Birthday Greetings #54

Happy birthday to Nero, Roman emperor.  Nero was everything an emperor should be with dissolute parties, poisonings, extravagant building plans, conspiracies, revolts being crushed all over the place (although not, significantly, the last one) tortures, persecutions and all of the other stuff that makes for really great history.  Certainly the historians of the time really went to town and the general impression is of Nero as a vicious, self indulgent wastrel.

But was this the truth?  Who cares?  It's fun.  If we rehabilitate Nero we'd have to do Attila the Hun next.  According to the same historians who tell us he was a monster we learn that his mother was a manipulative psychopath as well.  This charmer (by the name of Agrippina the Younger) married the then emperor Claudius and persuaded him to adopt Nero, her son from an earlier marriage.  Claudius was also Nero's great uncle so there was already a family tie there of sorts.

Claudius died (poisoned by Agrippina according to Suetonius) and with his natural son being well under age his adoptive son Nero was proclaimed emperor.  His three closest advisors were his mother (poisoner), Seneca (philosopher, author, loan shark and sleazebag) and Burrus (praetorian prefect and thug).  All of these three had their talents but spent most of their time arguing with each other (although Burrus and Seneca were united in advising Nero to watch out for his mother).

As time went by Nero listened to his mother less.  She responded in a mature and sensible way; she cultivated Britannicus (the natural son of Claudius) now reaching his majority in the hopes of having him proclaimed as emperor in Nero's place.  Nero had learnt Mother's lessons well however and Britannicus died of a sudden attack of poison.  A few years later after she apparently found someone else to promote to the throne Nero had his mother murdered as well.  A fancy, collapsible boat was created designed to fall apart as Agrippina was being transported home unfortunately nobody bothered to check if she could swim.  When she emerged from the waters dripping and furious Nero had no choice but to send in the praetorians with sharp implements.  It was dressed up as suicide.

Meanwhile Burrus died (surprisingly of natural causes) and Seneca (facing embezzlement charges) withdrew into private life; after being implicated in a plot against Nero he withdrew into private death.  Nero was on his own.  On the one hand promoting the arts and athletic competitions is certainly not a bad thing.  He won a war with Parthia (well his generals did but he got the credit) and a revolt in Britain was crushed.  He toured Greece, participated in the Olympic Games and returned to Rome loaded with prizes he hadn't earned.  Certain tax exemptions and a promotion of the theatre gained popularity.  On the other hand the murders kept coming and while a certain amount of hanging out in brothels and sleeping with the wives of your subordinates was considered de rigeur Nero took it to slightly ridiculous lengths.  He also performed on stage which was shocking, demeaning to his office and apparently he wasn't very good.

Having ditched the wife his mother foisted on him he took up with another wife.  Specifically Poppaea was the wife of Otho, one of his mates, party companions and general hangers on.  Nero packed Otho off as governor of Portugal and moved the guy's wife into the imperial palace.  She later died, vicious rumours suggested Nero had kicked her in the stomache while she was pregnant.  This may or may not be true but its certain Nero was devastated by her loss going so far as to castrate a slave who looked like her and marry him.  Any chances that this particular union might have had a happy ending were scotched by Nero's absent minded habit of calling him Poppaea.

Then Rome burnt down.  Not all of it but a considerable amount of it.  This allowed rumour mongering historians to blame Nero for the conflagration.  Perhaps sensing a public relations opportunity Nero was active in the rescue work and paid for a lot of disaster relief out of his own pocket.  He then blew all of that popularity by spending public funds building himself a massive house on the ruins.

Sensing that he was losing the love of the people Nero blamed the fire on an obscure and rather irritating religious sect known as the Christians and had them slaughtered in creative and appalling ways.  By this time everybody was sick to death of Nero's rule.  It is important to note that "everybody" in this sense meant "everybody important enough to catch the attention of the historians".  He retained his popularity with the masses.  Unfortunately the masses didn't command legions.  Way over in Judea the Jews were revolting and troops were sent to put them down.  While this was going on the troops of the Rhine legions grew restive. 

The governor of one of the Gallic provinces revolted, largely as a tax protest (something the Americans would do with more success several centuries later).  Loyalish troops from the Rhine put down the revolt but simultaneously Galba, until then inoffensively governing Spain, claimed the throne.  Support for Nero collapsed and Nero panicked.  In fact had he toughed it out he may well have won or at least saved his life.  As it was he seems to have had a bit of a meltdown.  He ran in circles, fled Rome, returned to Rome, fled again and when a delegation from the Senate turned up to negotiate an honourable retirement he lost it completely and screwing up all of his courage (or rather, screwing up a slave's courage) got one of his retainers to run him through with a sword.

So what to make of Nero?  That he was a vicious, self indulgent thug with pretensions to artistic skill seems to be pretty much agreed.  Whether he was any worse than most people in that day and age is more debateable.  Certainly there were some good initiatives in the early days of his reign when he still had the advice of Seneca and Burrus and its also true that the loathing and discontent of the ruling elite wasn't matched by the populace.  But if you're going to be an emperor then keeping the ruling elite onside while not completely sacrificing the opinion of the mob is a circle you have to square.  At this Nero failed and once he realised that he'd failed lost his shit so completely that he killed himself when he most likely didn't have to.  Compared to Caligula he was probably an improvement.  Compared with Vespasian or Marcus Aurelius he was a dissolute nobody playing a role.  And as mentioned earlier, his acting skills sucked.