EMPEROR NERO: hero or zero?

What can be said about Nero? What can’t be said about Nero? He was, to be sure, a bad man by any definition of the term. But that only goes so far in explaining why we still find the figure of Nero so compelling two millennia later. Nero’s badness is akin to that of Benito Mussolini-while the two men would have been Hitlers, their idiosyncrasies both foiled their dreams and make them oddly endearing to us. Nero wasn’t simply ridiculous-he was colossally ridiculous. Nero aspired to be a god, or at the very least, a monster, but in the final analysis, he’s only human.

Nero kicked off his life of crime on in the year AD 37. The seeds of Nero’s wild life, though, begin not with him, but with his mother, a woman by the name of Agrippina (his father was a no-account noble Roman). Agrippina was the granddaughter of Augustus, the first Emperor, who managed to marry Claudius, the Emperor, and also her uncle. The people of Rome were mildly scandalized by this turn of events, but they got over it. Claudius already had a son, the poor Britannicus, but Agrippina thought that her boy Nero would make a better emperor. Nero’s imperial credentials were polished by his marriage-at the tender age of 15-to Claudius’s daughter Octavia, who was his step-sister and second cousin, and on top of all of this only 11. The same year, Claudius died under rather suspicious circumstances (poisoned mushrooms, presumably poisoned by his dear wife), and Nero, with Agrippina behind him, became the Emperor of Rome. Arrangements were made to make Claudius a god, the people were satisfied with Nero’s step-filial devotion, and he was set for life.

Nero’s first years as Emperor were not all that exciting, mostly because he was not really in charge-wielding the real power were his mother and his teachers Seneca and Burrus. Having little to do, the young Nero enrolled himself in a youth gang, and went about in disguise at night, mugging people on the street, managing, on at least one occasion, to murder a senator. Meanwhile, his mother and his teachers were increasingly at odds, and Agrippina decided to support Britaniccus (Claudius’ other son, remember) as a possible replacement Emperor-while Britannicus was unemployed, at least he was not in a street gang. Nero got wind of this and decided that it would be politically expedient to have his dear mother murdered. First, though, he got Brittanicus out of the way-following his mother’s example, he went with poison, which worked like a charm. Murdering his actual mother, though, was not quite so easy, and it took Nero a few tries to get it right. He tried to poison her, but she proved too clever for this. Then he arranged to have the ceiling of her room fall in on her, but she found out about that. Nero sat down and thought about the situation, and realized that what it really called for was a collapsible boat-here again, the roof would fall in, but if that didn’t work, he could have the boat sunk. It was too good a plan not to work. Alas, he had not reckoned on his mother’s swimming ability. At that point, Nero realized his error in straying from orthodoxy, and hired some guys with daggers to stab her to death.

With mother out of the way, Nero took charge of his empire. And his eleven years of empire flew by, a nightmarish haze of drugs, sex, and theatre, that, by all accounts (the most interesting being the life of Nero given by  Suetonius in The Twelve Cæsars), he enjoyed very much. Seneca and Burrus were still running things in the background, but Nero eventually got tired of them, and had Seneca kill himself. Burrus had the good sense to die of old age. His wife, meanwhile, was not keeping him very happy: no children had come along to make him a happy father. So poor Octavia was banished, while Nero had affairs with the local ladies. Banishing his wife, however, would not placate Nero’s restless soul, so he had her killed, and he married Poppaea Sabina, a noble Roman lady. Poppaea had a daughter, but she died. Nero was not amused by this.

Nero is best remembered, however, for his alleged part in the fire that burned down most of Rome on the night of 18 July, 64. Opinion remains divided as to whether Nero started the fire, though it seems improbable: first, he was out of town at the time, and secondly, Nero did want the people to love him. Nero did, of course, take advantage of the fire, not only to build his colossal house (see below) but also to blame the early Christian community, kicking off a good century of persecutions. Blame having been taken care of, Nero went on having fun. He innagurated a set of athletic games which took place in AD 60 and 64, Neronia I and II; in the second set, he took up public performance. In 66, he decided to go to Greece to become a famous actor. He sang, he danced, he played the lute. And the people loved him. They had to love him. He was Nero.

Alas, things began to fall apart for Nero at home. The Empire was not going all that well, and the army and the Senate (along with a significant part of the Roman people) were no longer amused by Nero’s antics. He was making the Empire look foolish. Finally, Nero was declared a  public enemy by the Senate. He tried to escape, running away with a choice group of friends, but finally, even his friends told him that he was being a coward, and that the best thing to do would be to take it like a man and just kill himself. So he did, very sadly: in the manner of the times, he opened his veins, and died very slowly and sadly. Poor Nero.  Poor, poor Nero.

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