Nero

Based on Wikipedia: Nero

In June of 68 AD, a thirty-year-old man fled through the darkened streets of Rome, disguised and terrified, hunted by the very empire he had ruled for fourteen years. Within hours, he would become the first Roman emperor to take his own life. His name was Nero, and his death would spark a year of chaos that nearly tore the Roman world apart.

But here's what makes Nero's story so fascinating: depending on who you asked, he was either a monster or a hero. The Roman Senate despised him. The common people adored him. Centuries after his death, pretenders would still emerge claiming to be Nero returned from the grave, because the masses refused to believe their beloved emperor was truly gone.

So which was he—tyrant or populist champion? The answer, as with most things in history, is complicated.

Born to Chaos

Nero entered the world on December 15, 37 AD, in the coastal town of Antium—modern-day Anzio, about thirty miles south of Rome. He was born Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, a name that reflected his father's ancient aristocratic lineage. The Ahenobarbi claimed descent from the god Mars himself, though this divine heritage apparently didn't prevent them from being thoroughly unpleasant people.

His father, Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus, had a reputation for brutality that was remarkable even by Roman standards. When friends congratulated him on his newborn son, he reportedly replied that any child born to himself and Agrippina would have "a detestable nature and become a public danger." It was meant as dark humor. History would prove it prophetic.

Nero's mother, Agrippina the Younger, was a different kind of dangerous. She was the sister of Emperor Caligula—yes, that Caligula, the one who allegedly made his horse a senator—and a great-great-granddaughter of Augustus, the founder of the Roman Empire. In a world where bloodlines meant everything, Agrippina possessed something more valuable than gold: a legitimate claim to imperial power.

When Nero was only three years old, his father died. Shortly after, his mother was exiled to a remote Mediterranean island, accused of plotting against her brother Caligula. The young boy was stripped of his inheritance and sent to live with his aunt Domitia Lepida. It was an inauspicious beginning for someone who would one day rule the known world.

The Making of an Emperor

Everything changed in 41 AD when Caligula was assassinated and Claudius—Nero's uncle by marriage—became emperor. Claudius was an unlikely ruler: he walked with a limp, spoke with a stammer, and had been dismissed by his own family as an embarrassment. But he proved surprisingly capable, and in 49 AD, he made a decision that would reshape Roman history.

He married Agrippina.

Agrippina had returned from exile with a single obsession: putting her son on the throne. She was brilliant, ruthless, and patient. Within a year of the marriage, she convinced Claudius to adopt Nero as his son and heir, leapfrogging Claudius's own biological son, Britannicus, in the line of succession. Gold coins were minted celebrating the adoption. The message was clear: a new leader was being groomed.

Agrippina's ambition extended beyond mere succession. She systematically replaced anyone who might support Britannicus with her own loyalists. She installed her handpicked man, Afranius Burrus, as commander of the Praetorian Guard—the elite military unit that served as both the emperor's bodyguard and the ultimate kingmakers of Rome. When Claudius died in 54 AD, the transition to Nero's rule was seamless.

How did Claudius die? Almost certainly by poison, administered at a dinner party—possibly on mushrooms, his favorite dish. Ancient sources disagree on the details but agree on the perpetrator: Agrippina. She had waited years for this moment, and she wasn't about to let it slip away.

The Boy Emperor

Nero was sixteen years old when he became ruler of an empire stretching from Britain to Syria, from the Rhine to the Sahara. He was, by the standards of the time, surprisingly well-prepared. His tutor was Seneca the Younger, one of the most celebrated philosophers of the ancient world, and his first speech before the Senate promised a new era of just and moderate government.

The promises weren't empty. Nero pledged to respect the Senate's authority, end secret trials, and root out the corruption that had flourished under Claudius. For the first five years of his reign—a period later called the "Quinquennium Neronis" or "Nero's Five Years"—his administration was genuinely excellent. Tax collectors were subjected to new oversight. Slaves were given the right to file complaints against abusive masters. Economic reforms addressed the deflation that was squeezing the empire.

A generation later, the Emperor Trajan would look back on those early years as a model of good governance.

But there was a problem. Agrippina hadn't orchestrated her son's rise to power so that Seneca and Burrus could run the empire. She intended to rule through Nero, and for a time, she did. One of the first coins of Nero's reign showed his mother's portrait on the front—a position traditionally reserved for the emperor himself. The Senate granted her two lictors, the ceremonial guards that signified official Roman authority, an honor almost never bestowed on women.

Nero chafed under her control.

The Breaking Point

The conflict between mother and son intensified gradually. When Nero took a lover—a freed slave woman named Claudia Acte—Agrippina saw it as a dangerous sign of independence. When Nero removed her allies from positions of power, she threatened to support Britannicus's claim to the throne instead.

Britannicus died shortly afterward at a dinner party, apparently of a seizure. He was fourteen years old. No one really believed it was natural.

Agrippina's response was to cultivate a relationship with Nero's wife, Octavia—Claudius's daughter, whom Nero had been forced to marry for political reasons but didn't love. It was a calculated move, reminding Nero that there were other power centers in Rome that she could manipulate.

Nero exiled his mother from the palace.

For four years, an uneasy truce held. Then, in 59 AD, Nero decided to end the threat permanently.

The method he chose was elaborate, almost theatrical—fitting for a man who would later fancy himself an artist. He commissioned a collapsible boat designed to sink with Agrippina aboard, making her death look like an accident. The boat worked as planned. It collapsed in the Bay of Naples. But Agrippina, in an astonishing feat of survival, swam to shore.

Nero panicked and sent soldiers to finish the job. When they arrived at her villa, Agrippina reportedly pointed to her womb and said, "Strike here, for this bore Nero." They obliged.

The official story was suicide. No one believed it.

The Performer Emperor

After Agrippina's death, something shifted in Nero. The restraint of his early years dissolved. He had always been interested in the arts—singing, poetry, acting, chariot racing—but now he began performing publicly, and this scandalized Roman aristocracy in ways that are hard for modern audiences to appreciate.

To understand the outrage, you need to understand Roman social hierarchy. Actors, musicians, and charioteers were considered infamous—a legal category that placed them alongside prostitutes and gladiators, barred from holding public office or enjoying the full rights of citizenship. For an emperor to step onto a stage was like a medieval king choosing to become a court jester. It inverted the entire social order.

Nero didn't care. He competed in poetry contests, gave concerts, raced chariots in front of massive crowds. He traveled to Greece specifically to compete in the Olympic Games of 67 AD, entering himself in the chariot racing event. He won, of course—the judges were hardly going to give a losing score to the Emperor of Rome—even though he reportedly fell out of his chariot during the race.

The aristocracy was horrified. The common people loved it.

This is crucial to understanding Nero's reign. He spent lavishly on public entertainments—games, spectacles, festivals—and the costs fell primarily on the wealthy through taxation. The Roman elite, who had to pay for these entertainments while watching their emperor demean himself on stage, despised him. The masses, who got free bread and circuses from a ruler who seemed to actually enjoy their company, adored him.

The ancient sources that have survived were written almost exclusively by aristocrats. This matters.

The Great Fire

On the night of July 18, 64 AD, a fire broke out near the Circus Maximus, Rome's enormous chariot-racing stadium. Rome had always been vulnerable to fires—a densely packed city of wooden buildings with open flames for light and cooking—but this one was different. Fanned by summer winds, it spread with terrifying speed.

The fire burned for six days. When it finally died, two-thirds of Rome had been destroyed.

This is where Nero's reputation enters the realm of legend, and not in a good way. The famous story claims that Nero "fiddled while Rome burned"—that he stood on a palace balcony playing his lyre and singing about the fall of Troy while the city consumed itself below. It's a powerful image. It's almost certainly false.

For one thing, fiddles wouldn't be invented for another thousand years. More importantly, Nero wasn't even in Rome when the fire started—he was at his villa in Antium, thirty miles away. When he learned of the disaster, he rushed back to the city and, according to even hostile sources, organized relief efforts. He opened his own gardens as shelter for the homeless. He arranged for food supplies from neighboring towns.

But rumors spread anyway. Some whispered that Nero had started the fire himself to clear land for a new palace he wanted to build. The timing was suspicious—Nero had indeed been planning a massive new residence called the Domus Transitoria, intended to connect all the imperial properties across Rome.

Whether Nero started the fire is something we'll never know for certain. What we do know is what he did next.

The Scapegoats

Nero needed someone to blame. He found the Christians.

In 64 AD, Christianity was a small, obscure sect, perhaps a few thousand adherents in a city of a million people. Romans found them strange and vaguely threatening—they refused to worship the traditional gods, held secret meetings, and practiced rituals that outsiders misunderstood as cannibalism (the Eucharist, with its language of eating flesh and drinking blood, sounded sinister to pagan ears).

According to the historian Tacitus, Nero rounded up Christians and executed them in spectacular fashion. Some were torn apart by dogs. Others were crucified. Still others were coated in pitch and set ablaze to serve as human torches, lighting Nero's gardens at night.

Tacitus, no friend to either Nero or Christians, noted that the punishments were so extreme they actually generated sympathy for the victims. The cruelty seemed motivated not by justice but by the emperor's personal sadism.

This persecution—the first organized Roman action against Christians—would echo through history. Later Christian tradition would remember Nero as the Antichrist, and some early Christians believed he would literally return at the end of times to persecute the faithful once more.

Marriages and Murders

Nero's personal life was chaotic even by imperial standards. His first wife, Octavia, was Claudius's daughter—a marriage of pure political convenience. He despised her and carried on affairs openly, first with the freed slave Acte, then with Poppaea Sabina, a noblewoman of legendary beauty who was already married when she caught Nero's eye.

In 62 AD, Nero divorced Octavia on grounds of infertility and married Poppaea. When public protests erupted over Octavia's treatment—she was genuinely popular in Rome—Nero accused her of adultery and had her executed.

Poppaea herself died in 65 AD, reportedly kicked to death by Nero during an argument while she was pregnant. Ancient sources present this as deliberate murder; some modern historians suggest it may have been a pregnancy complication that gossip transformed into something more sinister. We'll never know.

What we do know is that Nero's behavior grew increasingly erratic. He participated in a mock wedding ceremony with a freedman named Pythagoras, playing the role of the bride—another shocking violation of Roman social norms. He began work on a new palace, the Domus Aurea or "Golden House," a sprawling complex covering parts of three of Rome's seven hills, with a revolving dining room and a 120-foot bronze statue of Nero himself as the sun god.

The costs were staggering. Provinces were squeezed for tribute. Property was confiscated. The aristocracy seethed.

The Empire Strikes Back

Despite Nero's domestic excesses, the empire itself remained relatively stable. On the eastern frontier, his general Corbulo fought a long war against the Parthian Empire over control of Armenia—a buffer state that both powers considered vital to their security. The war ended in 63 AD with a diplomatic compromise: Armenia would be ruled by a Parthian prince, but that prince would receive his crown from Rome. It was a face-saving solution that preserved peace for generations.

In Britain, the general Suetonius Paulinus crushed a massive rebellion led by Queen Boudica of the Iceni. Boudica's revolt had destroyed three Roman cities and killed tens of thousands; its suppression secured Roman control of Britain for another three centuries.

In Judea, tensions between the Jewish population and Roman authorities finally boiled over into open revolt in 66 AD. Nero dispatched his general Vespasian to deal with the uprising—a decision that would have consequences he never lived to see.

The Fall

By 68 AD, Nero had alienated nearly everyone who mattered. The Senate despised him. The army felt neglected—he had spent lavishly on entertainments but stinted on military pay. Provincial governors watched the chaos in Rome and began making calculations.

In March, Gaius Julius Vindex, the governor of Gaul, raised the standard of revolt. His forces were defeated, but the rebellion spread. Servius Sulpicius Galba, the governor of Spain, declared himself emperor. The Praetorian Guard, sensing which way the wind was blowing, switched their allegiance to Galba.

The Senate declared Nero a public enemy and condemned him to death—specifically, to be executed "in the ancient manner," which involved being stripped naked, having his head fixed in a wooden fork, and being beaten to death with rods.

Nero fled Rome with a handful of loyal servants. On June 9, 68 AD, holed up in a villa outside the city with horsemen closing in, he decided to take matters into his own hands. He lacked the courage to do it himself. A servant helped guide the blade.

His last words, according to Suetonius: "What an artist dies in me!"

The Aftermath

Nero's death didn't bring stability. Instead, it triggered the "Year of the Four Emperors"—a brutal civil war that saw Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and finally Vespasian all claim the purple in rapid succession. By the time the dust settled, the Julio-Claudian dynasty that had ruled Rome since Augustus was extinct, and a new family—the Flavians—sat on the throne.

Vespasian, the general Nero had sent to suppress the Jewish revolt, became emperor. He immediately set about dismantling Nero's legacy, tearing down the Golden House and building the Colosseum on its grounds—a monument for the Roman people on land Nero had claimed for himself.

But something strange happened in the eastern provinces. Among the common people, especially in Greece and Asia Minor, Nero remained beloved. Rumors spread that he hadn't really died, that he had escaped and would return to reclaim his throne. At least three different pretenders emerged over the following decades, each claiming to be Nero returned. The last appeared as late as 89 AD—more than twenty years after the real Nero's death.

The legend of Nero Redivivus—Nero Reborn—persisted for centuries, eventually merging with Christian apocalyptic traditions. Some early Christians believed Nero was the Beast described in the Book of Revelation, and that he would return at the end of times.

The Verdict of History

So who was Nero, really?

The ancient sources are nearly unanimous: a tyrant, a matricide, a pyromaniac, a persecutor of innocents. But these sources were written by aristocrats and senators—exactly the people Nero had antagonized with his taxes, his entertainments, and his fundamental lack of respect for traditional hierarchies.

Modern historians are more cautious. They note that Nero's early reign was genuinely well-administered, that his economic policies were sound, that his diplomacy on the Parthian frontier was sophisticated. They point out that the common people of Rome clearly loved him, and that this affection persisted long after his death.

The truth is probably this: Nero was neither the monster of legend nor an unappreciated hero. He was a young man thrust into absolute power with a domineering mother, surrounded by flatterers, with no one willing to tell him no. When he finally broke free of his mother's control, he had no internal compass to guide him. He indulged every whim, pursued every pleasure, and when things went wrong, he lashed out with the terrifying power at his command.

His story is a warning about what happens when absolute power meets human weakness—and a reminder that the historical record is always written by someone with an agenda.

Two thousand years later, we're still arguing about who Nero really was. That alone makes him one of history's most fascinating figures.