Nero

Nero was Roman emperor from AD 54 to 68, the fifth and last ruler of the Julio-Claudian dynasty founded by Augustus. He came to the throne at sixteen, had his mother and his first wife killed, performed in public as a singer and charioteer, and was blamed for the Great Fire of Rome, after which he punished Christians in the city. Deserted by the army and the Senate, he took his own life, and his death opened a year of civil war. The ancient writers who describe him were hostile, and modern historians debate how far their portrait can be trusted.

He was born Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus on 15 December 37 at Antium (Anzio), south of Rome. His father, Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus, came from an old noble family and died when the boy was about three. His mother, Agrippina the Younger, was a great-granddaughter of Augustus and the sister of the emperor Caligula, who exiled her for a time. In 49 Agrippina married her uncle, the emperor Claudius, and in 50 Claudius adopted her son, who took the name Nero Claudius Caesar. Nero was given precedence over Claudius's own son, Britannicus, and married Claudius's daughter Octavia in 53. His tutor was the Stoic philosopher Seneca.

When Claudius died in October 54, ancient writers say poisoned by Agrippina, although this cannot be proved, the Praetorian Guard proclaimed Nero emperor and the Senate confirmed him. Britannicus died suddenly at a dinner a few months later, and Tacitus and Suetonius report that Nero had him poisoned.

For the first years, government was guided by Seneca and the praetorian prefect Sextus Afranius Burrus, and later Romans remembered this period as a time of good rule. Nero promised to respect the Senate, reduced some taxes, and showed little interest in the details of administration. His mother, who had expected to share power, was gradually pushed aside. In 59 Nero had her killed: according to the sources, an attempt to drown her in a collapsing boat failed, and she was then murdered at her villa on his orders.

After Burrus died in 62 and Seneca withdrew from public life, Nero relied on the harsh new prefect Tigellinus. He divorced Octavia, who was exiled and then put to death, and married Poppaea Sabina. Treason trials were revived. Nero's passion for Greek culture grew more open: he sang to the lyre, wrote poetry, raced chariots and in 64 appeared on stage in Naples. To the Roman aristocracy this was a disgrace, since performers were among the lowest in society, but it seems to have made him popular with ordinary people, for whom he also staged lavish games.

Abroad, Nero's reign saw serious conflict. In Britain, the revolt of Boudica in 60 or 61 destroyed three Roman towns before it was suppressed. In the East, the general Corbulo fought a long war with the Parthian Empire over Armenia, ending in a compromise: the Parthian prince Tiridates kept the Armenian throne but travelled to Rome in 66 to be crowned by Nero in a spectacular ceremony. In 66 a great revolt broke out in Judaea, and Nero sent the general Vespasian to put it down, beginning the war that ended with the destruction of Jerusalem in 70.

In July 64 a fire broke out near the Circus Maximus and burned for about nine days, destroying or damaging much of the city. Nero was at Antium when it began. He returned, opened public buildings and his own gardens to the homeless and organised food supplies, and new building rules followed, with wider streets and limits on wooden construction. A rumour spread that he had started the fire, or that he had sung of the fall of Troy while Rome burned. Tacitus reports the rumour without endorsing it, and most historians think the fire was an accident; the image of Nero fiddling is a later invention, since the fiddle did not yet exist.

To deflect blame, Tacitus says, Nero accused the Christians of the city, a small and unpopular group, and had many of them killed in cruel ways: torn apart by dogs, crucified or burned as torches. This is the earliest pagan account of the persecution of Christianity, and Christian tradition holds that the apostles Peter and Paul were executed under Nero, though the exact circumstances are uncertain. On the land cleared by the fire Nero built the Domus Aurea, the Golden House, a vast palace with parks and an artificial lake, which deepened the suspicion against him.

The costs of rebuilding and of the Golden House strained the treasury, and Nero reduced the silver and gold content of the coinage. In 65 a conspiracy of senators and officers led by Gaius Calpurnius Piso was discovered. Many were executed or forced to kill themselves, including Seneca and the poet Lucan. Poppaea died the same year, according to Suetonius after Nero kicked her while she was pregnant. In 66 to 67 Nero toured Greece, competing in the great festivals, including the Olympic Games, where he was declared victor even after falling from his chariot. He proclaimed the freedom of the province from Roman taxation and began a canal across the Isthmus of Corinth, abandoned after his death. Corbulo, the most successful general of the reign, was ordered to commit suicide.

In March 68 Gaius Julius Vindex, governor of part of Gaul, rebelled, and the elderly governor of Spain, Galba, joined him. Vindex was defeated, but the support for Nero collapsed. The Praetorian Guard abandoned him, and the Senate declared him a public enemy. On 9 June 68, hiding in the villa of his freedman Phaon outside Rome, he stabbed himself in the throat with the help of his secretary. Suetonius reports his last words as a lament about what an artist was dying in him. His death was followed by the Year of the Four Emperors, in which Galba, Otho and Vitellius rose and fell before Vespasian took power.

The surviving accounts of Nero, by Tacitus, Suetonius and Cassius Dio, were written decades later by members of the senatorial class he had humiliated, and they portray him as a cruel, vain and debauched tyrant. Some modern historians, such as Edward Champlin, have argued that much of this is distorted and that Nero was a showman who remained popular with ordinary people, especially in the Greek East. That popularity is shown by the appearance of at least three impostors claiming to be Nero in the years after his death. Few doubt, however, that he ordered the deaths of his mother, his wife and many others. In Christian tradition Nero became the archetypal persecutor, and some early Christian writers linked him with the Antichrist. His name has remained a byword for tyranny in the history of the Roman Empire.