The emperor of Rome was Nero. After the death of his father, he became the ruler of the Roman Empire. The last ruler of the Giuseppe-Claudian dynasty, he killed himself after being assassinated or abandoned by his allies.
Nero has become one of the most notorious men of all time due to the apocryphal story that he fiddled while Rome burned in a great fire. He murdered his mother, his first wife, and his second wife. He is said to have started the great fire of Rome in 64 A.D. to rebuild the city center.
There is evidence that Nero had some level of popular support. He had a passion for music and the arts and gave a performance in Rome in 65 A.D., but he was blamed for starting the fire and took it upon himself to organize relief efforts.
He let slip no opportunity for acts of generosity and mercy, or even for displaying his affability, wrote the otherwise critical Suetonius in the 2nd century A.D.
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Nero was born in Antium, Italy, on December 15, 37 A.D., to his mother and father. When he was 3 years old, his father died and his mother was thrown out of the Roman empire, leaving him in the care of an aunt. His name was Ahenobarbus when he was born.
After the murder of Caligula, mother and son were together again. His mother was ambitious and married Claudius, who was also her uncle, in 49 A.D., and she saw to it that he adopted her son, giving him a new name that started with Nero.
After Nero became emperor, he chose his adopted son, Claudius, over his own biological son, Britannicus, to be his heir apparent.
Nero became emperor at the age of 17 after being poisoned with a mushroom. Hareth Al Bustani, author of Nero and the Art of Tyranny, wrote that Nero actually stuck to his word, reversing egregious laws and restoring authority to the Senate.
The emperor gave 400 sesterces to every citizen, greeted soldiers by name, introduced a salary for impoverished senators, and built a beautiful new market.
His mother remained influential. In the first two years of Nero's reign, his coins depicted him side by side with his mother. She managed for him all the business of the empire and sent letters to various communities, governors and kings.
Within two years of becoming emperor, Nero and his mother had a falling out. After 55 A.D., her face stopped appearing on Roman coins, and she lost her power in favor of the Praetorian Guard, who advised Nero on military affairs.
She tried to assert herself by strolling over and sitting next to Nero, as if she were his equal, when a group of Armenian diplomats came to visit. Al Bustani wrote that Seneca ran over and met her half way, blocking her from joining her son. When Nero cheated on his wife, they fell out even more.
The reason for Nero ordering his mom to be killed was that she was going to kill him. Whatever the reason, Nero knew that he was making a decision that could haunt him.
Nero ordered naval troops to sink the boat that she was going to sail on. His mother swimming to shore failed the first attempt. The assassins were ordered by Nero to do the job.
When the troops came to kill her, Tacitus told them that she had recovered from the sinking boat, but if they were to do a crime, she wouldn't believe it.
After Nero was born, an astrologer told Agrippina that he would rule one day, but only after killing. Al Bustani wrote that she spat back, "Let him kill me, only let him rule!"
Nero found his actions appreciated. He was praised by the senators for killing his mother. The report on the murder was written by Seneca.
Al Bustani says that the death of Agrippina appears to have changed Nero's rule, as he paid less attention to his advisors. He began paving the way towards his public debut as Apollo, the sun god of chariots and song.
The Roman elite was annoyed by the number of festivals and public celebrations of the emperor, but the plebeian class enjoyed them. The marriage of Nero and Octavia was falling apart. They were unable to have a child, and the two were estranged.
After several attempts to kill her, he divorced her on the ground of barrenness, and when the people reproached him, he put her to death on a charge of adultery.
It is possible that Nero killed her to protect his position as emperor. As Shotter notes, a large part of Nero's legitimacy was based on the fact that he was married to his daughter and that he was the adopted son of Claudius. The death did not go over well with the public, as Al Bustani points out, as riots broke out when news of the death spread.
Nero married Poppaea Sabina in the year 62 A.D., and she gave birth to their daughter in January 63 A.D., but she died three months later.
Poppaea died while she was pregnant again. Ancient writers say Nero killed her with a kick. A poem from Egypt casts doubt on this, showing Poppaea in the afterlife wanting to stay with Nero.
The story about the kick in the belly cannot be true because the poet is trying to tell you that Poppaea loves her husband, according to the researcher who worked on the text.
On the night of July 18th, a fire broke out in the Circus Maximus that raged for six days, leaving little of the city undamaged. Historians agree that Nero was at Antium at the time of Rome's burning. He returned to Rome to oversee the relief efforts.
Nero responded quickly, opening up his gardens to the homeless, and launching a massive reconstruction drive. The city was in shock. The Golden House, Nero's plan for a huge palace with a revolving dining room and perfume dispensers, caused some to theorize that he had set the fire himself to make way for the Vanity.
Nero is often blamed for starting the fire, but this is not certain. The city of Rome was made with a lot of material that was dangerous.
The Christians were blamed by Nero after the flames died down. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as nightly illumination when daylight had expired.
Nero took advantage of the space that was left after the fire. He started work on his new palace called the Domus Aurea, which was said to include a statue of him, at the entranceway.
There would be bloodshed in places throughout the empire. In 60 A.D., the Iceni Queen Boudica rose in rebellion after her daughters were raped by Roman soldiers. King Prasutagus made a deal with Claudius that would see him rule as a client-king. The officials appointed by Nero ignored his death and took Iceni land.
Over the course of a few years, Boudica was able to overrun a number of Roman settlements and military units. The Roman commander on the island, Gaius Suetonius Paulinus, massed a force of 10,000 men and defeated Boudica at the Battle of Watling Street.
Rome had military trouble in other places during Nero's reign. Rome had to give up plans to annex the kingdom of Armenia in order to avoid a war with Parthia in the east. A rebellion in Judea near the end of Nero's reign would eventually lead to the siege of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Second Temple. The abandonment of Qumran was one effect of this.
There was growing discontent with Nero at home and a group of people were planning to assassinate him. The tribune Subrius Flavus said that he began to hate you when you turned into the murderer of your mother and wife.
Not all of Nero's dealings ended in violence. After the death of his second wife and child, Nero went to Greece, which had been under Roman control for two centuries.
Shotter writes that Nero won 1,808 first prizes for his artistic presentations at Greek festivals. The Greeks agreed to delay the Olympic Games so that Nero could compete in them, according to the book Nero: The End of a Dynasty.
Edward Champlin wrote in his book that the athletic contests were added for the first time to include singing and acting for Nero's sake.
In one dangerous race, he fell out of his chariot, but the Hellenic Judges in charge of the games still granted him the wreath of victory.
Nero rewarded the Greeks with a tax exemption because he was so happy with the results of his trip to Greece.
The trip to Rome was a distraction from the events in Rome. Nero was losing control of the Praetorians after taking Tigellinus with him. It was only when Helius showed up in person that Nero decided to come back.
When he returned to Rome, he didn't speak to anyone directly, and instead gave a lecture on musical instruments to the senate.
The problems Nero faced were growing. He killed his mother, first wife and second wife. The construction of his golden house was putting a strain on the empire. He was forced to raise taxes and take religious treasures.
After the fire of Rome in 64 A.D., Nero took votive offerings from temples in Rome and Italy as well as hundreds of cult statues from temples in Greece and Asia.
The support of Nero began to fall apart. In April of 64, a Roman governor in Gaul named Gaius Iulius Vindex declared his support for Galba, then in Spain, for emperor, according to Shotter. After his forces were defeated by German legions in May, Vindex killed himself.
The Praetorian Guard, the force charged with guarding the emperor himself, abandoned their support for Nero after the Senate declared him an enemy of the people.
He took his own life the following day. His last words were said to be "what an artist dies in me!", and Shotter notes that his long-time mistress Acte was by his side.
A succession of emperors tried to gain control of the empire after Nero died. According to Shotter, Nero still had a lot of popular support and one of these emperors, Otho, even renamed himself in his honor.
Many people believe that Nero did not kill himself in June.
The decades that followed Nero's death saw a number of appearances in the East of imposters, a sign that some in the Roman Empire still approved of the man.
Though Nero died at just 30 years old, he left a legacy that would endure for thousands of years, with some denigrating him as the antichrist, and others wishing he would return to save Rome.
Nero's mother, Agrippina, was an incredibly powerful and influential woman, but she wasn't the only powerful female figure from Roman history.
If you want to learn more about the role of emperor in Ancient Rome, you should go back to the beginning and the story of Julius Caesar.
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