Nero, husband of Ottania, Emperor Claudius’s daughter, was designated emperor by Claudius himself at the persuasion of Claudius’s wife Agrippina. Thus a son-in-law, namely Nero, who was Claudius’s son-in-law, was preferred to Britannicus, Claudius’s son.
Nero was the fifth emperor from Augustus and ruled for thirteen years and eight months. According to Suetonius, he was very moderate for five years. As a boy he touched upon almost all the liberal disciplines. Averse to philosophy, he was inclined toward poetry and composed verses gladly and without difficulty. He also possessed more than moderate zeal for painting and modeling.
He began his rule with a display of piety, professing that he would govern according to Augustus’s precept. He let pass no opportunity to show generosity, clemency, or courtesy. He abolished or reduced the heavier taxes. For each of the noblest senators who lacked family property he established an annual salary.
When he was reminded to sign, according to custom, the punishment of a man condemned to death, he said, “How I wish I did not know how to write.” To the senate when it offered thanks, he answered, “When I have deserved them.” It was forbidden that anything except beans or vegetables be sold in taverns.
Among the other disciplines in which Nero was instructed during childhood was music. He omitted none of the practices that artists of that kind employed to preserve or strengthen the voice. Lying on his back, he supported a sheet of lead upon his chest, purged himself by vomiting and enemas, and abstained from fruits and foods harmful to the voice.
Even when the theater was suddenly shaken by an earthquake, he did not cease singing until he had finished what he began. He did not hesitate to perform among stage players even at private spectacles.
The cities in which musical contests were customarily held had arranged to send him all the crowns of the lyre players. He received them so gratefully that he not only admitted first the envoys who had brought them but also included them at his private meals. While he sang, no one was permitted to leave the theater even for a necessary reason.
Nero had already ruled for two years when Paul, because he had appealed to Caesar, was brought to Rome. When Nero heard that the controversy concerned the law of the Jews and Christians, he treated it with contempt. Paul was permitted to move freely through the city, though with one soldier guarding him.
Paul feared that perhaps the Jews who had sought his death in Judea had sent letters to the Jews at Rome so that they might kill him treacherously. For the next two years he therefore remained under open custody in lodging that he himself had rented, preaching without hindrance to those who came to him there. Afterward he enjoyed still greater freedom and was given permission to travel and preach in the western regions. Nero had not yet descended into the madness and cruelty that he later displayed.
§ I: On Nero’s Very Wicked Character
Suetonius says that at first Nero practiced wantonness, lust, luxury, and avarice gradually, secretly, and as though through youthful error. Yet even then no one could doubt that these were not faults of age [read: faults of nature, not of age].
Immediately after twilight he put on a cap or hood and entered taverns. He wandered praisingly [read: playfully] throughout the neighborhoods, though not without the ruin of many people, for he was accustomed to beat men returning from dinner, wound those who resisted, and throw them into sewers. He also broke into and plundered shops and often risked his eyes and his life in brawls of this sort.
He was beaten to death [read: nearly to death] by a man whose wife he had handled. For that reason he never afterward exposed himself in public at that hour without tribunes following far behind and in concealment.
As his vices gradually strengthened, he abandoned concealment and, without concern for disguising them, openly erupted into greater offenses. He prolonged banquets from noon until midnight, often refreshing himself in warm pools and, during summer, in pools cooled with snow.
He sometimes sang in public amid the services of the whole city’s prostitutes and Syrian flute girls. No one doubted that he desired intercourse with his mother but was deterred lest that fierce and ungovernable woman gain excessive influence through this kind of favor. He therefore received among his concubines a prostitute who was said to look very much like his mother.
He was thoroughly persuaded that no one was chaste or pure in any part of the body, but that most people concealed their vice and covered it cunningly. Therefore he pardoned other offenses as well for those who confessed obscenity before him.
He thought there was no fruit of wealth and money other than extravagance. He never wore the same garment twice. He gambled with four hundred thousand sesterces. He fished with gilded nets whose cords were woven from purple and scarlet thread. He is said never to have traveled with fewer than a thousand carriages, while his mules wore silver shoes.
In nothing, however, was he more ruinously extravagant than in building. Suetonius himself describes marvels concerning the palace that he built.
Drained and in need of money, he turned his mind to false accusations and plunder. He removed gifts from numerous temples and melted down images made of gold and silver.
He began his parricides and killings with Claudius, of whose murder, even if he was not the author, he was at least certainly aware. He often planned in vain to strangle his wife Ottania. First he divorced her as barren, but when the people condemned the divorce and did not spare their insults, he also banished her. Finally he killed her on a false charge of adultery.
[Running head: Chapter Twenty-Three, Folio 204.]
After divorcing Ottania, Nero took Pompeia [read: Poppaea] in marriage and loved her uniquely. Nevertheless, while she was pregnant and ill, he killed her with a kick.
After Pompeia [read: Poppaea]’s death, he killed Antonia, Claudius’s daughter, because she refused marriage with him, accusing her of attempting a revolution.
He entrusted his still-underage stepson to his servants to be drowned at sea while they were fishing, because it was reported that the boy played at being a commander and emperor. He banished the son of his nurse because he had bathed in baths constructed for Nero’s arrival.
He compelled his teacher Seneca to kill himself. Promising a prefect a remedy for his throat, he sent him poison.
He disposed of wealthy and elderly freedmen with poison, placed partly in food and partly in drink. Once they had been the authors and directors of his adoption, and afterward of his claim to dominion.
His mother sternly investigated and corrected his words and deeds. First he deprived her of every honor and power and expelled her from his company and the palace. Soon, terrified by her threats and violence, he resolved to destroy her.
When he had attempted to poison her three times and perceived that she was protected by antidotes, he finally ordered her killed. It is also said that he hurried to her corpse, handled her limbs, praised some, and criticized others.
To the parricide of his mother he added the murder of his aunt. Before she was even dead, he invaded her property, suppressing her will so that nothing might escape him.
With no less savagery he raged against outsiders and destined every very noble person for death. The children of those condemned were driven from the city and carried off by poison and hunger.
It is also believed that he wished to throw living men to a certain Egyptian who was accustomed to eat raw flesh and whatever was given him, so that the man might tear them apart and consume them.
He spared neither the people nor the city walls. As though offended by the ugliness of the old buildings and the narrowness and crookedness of the streets, he openly burned the city for six days and seven nights. Watching the fire from a tower and delighted, as he said, by the beauty of the flame, he sang in his theatrical costume.
§ II: On Nero’s Death
Suetonius says that when the Gauls began such a rebellion, Britain was soon lost and Armenia as well, and both were recovered again. Nero thereby conceived a belief in his perpetual and singular good fortune. Indeed, after his most precious possessions were lost in a shipwreck, he did not hesitate to tell his companions that the fish would bring them back to him.
When he learned of the uprising in Gaul, he received the news so cheerfully and calmly that he even gave rise to suspicion that he rejoiced because he had obtained an opportunity to plunder the wealthiest provinces by right of war. He went into the arena and resolved to watch competing athletes with the most lavish enthusiasm.
After he learned that the Spanish provinces had also rebelled, he collapsed in spirit and lay for a long time without speech, as though dead. When he came to himself, he tore his clothing, beat his head, and declared that all was over for him.
It is believed that he determined to send assassins against all the commanders of armies and governors of provinces, as though they had conspired together and shared the same knowledge. He also planned to slaughter all exiles everywhere and all men of Gallic origin in the city—the former lest they join the rebels, the latter as accomplices and supporters of their countrymen.
He planned to kill the entire senate with poison at banquets, to burn the city, and to release wild beasts against the people. Yet he was deterred by despair of accomplishing these things.
He possessed an ill-considered desire for eternity and perpetual fame. Therefore, after removing their ancient names from many things and places, he imposed new names of his own. He wished the month of April to be called “Neroneus” and Rome “Neropolis.” He was a despiser of every religion.
When the defection of the other armies was announced, he tore up the letters handed to him at dinner, overturned the table, and smashed on the ground two cups that he greatly enjoyed using.
Taking poison stored in a golden box, he sent his most faithful freedmen ahead to Hostia to prepare a fleet and attempted to gain the tribunes and centurions as companions in flight.
Hugh of Fleury says in Book 3 that, after Nero had inflicted many evils upon the republic—which it would be too long to recount one by one—the senate finally judged him an enemy because he had violated faith by sacrilege, piety by parricide, and chastity by incest, and because he had entrusted even the power of the Roman Empire, or its offices and business, to his most wicked freedmen.
Because Nero himself kept faith with no one, he regarded everyone with suspicion. Nevertheless, he thought that he should trust two utterly wicked men, Nymphidius and Gemellius, whose low condition had made them beholden to him.
But they themselves recoiled from the example of his cruelty. Because he had killed his dearest and truest friends, they wished to protect themselves and forestall what they feared. Both therefore joined a conspiracy with the others and abandoned the parricide.
Deserted by all his men, Nero fled from the city at night with only four companions. He was barefoot, his head was covered, and a cloth was stretched before his face.
After he hid himself, a messenger brought by a courier reported that the senate had judged him an enemy and that he was being sought for death. When he heard that companions [read: horsemen] were approaching to capture him alive, he killed himself.
There was so much rejoicing at his death that the common people ran through the whole city wearing caps of liberty.
According to Eusebius, in the year of the Lord 70 and the thirty-second year of Nero’s age, when the senate sought him for punishment, he fled from the palace to the fourth milestone from the city. There, on the suburban estate of his freedman between the Salarian and Mumentana [read: Nomentana] roads, he killed himself. In him the whole family of Augustus came to an end.