused a scandal. So Nero divorced Claudia and banished her into exile, an underhand move that was about to get even more underhanded. When the people of Rome protested her banishment, Nero had his ex-wife murdered. It was the second time he’d killed a close relative, and just as with Agrippina, Nero vaguely made it out like it had been a suicide. In reality, it was yet another bloodstain on the artist-emperor’s hands. It wouldn’t be the last.
**Let the Mother Burn**
By July 18, 64 AD, Emperor Nero’s initial popularity was in terminal nosedive. The same year Nero had Claudia murdered, the Praetorian Guard prefect Burrus had died. A natural moderate, he’d kept the emperor’s darkest desires in check. So what did Nero do? He replaced him with a guy called Tigellinus, who thought the best thing the emperor could do with his dark desires was let them loose.
Come that hot July of 64 AD, the people of Rome were fed up with their emperor and ready to believe anything about him. Into this tinderbox of resentment came a very real spark. The causes of the Great Fire of Rome are lost to history. All we know is that, on July 18, a conflagration swept through the Eternal City. At the time, Rome was a collection of wooden shacks that had been thrown up without any central plan. So when the inferno got going, it really got going. The fire burned for a week. By the time it fizzled, three of the city’s districts had been destroyed, and the imperial palace itself had been damaged.
And what was Emperor Nero doing while all this destruction took place? That’s absolutely wrong. Yep, the one thing everyone knows about Nero, that he fiddled as Rome burned, turns out to be total bunk. Nero wasn’t even in the city at the time. Far from regarding the fire as a source of amusement, Tacitus tells us Nero raced back to Rome and spearheaded the relief efforts. He even let hundreds of those left homeless by the disaster stay in the imperial palace.
This raises the question: why do we all think Nero fiddled as Rome burned? Two reasons. One involves a building, the other a group of people. Let’s tackle the building first. Once the fire was over, Nero pledged to rebuild Rome grander than before. In most respects, he succeeded, constructing a new city with streets wide enough to hinder future fires. However, he also decided to build a massive palace atop the rubble. A palace that included a 120-foot tall statue of himself.
For a Roman public that was already leaning anti-Nero, this was too much. Rumors started to swirl that Nero had set the fire himself, specifically so he could build his palace. Panicked, Nero decided he needed to find someone else to blame fast. His chosen scapegoats were a group known as the Christians.
In 64 AD, Rome’s Christians were a small sect, comprising non-citizens, refugees, and Greek-speaking outsiders. Like foreigners, refugees, and immigrants sadly discover all too frequently, that made them perfect targets. On Nero’s orders, prominent Christians were tortured until they confessed to starting the fire. Nero then set about having all of them rounded up and gruesomely executed. Unlike the tale of Nero fiddling, all the stories you’ve heard about his torture of the Christians are true. Christians really were torn apart by wild animals. Nero really did have them burned alive to illuminate his garden parties.
Perhaps it’s no wonder early Christians came to seriously hate Nero. There’s a theory that the Antichrist in the Book of Revelation was meant to symbolize the emperor. But it wasn’t just the Christians who disliked Nero’s persecution. The extreme tortures inflicted were disturbing even by Roman standards. In the Senate and the Praetorian Guard, people began to whisper that maybe things were getting out of hand. That it was time to get rid of their emperor.
**The Horrors of Love**
When people want to prove just what a monster Nero was, they usually point to his actions in 64 AD: allegedly letting Rome burn and actually slaughtering the Christians. Really, they should point to the emperor’s antics the following year. If 64 AD was Nero at his most misunderstood, 65 AD was Nero at his psychotic peak.
It started when the Senate plot against Nero was discovered. What followed was a purge that saw 23 conspirators forced to commit suicide, among them the philosopher Seneca. But if 23 dead doesn’t sound so bad, know that this was just the warm-up act. In the wake of the conspiracy, Nero brought back the treason trials that had been such a feature of Tiberius and Caligula’s rules. Kangaroo courts that convicted and executed people on a whim, the treason trials were infamous for being an underhand way for the emperor to get rid of anyone he didn’t like.
Yet even this bloodshed doesn’t compare to Nero’s cruelest act that year. At some point that summer, Nero got in a blazing row with his wife, Poppaea Sabina. Remember her? The mistress who got pregnant, causing Nero to murder his previous wife? Well, Poppaea probably should have realized that ordering your wife’s assassination isn’t a great sign of mental stability. According to Tacitus, Nero, mad with rage, kicked Poppaea to death. The poor girl was pregnant at the time, and Nero made sure to aim his vicious kicks at her swollen stomach.
In the aftermath of this brutal act, Nero went insane. He had Poppaea embalmed and her corpse deposited in a mausoleum so he could visit it whenever he wanted. Freakier still, Nero caught sight of a 13-year-old boy a few weeks later who was the spitting image of his murdered wife. Known as Sporus, this unlucky boy was kidnapped by Nero’s men and castrated. Nero then forced Sporus to dress in clothes belonging to the dead Poppaea and married him in a bizarre service.
After that, Sporus could be seen, dressed and acting like the dead empress, sitting at Nero’s side as the deranged emperor kissed and fondled him. If this wasn’t already creepy enough, Nero himself took to wearing a Poppaea mask when he performed on stage, embodying the girl whose life he’d so viciously snatched away. Yet even as he drifted into a disturbing territory, Nero didn’t lose his common touch.
In 66 AD, he left on a tour of Rome’s eastern provinces, effectively giving himself a year’s break from running the empire. But rather than react to this creepy behavior the way the elites in Rome had, those in the east acted like Nero was an ancient rock star. The thing was, Nero knew how to play a crowd. In Greece, he dressed like an ascetic, with bare feet and flowing hair, and took an active interest in the country’s new religions. Wherever he went, he granted towns “free city” status, ensuring the inhabitants celebrated him. He was so popular that he even took part in the Olympic Games. Unsurprisingly, he won every event he entered.
It seems Nero himself felt being in the east was a form of freedom. He began appearing on stage more and more, often playing the roles of pregnant women. When word got back to Rome, upper society was more scandalized than ever. But Nero was wrong if he thought he could just keep violating norms and doing whatever he felt like. The emperor didn’t know it yet, but his days on this earth were already numbered.
**“What an Artist Dies in Me”**
In early 68 AD, Nero sent an order to the governor of Gaul
Nero – The fifth Roman Emperor, known for his tyrannical rule and the Great Fire of Rome. – Nero’s reign is often remembered for the Great Fire of Rome in 64 AD, which led to widespread devastation and subsequent persecution of Christians.
Agrippina – A prominent Roman empress and mother of Nero, known for her ambitious and influential role in Roman politics. – Agrippina’s influence over her son, Nero, was significant, as she maneuvered her way through the political landscape of ancient Rome to secure his position as emperor.
Caligula – The third Roman Emperor, infamous for his eccentric and cruel behavior during his short reign. – Caligula’s reign is often cited as a period of extreme extravagance and cruelty, which ultimately led to his assassination by members of his own guard.
Claudius – The fourth Roman Emperor, known for his expansion of the Roman Empire and significant administrative reforms. – Claudius is credited with the conquest of Britain and implementing reforms that strengthened the Roman bureaucracy.
Empire – A large political unit or state, usually under a single leader, that controls many peoples or territories. – The Roman Empire at its height was a vast expanse of territories that stretched from Britain to the Middle East, unified under Roman law and governance.
History – The study of past events, particularly in human affairs. – The study of history allows us to understand the complexities of human societies and the factors that have shaped the modern world.
Literature – Written works, especially those considered of superior or lasting artistic merit. – The literature of the Renaissance period reflects the cultural rebirth and intellectual exploration of the time, with works by authors like Shakespeare and Dante.
Persecution – The systematic mistreatment of an individual or group, often due to their beliefs or identity. – The persecution of early Christians in the Roman Empire was marked by periods of intense suffering and martyrdom, which ultimately strengthened the resolve of the Christian community.
Artist – A person engaged in one or more of the arts, such as painting, sculpting, or writing, often with a focus on creativity and expression. – Leonardo da Vinci is celebrated as a quintessential Renaissance artist, whose works exemplify the fusion of art and science.
Tragedy – A form of drama based on human suffering that invokes an accompanying catharsis or pleasure in audiences. – Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” is a classic example of tragedy, exploring themes of revenge, madness, and the consequences of moral corruption.
