Nero
Nero became emperor at seventeen, the day that Claudius died. Like Caligula had wanted when he took power, Nero wanted to rule well. And, like Caligula, he craved public adoration. But he was never able to bear frustrations with patience. His mother became an irritant, and in the year 59 he had her murdered. Following this, Nero became more defensive and by the year 61 he had re-instituted treason trials.
His wife, Octavia, grew to hate him, and he feared that she was spreading dislike of him in his household and at court. He had her charged with treason and executed in the year 62. He had a love interest at this time, remarried and exercised this power against his next wife, Poppaea Sabina, one of the many attractive women across history who sought association with men of wealth and fame. She married Nero in 62.
In the year 64 was the great fire in Rome. It burned wooden tenement houses, which were as high as six stories, and it burned the home of the wealthy, including Nero's palace. According to the historian Tacitus, who wrote decades later, many Romans many believed the rumor that Nero had started the fire to make space for his new great mansion, and they pitied Christians who were blamed for the fire, believing that instead of being sacrificed for the welfare of the state, the Christians were being sacrificed as Nero's scapegoats.
The popularity Nero had wanted escaped him. Military commanders outside Rome were aware of Nero's unpopularity. Nero didn't realize where the real power was. In 68, he ordered the execution of his military commander in Spain, Servius Galba. With nothing to lose, Galba declared himself a subject of the Senate and Rome's citizens rather than of the emperor. Galba and his army headed for Rome. Realizing that he was powerless, Nero ran through his palace screaming hysterically. The Senate aroused itself, declared Nero a public enemy and ordered his execution. Soldiers closed in on Nero at his villa. The family dynasty begun by Augustus was at an end 54 years after it had begun. With Senate approval, power passed to Servius Galba. An era of rule by military men had begun.
Nero was the last emperor of the Julio-Claudian family, a dynasty that had lasted only 54 years following the death of its founder, Augustus – not an ucommon length of time for a ruling dynasty, but much shorter than some other dynasties elsewhere in the world.
Perhaps the most infamous of Rome’s emperors, Nero Claudius Caesar (37-68 A.D.) ruled Rome from 54 A.D. until his death by suicide 14 years later. He is best known for his debaucheries, political murders, persecution of Christians and a passion for music that led to the probably apocryphal rumor that Nero “fiddled” while Rome burned during the great fire of 64 A.D.
NERO’S MURDEROUS PATH TO POWER
Born Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, Nero took his familiar name when he was adopted at age 13 by his great-uncle, the emperor Claudius (his father, Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus, had died when the future emperor was only 2). Nero’s mother, Agrippina the Younger, had married Claudius after arranging the death of her second husband and was the driving force behind her son’s adoption. She arranged for Nero to wed Claudius’ daughter Octavia in 53, further sidelining the emperor’s son Britannicus. Upon Claudius’ sudden death in 54—classical sources suggest Agrippina fed him poisoned mushrooms—the 17-year-old Nero ascended the throne.
In his first five years as emperor, Nero gained a reputation for political generosity, promoting power-sharing with the Senate and ending closed-door political trials, though he generally pursued his own passions and left the ruling up to three key advisers—the Stoic philosopher Seneca, the prefect Burrus and ultimately Agrippina.
Eventually Seneca encouraged Nero to step out from his domineering mother’s shadow. She turned against him, promoting her stepson Britannicus as the true heir to the throne and protesting Nero’s affair with his friend’s wife Poppaea Sabina. But Nero had learned his mother’s lessons well: Brittanicus soon died under dubious circumstances, and in 59, after a failed plot to drown her in a collapsible boat, Nero had Agrippina stabbed to death in her villa. The empress Octavia was exiled and executed, and in 62 Nero and Poppaea were married. Three years later, in what the Roman historian Tacitus described as “a casual outburst of rage,” Nero killed Poppea with a single kick to her belly.
NERO: THE ARTIST AND THE FIRE
Following his mother’s death, Nero gave himself fully to his longstanding artistic and aesthetic passions. At private events beginning in 59, he sang and performed on the lyre and encouraged members of the upper classes to take dancing lessons. He ordered public games to be held every five years in Rome and trained as an athlete himself, competing as a charioteer. His most lasting artistic legacy, though, was his re-creation of Rome following the fire that destroyed most of the city.
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