Nero

Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus was born Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus on 15 December AD 37 at Antium, the only son of the disreputable politician Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus and Agrippina the Younger, great-granddaughter of Augustus. When his father congratulated friends on the birth, he is said to have remarked that any child born to him and Agrippina would have a detestable nature and become a public danger. The father died when Nero was three, his inheritance was seized by the reigning emperor Caligula, and Nero was sent to live with an aunt. His mother's marriage to her uncle Claudius in AD 49 transformed his prospects: she persuaded Claudius to adopt Nero as heir in AD 50, sidelining the emperor's natural son Britannicus. When Claudius died in October AD 54 — most ancient historians believe Agrippina poisoned him with mushrooms — the sixteen-year-old Nero ascended to the throne with the backing of the Praetorian Guard.

His first speech to the Senate, written by Seneca, promised an end to secret trials and a return to Augustan principles. For five years a remarkable government followed, guided by Seneca and the praetorian prefect Burrus: corruption among tax collectors was curbed, slaves were given the right to file complaints against masters, judicial transparency was restored, and Nero even proposed (in AD 58) the abolition of all indirect taxes — a measure the Senate quietly buried. Trajan would later call these years the Quinquennium Neronis, a benchmark for good Roman government. Nero also patronised the arts on an unprecedented scale, sponsoring games, building amphitheatres, and performing himself as singer, poet, charioteer and tragedian. Roman aristocrats were appalled — such occupations were the work of slaves and entertainers — but the common people loved him for it.

The slide began in AD 55 with the poisoning of Britannicus, and accelerated when Nero tired of his mother's interference. In AD 59 he had Agrippina killed: a botched shipwreck was followed by the freedman Anicetus stabbing her at her villa. His tutor Burrus died in AD 62; Seneca, isolated, withdrew from public life. The same year Nero divorced his wife Octavia on charges of infertility, banished her, and had her executed after public protests. He married Poppaea Sabina; in AD 65, while she was pregnant with their second child, he is said to have kicked her to death, though modern historians suspect miscarriage or death in childbirth. After the Pisonian conspiracy was uncovered the same year, Seneca and many senators were ordered to commit suicide.

The Great Fire of Rome began on the night of 18-19 July AD 64 and burned for seven days, destroying three of the city's fourteen districts. Tacitus records that Nero returned from Antium to direct relief efforts in person, opened his palaces to shelter the homeless, and paid for food from his own funds. But to deflect rumours that he had started the fire to clear ground for his Golden House, he arrested Christians as scapegoats — some were thrown to wild beasts, some crucified, some burned alive as living torches. This was the first organised state persecution of Christians and would weigh permanently on his reputation. Rebuilding required heavy new taxes on the provinces and the first debasement of Roman coinage in imperial history.

On the foreign-policy front the regime had real successes. The general Corbulo's campaigns in Armenia produced a durable settlement with the Parthians: Tiridates was crowned king of Armenia in a ceremony at Rome in AD 66, and peace between the two empires lasted half a century. In Britain, the governor Suetonius Paulinus crushed Boudica's revolt of AD 60-61, and Nero replaced him with a more conciliatory successor when reports of harsh reprisals reached Rome. The First Jewish-Roman War broke out in AD 66, and Nero dispatched Vespasian — a competent general he had previously snubbed for falling asleep at one of his concerts — to put it down. These were not the decisions of an idiot.

In AD 66-67 Nero toured Greece, fixing Olympic and other festival victories for himself and accumulating 1,808 crowns. The military and Senate were furious. In March AD 68, Vindex, governor of Gallia Lugdunensis, rebelled, soon joined by Galba in Spain and the prefect of the Praetorian Guard. Declared a public enemy by the Senate, Nero fled to a freedman's villa outside Rome and on 9 June AD 68 forced himself to suicide, the secretary Epaphroditus finishing the blow when his nerve failed. His reported last words — Qualis artifex pereo ("What an artist the world is losing") — captured the self-image of an emperor who never separated rule from performance. He was thirty. With him the Julio-Claudian dynasty ended after ninety-four years across five emperors, and Rome plunged into the Year of the Four Emperors. Modern historians increasingly note that contemporary sources are deeply biased — Tacitus, Suetonius, and Cassius Dio all wrote 50-180 years later for senatorial readerships — and that Nero retained genuine popularity among the lower classes and in the East. At least three Nero impostors led short-lived revolts in the decades after his death, banking on the belief that the emperor would return. The dispute over his legacy has never closed.