Nero's
Reign

Nero's reign
lasted from
AD 15 to
AD 68

Roman Coliseum
(full story here)

I caught myself here. I was going to say that Nero would rather be off strumming his lute or acting on stage than watching people kill each other in the coliseum.

But the coliseum did not exist during Nero's time. Construction began in about 70 A.D. and ended around 80 A.D. Nero was dead by 68 A.D.

There were gladitorial fights and public attendance of events of this nature, but usually in smaller venues - not on the scale of the coliseum.

The story of the coliseum and the gladiators finds its roots in religious funeral celebration. Originally these games were not the bloodthirsty spectacles we know them as - they were meant to honour the recently departed by way of funeral services. Gradually over time, the event evolved into the killing pool we best remember it as.

For more information on the Roman Coliseum click here.

Thanks for coming

Nero had grand visions, but made fatal mistakes

The story of Nero, one of the cruelist emperors of the Roman Empire, is one of the sadest stories to ever be told. He was very immature, did not take the duties of emperor very seriously, and it ultimately led to his downfall. Not that those are the only reasons to suffer a downfall as emperor of the Roman Empire. Many other emperors suffered similar fates, for various different reasons.

It was only by pure luck and chance that an emperor lived to what was then considered old age - in those days, a citizen of Rome, or Italy, or of anywhere probably, was considered old if they lived to 50 or more. People died in those days for reasons that would keep us in hospital overnight. They could not perform blood transfusions for example. Unless the flow of blood from a serious wound could be stemmed, you could simply bleed to death.

It is also interesting to note that because of the rampant promiscuity of the times (not much has changed), in some cases you would not know who your brother, sister, uncle, aunt, or even mother or father were. There was no way to prove relation.

There was a lot of sleeping around in those days among the Roman 'elite' - cousins would marry cousins and even brothers and sisters would marry - this method would retain the 'bloodline' of the ruling class. Caligula was known to sleep with his own sister. One likely result from this would be mental abnormalities from inbreeding - too much similar DNA in the gene pool.

The saying goes, "when in Rome...." So, you are the product of the time you live, so Nero cannot really be faulted for what he did. He saw so much debauchery and mayhem around him, he just emulated it. He would probably have been just as hated or ridiculed if he had tried to change the way things were done.

He came to power as a teenager. The job was hard enough let alone acquiring the highest power in the most powerful nation at the time as a teenager - it must have been like getting into the candy dish without mom and dad seeing.

I don't understand why those became emperor did not do more to ensure they were well liked. Most men who became emperor were murdered. Also, people around the emperor dropped like flies. As we know, these people included mothers and wives. It was a very dangerous occupation. I suppose it was just a fact of life that everyone accepted.

Quo Vadis? is an excellent movie and Peter Ustinov does a superb job portraying Nero. The movie takes liberties of course - it is not known that Nero was responsible for the great fire and that he sang and strummed his lute while Rome burned (but he did have a massive rebuilding project on the burner which became his Golden House). The movie throws in a romantic plot between Robert Taylor and Deborah Kerr. It is doubtful that such an affair would evolve between a Roman soldier and a Christian - but possible I suppose.

The film shows Nero committing suicide in the palace with the help of an aide. Other accounts had him fleeing the palace and eventually being cornered in a run-down building, where he apparently died from a stab wound to the neck. He was very high on himself for sure - when the Golden House was completed, he was quoted as saying that he could now finally live like a human being. And just before the knife blade entered his throat, he was to say what an artist Rome loses in him. Apparently he was an accomplished musician and songwriter, but not a prodigy.

Leo Genn portrayed Petronius

This time in Roman history is considered truly evolutionary, which is was. The Romans, borrowing from the Estrucians and the Greeks, founded laws and were very organized in the government structure; they built roads and of course buildings which still stand today. That is quite a feat to build a road 2,000 years ago that you can still walk or drive down today; some of the architecture was the first of its kind. But even with all this, call it civilized perhaps, you had murder and mayhem on a large scale. The emperor's own guardsmen could hunt him down and string him to a tree, and everyone would talk about how horrible he was, yet, not soon after an emperor's death, the senate would proclaim him a god and erect a building or statue in his honour. Most emperors who were disposed of and killed were later honoured in this way.

It is even said that some people who were loyal to Nero wept and even threw themselves on his funeral pyre. He was responsible for many deaths, including his own mother. He sent her off on some errand by boat, but the boat was rigged to sink. She did not drown, and in fact showed considerable stamina by swimming to land. Nero then had soldiers go there to finish her off.

So nasty was this society that really no one was safe if the emperor decided you were to die. In the film I, Claudius, a soldier and his family are murdered after it was found out that the soldier was scheming behind the emperor's back. The soldier had young children. The film shows a soldier ordering another soldier into the room where the children are to kill them. He apparently has no problem disposing of the boy, but he comes out of the room and tells 'his boss' he cannot kill the girl, adding, 'she is a virgin'. His boss responds, 'well then make sure she is not a virgin when she dies'.

The following contains more specific information about Nero's life:

The death of Claudius in 54 A.D., generally thought to have been planned and carried out by his wife Agrippina Minor, secured for her son Nero the place as emperor which she had so carefully arranged. Before his death, Claudius, though he already had a son Britannicus, had adopted Nero at Agrippina's instigation. Since Nero was only an adolescent, the early part of his reign was characterized by direction from older figures, including Agrippina. Some scholars see a struggle between Agrippina against Seneca and Burrus for control of the young emperor, and when Agrippina began to show favor to Britannicus, a legitimate (though slightly younger) heir and possible rival, Britannicus' murder was arranged (55 A.D.) and Agrippina's authority displaced.

The traditional portrait of Nero's dissolute life derives at least in part from the years which followed soon after his accession; the attraction of Poppaea Sabina who was married first to Rufrius Crispinus then to Otho (himself a close friend of Nero), may have had same connection with the divorce, exile, and murder of Nero's first wife, Octavia, Claudius' daughter. Poppaea became Nero's mistress in 58 A.D., and the next year Agrippina herself was murdered, with Nero's knowledge. Burrus and Seneca continued in their guidance until 62 A.D. when the former died and the latter entered retirement. In their place that year appeared a counselor, Gaius Ofonius Tigellinus, who had been exiled in 39 A.D. by Caligula for adultery with Agrippina, but who returned to find favor with Nero and a post for himself as praetorian prefect, from which position he exerted a further degenerating influence on Nero.

Poppaea and Nero married in 62 A.D., and she bore a daughter to him the next year, but the child died only a few months later. In 64 A.D. a great fire left much of the city in ruins, and while it is not certain that Nero himself had the fires set, it is true that his ambitious building campaign, which followed the fires (and in particular the construction of the Domus Aurea), represented to many a private selfishness at a time when public reconstruction was most needed. In 65 A.D. Nero's artistic inclinations, present since his accession, became truly public, and in a display which shocked conservative tastes he appeared on stage and sang for audiences.

His enemies had become numerous, and that same year a plot to assassinate Nero and to replace him with Gaius Calpurnius Piso was both formulated and betrayed; many were forced to commit suicide in connection with the Pisonian conspiracy. In 66 A.D. Nero left Rome altogether for a tour of Greece, during which his extravagances alienated him further still from general citizens and military commanders alike. More crucially, in his paranoia after the conspiracy he ordered a popular and successful general, Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo, to commit suicide, a decision which left other provincial leaders in doubt about his next move and inclined toward rebellion rather than inaction.

In 68 A.D. Vindex revolted in Lugdunensis, as did Clodius Macer in Africa. Galba declared his allegiance to the Senate and the Roman people, rather than to Nero. Such unrest in the provinces, coupled with intrigue at Rome among the praetorians, provided Nero's enemies, especially within the Senate, with their chance to depose him. He committed suicide on 9 June 68 A.D.

Nero, last of the Julio-Claudians, had been placed in the difficult position of absolute authority at a young age coupled with the often-contradictory efforts of those in a position to manipulate him. Augustus, however, had not been much older when he began his bid for power, and so a great deal of the responsibility for Nero's conduct must also rest with the man himself. Nero's reign was not without military operations (e.g., the campaigns of Corbulo against the Parthians, the suppression of the revolt of Boudicca in Britain), but his neglect of the armies was a critical error.

He left Rome not to review his troops but to compete in Greek games, and as a further slight had left a freedman, Helius, in his place at Rome to govern in his absence. The suspicion which surrounded him after the treason trials and the conspiracy set the stage for a series of civil upheavals, "the Year of the Four Emperors," which included the rise to power of men such as Otho in Lusitania and Vespasian in Judaea, whom Nero himself had sent to the frontiers, unaware that they were to become his successors.

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