Emperor Nero

Nero was born on 15^th December 37 AD, the son of Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus and Agrippina the Younger, who was the sister of the notorious emperor Caligula. When Ahenobarbus died (of natural causes) in 40 AD, Agrippina married her uncle, the emperor Claudius, who, in 50 AD, adopted Nero as his own son.

It was unlikely that Nero was going to turn out to be a model emperor when his turn came, given the genes he inherited from both his natural parents. Ahenobarbus had been a notably brutal and venal man who had been lucky to survive the reign of Tiberius, and Agrippina would prove to have come from a similar mould and be a woman who took parental ambition to a remarkable extreme.

In order to prevent Claudius’s natural son Germanicus from inheriting the imperial throne she murdered Claudius (by way of poisoned mushrooms) before Germanicus came of age. Nero therefore became emperor at the age of 16, on 13^th October 54 AD.

The start of his reign

Agrippina proved to be the power behind the throne during Nero’s early years, especially as Nero showed no enthusiasm for the job. Germanicus soon suffered the fate of his father, thus ensuring that there was no rival waiting in the wings.

With Agrippina pulling the strings, and the business of government being in the safe hands of people such as the philosopher Seneca, who had been Nero’s tutor, the first few years of Nero’s reign passed with nothing much to worry about. The emperor was thus able to indulge himself in the activities that most interested him, such as poetry and acting.

Although Nero was quite content to let the business of ruling the empire carry on without him, he was far less liberal when it came to his private life. His mother had, before he became emperor, engineered his marriage to Claudius’s daughter Octavia, but Nero did not find her to be to his taste as a wife. He was far more excited by the beautiful and vivacious Poppaea Sabina. A strange love triangle emerged between Nero, Poppaea and one of Nero’s dissolute friends, Otho, who would have a brief reign as emperor in due course. One possibility is that Otho was already married to Poppaea but was persuaded to “lend” her to Nero until such time as Nero was able to divorce Octavia.

Nero was now in the hands of two powerful women. Poppaea wanted to be empress but Agrippina was determined that he should stay married to Octavia, who could be controlled in ways that Poppaea could not. Nero also knew what he wanted, and the only solution he could see was to murder his mother.

Nero takes over

In 59 AD, Nero staged a boating accident that he hoped would kill Agrippina, but the plot failed when she was able to swim to shore. When Nero heard of this he sent a detachment of sailors to finish the job in a more traditional way.

With his mother out of the way, Nero now emerged in his true colours and things went rapidly downhill. Octavia was not only divorced but accused of treason and banished to an island. She would later be executed on Nero’s orders. Twelve days after the divorce Nero married Poppaea, who was already pregnant with Nero’s child.

Nero also dismissed his wise counsellors and admitted a wholly unworthy replacement, Tigellinus, to his inner circle. This man had no qualifications for the post, being a supplier of chariot horses, but Nero approved of his advice that he should indulge in pleasurable activities. These included giving lengthy performances of his indifferent poetry in front of audiences that were required to applaud with enthusiasm or face execution.

Running the Empire

Meanwhile there was an empire to run. The first major problem during Nero’s reign was the revolt of Boudicca in Britain in 60 AD. The warrior queen had managed to rouse her Iceni tribe to rebel against Roman rule by telling them stories about the decadence of Rome and its effeminate emperor. The rebellion was vicious and highly dangerous, from a Roman viewpoint, with the cities of Camulodunum, Londonium and Verulamium being attacked and thousands of people massacred.

The response was equally severe. The Romans had a highly effective general in Suetonius Paulinus and the rebellion was crushed with great ferocity, ending with the suicide of Boudicca.

In the East, Nero depended on the diplomatic skills of General Domitius Corbulo to reach a compromise solution with Parthia over the status of Armenia.

Worse problems arose in Judaea, when in May 66 AD the Roman procurator Florus made a bad situation worse by ordering his soldiers to seize silver from the Temple treasury at Jerusalem. The revolt this occasioned would lead to the loss of thousands of lives, both Jewish and Roman, and would culminate in the sack of Jerusalem in 70 AD, after Nero’s reign was over.

Fire at Rome

There was a crisis much closer to home in 64 AD, when a terrible fire broke out in Rome. This destroyed a large area of the city, leaving many people homeless. Nero’s reaction to the fire has been the subject of controversy ever since. Some historians say that Nero organised the relief effort, whereas others maintain that he was indifferent to the suffering of ordinary people. One thing that is certain is that Nero did not “fiddle while Rome burned”; for one thing the violin had not been invented and Nero did not play the lyre-like instrument called the “fidicula”. There is no contemporary documentary evidence for this phrase.

However, it is not beyond doubt that Nero used the fire as an excuse to wreak vengeance on a small but growing religious group, the Christians, who could safely be blamed for starting the fire. Ordinary Romans distrusted these people, who lived in separate enclaves and conducted secret rituals, so encouraging an anti-Christian mood was neither difficult not unpopular.

If Nero faced no opposition from non-Christians over the persecution, he did manage to raise some eyebrows over the sadistic methods he either invented or encouraged for the execution of Christians. These included smearing them in pitch and setting them alight as human torches.

Nero exploited the fire to his own advantage in that it left vast open spaces to be re-developed. He was quite happy to seize one of these to build his own “Golden House” that featured a huge artificial lake and a massive statue of himself. The later emperor Vespasian tore down the house and used the space where the lake had been to build the Colosseum.

Nero’s downfall

Nero’s mental state deteriorated steadily and led to him indulging in terrible rages. In one of these, in 65 AD, he kicked his pregnant wife Poppaea so hard that a rupture caused her to bleed to death.

As he rapidly lost grip on reality moves were made to depose him. A plot by several senators was uncovered, leading to a new round of executions and the settling of old scores. Trumped-up charges were laid against people who had fallen out of favour, leading inevitably to their deaths. Even Seneca was forced to commit suicide.

Among the victims was Domitius Corbulo, the hero of the Parthian Wars, who had done absolutely nothing to deserve such a fate. This act, possibly motivated by envy, proved to be one outrage too far, because Corbulo was much admired and respected and had powerful friends. A new conspiracy to remove Nero was instigated that had every chance of success.

In 67 AD Nero left Rome to compete in the Olympic Games as a charioteer, with the whole event being rescheduled to suit his convenience. This was the opportunity that Nero’s enemies needed to plot his downfall. Instead of being able to return in triumph from the Games, having won every event he had entered (no surprise there), Nero found that other events had been taking place behind his back, and that they had reached an advanced stage.

In 68 AD governors in Gaul and Judaea declared their opposition to Nero. Galba, the governor of a Spanish province, declared himself emperor, gaining support including that of an army commander in Germany. When the leaders of the Praetorian Guard also switched sides, the senate deposed Nero, who now knew that the game was up.

Nero’s only option was to flee the palace and seek refuge with a man named Phaon, whom he thought he could trust. However, Phaon had already betrayed the emperor who stabbed himself as he heard his would-be assassins enter the house. Nero’s last words were: “How great an artist dies with me!” thus showing that he was utterly deluded to the last.

Nero was a man who should never have been emperor, and this would not have happened had he not had the mother that he did. It was her murderous ambition that made Nero the heir of Claudius, and once she had fallen victim to her son he proved just how unworthy he was of such high office. The Julio-Claudian emperors had been a mixed bunch, and the last of them was arguably the worst of them all.

© John Welford