Emperor Nero: the tyrant of Rome

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While these men wrote long after his death and hardly with an agenda to preserve his reputation – which explains the generally debunked claims of fiddling while Rome burned and having an incestuous relationship with his mother – they recounted tales of such salacious and immoral deeds that they have endured. A handful of historians may attempt to re-evaluate his legacy, but Nero will always be the megalomaniacal, murderous tyrant.

Nero's early life and family

The future Nero, born Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus on 15 December AD 37 in Antium, near Rome, had not been destined to be emperor. Nor did his personal ambition drive him to the throne. It was his mother, Agrippina the Younger, who became the overbearing influence on him, especially as his father had died. A dangerous combination of cunning, intelligence and ruthlessness, she survived exile under her older brother, Caligula, only to come back consumed with the aim of reaching the pinnacle of power.

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Shortly after dispatching her second husband with poison, Agrippina seduced and married Emperor Claudius, her uncle. She eliminated rivals and charmed Claudius into adopting the 13-year-old Nero as his heir, at the expense of his own son Britannicus. Her machinations also saw his daughter Octavia married to Nero in AD 53. All that remained was to wait for Claudius to die, which came conveniently soon afterwards in October AD 54, supposedly helped along by Agrippina and a plate of poisoned mushrooms.

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Not yet 17, Nero had become emperor with Agrippina by his side, firm in the belief that she could rule through him. For a while, she may have been right as unusual coins from early in his reign depict a bust of Nero facing his mother, suggesting the two ruled as equals. An unwanted consequence of her tight hold over Nero, though, would be the later claims that mother and son committed incest, with reported sightings of them kissing sensuously in public. Even for someone of Nero’s reputation, however, this is strongly thought to be a rumour too far.

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What was Nero like as emperor?

For all of her scheming, Agrippina didn’t much enjoy her time at the centre of the world. Nero preferred the counsel of his more liberally minded tutor, Stoic philosopher Seneca, and the prefect of his Praetorian Guard, Burrus. Under their guidance, the following five years could actually be described as progressive – a word not often attributed to Nero. He granted the Senate greater independence, tackled corruption, cut taxes, ended secret trials, banned capital punishment and decreed that slaves could bring civil complaints against their masters.

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In reality, the people had Seneca and Burrus to thank for these policies. To Nero, his position afforded him nothing more than the freedom to indulge in his true passions – the arts (he wanted to be a musician and actor, and bring poetry, theatre and singing to the people) and the fulfilment of personal pleasures. Disguising himself, he spent nights stalking the streets of Rome with friends, drinking, frequenting brothels and brawling. Ignoring Octavia and a marriage that bored him, he fell for a former slave, who he later left for Poppaea Sabina, the wife of a senator.

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Was Nero a tyrant?

Nero grew bolder, and Agrippina’s control shrank, until she turned on her son to champion Britannicus instead. That move proved both her undoing and the beginning of several formative, blood-soaked years for the emperor.

The first to die was Britannicus, on the day before he became an adult in AD 55. Although Nero claimed his step-brother succumbed to an epileptic seizure, historical records suggest poison had been added to his glass of wine. Next to go would be Agrippina herself in AD 59. Nero wanted her death to look like an accident so, according to Suetonius, came up with the idea of a booby-trapped boat, which would fall apart in the water. In a final show of her domineering personality, she survived the sinking and swam to shore, so Nero had to send assassins to finish the job at her villa. As the killers surrounded her, swords raised, she allegedly showed them her belly and exclaimed “Strike here, for this bore Nero”.

Then in AD 62, Nero lost those remaining figures who had managed to keep him in check. Burrus died – his replacement, a cruel man named Tigellinus, served with particular malice – while Seneca retired from public affairs. Nero found himself in absolute power for the first time, wholly untethered from any control or need to temper his behaviour. So when he wanted to marry his mistress Poppaea, he divorced and exiled Octavia on a trumped-up charge of adultery. When this caused outrage in Rome, he had her executed and her head presented to his new wife.

Rather than use this power to rule or even conquer new lands, Nero still dreamed of being an artist, cheered by an adoring public. He played the lyre, wrote poetry and sang, but Romans considered the idea of an emperor performing on stage as the ultimate disgrace, demonstrating a disrespectful and scandalous lack of dignity. Nero either didn’t care or craved the adulation too much. He forced people to watch his performances without letting them leave, which, Suetonius wrote, led some to pretend they had died so they would be carried out of the theatre.

Perhaps this innate desire to be adored inspired his actions during the Great Fire of Rome in AD 64. The six-day blaze reduced much of the world’s most powerful city to ashes, destroying or damaging an estimated ten of the 14 districts, and left hundreds dead and thousands homeless. Far from ‘fiddling while Rome burned’ – an overly repeated and dubious creation of the historical accounts – Nero had been at Antium, around 30 miles away, when the fire began.

Did Emperor Nero really play the fiddle while Rome burned?

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On hearing the news, he rushed back to the city to coordinate relief efforts, which included opening his private gardens as shelter and providing food. Yet no sooner had he seemingly displayed this rare example of pragmatic leadership, Nero couldn’t help but ruin it, and to such an extent that rumours of him actually being responsible for starting the fire began circulating, and have persisted ever since.

By quickly taking advantage of land cleared by the flames to begin construction of an extravagant palace complex, the Domus Aurea (Golden House), Nero gave many Romans reason to wonder whether that had been his intention all along. He needed to pass the blame, and he found his scapegoat in a small religious group that had been growing in Rome for a generation – the Christians. On Nero's orders, they endured the most horrific methods of persecution, from torture and whipping to being dressed in animal skins and set upon by wild dogs. Nero apparently delighted in having men crucified in his garden, coated in wax and set alight to act as candles at his parties.

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Violence and depravity became constant in Nero’s life, and resulted in the death of another wife. Suetonius wrote that, in AD 65, the emperor kicked the pregnant Poppaea to death after being scolded for spending too much time at the races. Grief-stricken, Nero then became fixated on a boy named Sporus, who bore a resemblance to his murdered wife, had him castrated and married him.

How did Nero almost ruin Rome?

Meanwhile, his megalomaniacal need to see the Golden House completed threatened to bankrupt the state treasury. Spanning 100 to 300 acres, the complex boasted gold-leaf-covered rooms and a lavish banqueting hall with a revolving ceiling that sprayed perfume on revellers below. Outside, the centrepiece was a 30-metre high colossus of Nero. Paying for it had proved beyond the capability of even the empire. Nero raised taxes, seized valuables from temples and squeezed Rome’s richest. When that wasn’t enough, he devalued the currency, reducing the weight and purity of the silver denarius coins.

Much like its leader, the empire looked increasingly unstable. There had been a revolt in Britain (he almost evacuated the island during Boudica’s uprising in AD 60 rather than trust his armies to defeat it), long conflicts in Parthia, an insurrection in Judea and an assassination plot uncovered in Rome. The purge of the Pisonian conspiracy in AD 65 – which intended to replace Nero with statesman Gaius Calpurnius Piso – claimed senators, army officers, aristocrats and even Seneca.

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Having overcome this threat and with discontent lingering, Nero left Rome, essentially renouncing his rule. For a year or so he took a hedonistic tour of Greece, competing in artistic competitions (where he ‘won’ 1,808 first prizes) and the Olympic Games. He almost died after being thrown from his chariot, but still won all his events. He, reluctantly, returned – just in time to see his reign come crashing down.

How did Nero die?

Nero did not consider it a serious danger when Gaius Julius Vindex, a governor in Gaul, rebelled in AD 68. “I have only to appear and sing to have peace once more in Gaul,” he allegedly declared. But then another governor, Servius Sulpicius Galba in northern Spain, joined the revolt and declared himself emperor, inspiring more to rise up. The Senate declared Nero a public enemy and, once the Praetorian Guard abandoned him, he knew it was the end.

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The 30-year-old emperor-turned-enemy of Rome fled the city, with nowhere to run or hide. On 9 June AD 68, he gave orders to the few men still with him, including his ‘wife’ Sporus, to dig a grave for him, while he prepared to commit suicide.

However, for a man who had killed so many, dispatching himself wasn’t such an easy task. He asked someone else to go first, to set an example, before begging his private secretary, Epaphroditos, to help drive the blade home. Nero – murderer, thief, sadist, tyrant – wanted to be remembered as something else. His final words were: “Oh, what an artist dies in me!”

What were Emperor Nero's greatest accomplishments?

Fire fighting

When Rome went up in flames in AD 64, it has been said that Nero took an active role in helping his people – he arranged food deliveries and let his gardens be used by the homeless.

Able administration

The first five years of Nero’s reign was defined by effective government policies – mainly down to his advisers – which benefitted the poor and reduced corruption.

A patron of the arts

A keen musician and actor, Nero built theatres, encouraged poetry and singing, and created festivals for artistic and athletic endeavours.

Jonny Wilkes is a freelance writer specialising in history

This content first appeared in the April 2017 edition of BBC History Revealed