Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - History's Worst F*ckboys: Emperor Nero

Episode Date: September 16, 2025

Where does Emperor Nero fit in the pantheon of history's worst f*ckboys?Does he measure up against the likes of previous episodes on Charles II or Raphael? Is he the worst of the lot? And what strange sex games did he like to play?Helping Kate getting to know the awful Emperor Nero is returning guest, Rome-based historian and tour guide, Alex Meddings.This episode was edited by Tom Delargy and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.Please vote for us for Listeners' Choice at the British Podcast Awards! Follow this link, and don’t forget to confirm the email. Thank you!Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds. Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister, you are listening to Betwicks the sheet, the naughtiest, spiciest, adultiest podcast that's out there. That's not true. That's not true by a long stretch. But we do cover some pretty saucy ground.

So I have to tell any newcomers, this is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things and an adultery way covering a range of subjects and you should be an adult too. We do that for your own safety, quite frankly, because we care. Right. On with the show! Join me at a house party in first century Rome.

I think it's fair to say this is a house party unlike anything that either you or I have been to before. We are at a lavish house party at the golden house of Emperor Nero, no less. Yeah, that's right, we're with the big wigs now. The wine is flowing and nobody has died a gruesome death. Well, I'll be not yet. The knight is still young. But everyone seems to be having a...

Oh, God. What's that? Oh, no. Somebody has started playing on a musical instrument to give us an unprompted and frankly unwanted musical performance. Oh, shit, it's actually the emperor. Oh, no. Oh, what's he doing?

Yeah, okay, this is the Roman equivalent of serenading us with Wonderwall, I guess. What do we do? Does everyone just... Oh, everyone's just standing and applauding. I mean, if they put up with this, what else are they going to be putting up with? But to be completely honest with you,

playing the guitar when nobody asked you to, is the very least of Nero's problems. In today's episode, we are going to be asking the question. Was Nero a historical fuckboy? Should we get on with the show? I think I've certainly got to get out of here before he starts singing a cappella. Let's go.

What do you look for in a man? Oh, money of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect copies of whatever my boyfriend. needs by just turning enough and pushing the fun. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, but beautiful done. Goodness has nothing to do with it, Dary.

Hello, and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society. With me, Kate Lister. We've already examined Charles and Raphael to ask the question, are they historical fuckboys? And we let them both off the hook, didn't we? Well, now it's the turn of the Emperor Nero. What a shocking example of a human being he was, even by the standards of the time.

So brace yourself betwixters. This is some next level badness. And enlightening us slash horrifying us about Nero is the fantastic Rome-based historian and tour guide Alexander Meddings. And he is going to hold our hand and take us back to the first century to meet Nero. Toga's at the ready, everyone. I don't know if you're prepared for it. let's do it anyway. Well, hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets.

It's only Alexander Meddings. How are you doing? I am great, thanks, Kate. How are you? Oh, I had the most fun talking to you last time about the Roman Legionnaires. That was a riot. So, of course, we were going to have you back on to further our endless fascination with history's worst fuckboys.

And today, I don't even know, we've done some of these. And I've thought, are they a fuckboy? maybe they just really like sex. Nero, as far as I can see, is so bad. I don't even know if he would, I don't know if he's good enough to be qualified as a fuck boy. I think he's changing the definition of what a fuck boy is. It's less kind of like ghosting after the third date

and more castrating a guy that looks like your ex-wife, you kicked a day when she was pregnant. Why am I laughing at that? That's not funny. It's so bad. Let's define our terms, right? I've returned to Urban Dictionary.com to get yet a Another definition of fuckboy, because they have several, the definition here is a boy who plays with girls' feelings and doesn't really like them and would do or say anything a girl wants to hear to have sex with them or to get something that they want.

Including I will have you executed. That's not here. I've been through. It's nowhere on Urban Dictionary does it continue with and will have you executed. It does say things like they will tell a girl anything she wants. they will go to any length. I don't know if they were thinking about mass murder, but maybe it covers it.

Yeah, it's tricky to fit Nero into this description. We'll give it a guy. I've come to this thinking maybe his reputation is ill-deserved. Maybe you are going to be one other people to go, no, hold on a minute. I'm Team Nero all the way. He's been horribly maligned, but I just don't think that that's going to happen. No, he was pretty awful by modern standards and ancient standards.

We can whitewash some things, but now he was generally abysmal. A wanker. All right, let's take him right back. Who is Nero? Where does he come from? How does he fit into the Roman lineage? So he is born in the year 37 AD. So he's born in the reign of Rome's third emperor, Caligula,

who's also quite terrible, and we'll probably move on to him later as well. He is related Nero to Augustus, blood and Augustus is like the goat. He was the first emperor, the greatest emperor, the one that all subsequent emperors try and emulate. And Nero has kind of proper blue blood coursing through his veins. His mother, Agrippina, was the sister of Caligula. She was the niece and the wife of Claudius, and Nero is adopted by Claudius when Claudius is emperor. He's got the credentials then. He definitely does. And when he's adopted, he changes his name too, because his original name is Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, which means Lucius Domitius Bronze Beard, because

kind of all men of that family had bronze beards, apparently. Was he a redhead then? Is that what we're saying? I think so. I mean, you can actually see some pretty interesting reconstructions of Nero based on portraiture and descriptions. He looks kind of like sort of Ed Shearer and let himself go with an in-cell neck beard. It's kind of the vibe. Wow. Okay. That's a vivid image you've just painted right there. All right, so his name was a real, I didn't know. His name was basically I'm a redhead and he changed it. Why did he change it? Why Nero? Why did he go Nero? It's one of those classic Julia-Claudian names that all of them share.

They're very unimaginative, although not as unimaginative as his father. And that, Ahenobaba's family, all of the men are called either Nias or Lucius, and they refuse to change throughout history. Does he change his name just to be the emperor? Yeah, to kind of fit in with the mould of the Julio Claudians and to style himself, or to be styled rather more as a legitimate air to the throne. But it's all a bit weird because Claudius already has an air. Claudius has a natural born son called Britannicus.

Hang on then. Yeah. Hang on. What happens to Britann... I just got a feeling he's not going to go and live on a farm somewhere and have a happy and long life. No. Not even an island for Britannicus.

No. Not even. He just gets poisoned. Oh, Britannica. By Nero? Was it by Nero? It's by Nero. Yeah.

Yeah, poor Britannicus. He has a pretty unhappy little life. He's a couple of years younger than Nero. Although we are told that the two of them growing up squabble quite a lot like siblings do, and there are some moments of high humour. Apparently Britannicus used to call Nero Ahenobabas, just to annoy him. Nero used to say that Britannicus wasn't actually Britannicus, but was a substitute. And then they grew up and he poisoned him.

So Agrippina kind of propels Nero to powers. She probably also has Claudia's poisoned by mushrooms. She was a power-hungry one, wasn't she, if memory serves? Well, yeah, she was phenomenal. She's a proper Machiavellian matriarch who was able to negotiate several emperors and make it pretty far before being done in by her son. We'll get to that. Stick a pin in that.

Spoiler alert. Did he have a happy childhood? We don't really know, but I assume not. It wasn't as bad as Caliculus, for sure, because Caliculus sees his entire family really Barra sisters just get wiped out in various Tiberian purges. I think he's just got a very overbearing, controlling mother, but there's nothing to suggest he has a particularly unhappy childhood. Dad dies really young. And if you wanted to kind of psychoanalyze, which is always a bit tricky with people who have been dead for 2,000 years, you could say maybe he's always,

throughout his life looking for that kind of father, you've done really well, son, kind of recognition, maybe. And a pushy stage mother, it seems. A very pushy mother. Like you're murdering people type of pushy. Oh, yeah. I mean, essentially Nero's first wife, he has three, his first wife, Octavia, the marriage is arranged by Agrippina and Claudius, and she's already married to a guy called Salinas, who they have accused of adultery and made to commit suicide.

When Nero's like 15, she's probably about 14, 15 as well. It would fuck you up, wouldn't it? It would do. That's not a healthy environment. be growing up in. No, it's toxic. It's a right snake pit. And his mother's so adept at maneuvering the snake pit that, yeah, you can't imagine it as a particularly easy childhood. But he's the cat that gets the cream. He's groomed for power. He gets power. He comes to power when he's 16 years old. 16. Oh, no. Yeah. Like, what were you doing at 16? Imagine something to go,

right, now you're in charge. Now you're the king of the biggest empire in the world. What do you want to do. Jesus Christ. Yeah. I was hanging around Wolverhampton dress as a goth, so not ready to rule an empire. No. What 16-year-old is fit to rule an empire, for God's sake? The good news is that he doesn't really do any ruling for quite a long time. So for the first four years, everything has been done by his mother, who appears on coins alongside him. It's the first time this ever happens in Roman history.

and her portrait appears on a verse of coins looking directly at Nero, who still has like the head of a little boy, basically. So she's doing a lot of ruling behind the scenes. In fact, we're told that she'll kind of stand in on senatorial meetings in the palace behind her, the curtains. She's had a rectum to hide her. Also, he's following the advice of his counsellors. So he's got a tutor, Seneca, the Stoic philosopher, and the head of the Praetorian Guard, a guy called Afranius Boris, who's a pretty headstrong figure. So he's got good counsel. Now, I imagine that what is going to happen here is what happens in almost any situation

where a parent and adult, some parental figure steps in and goes, well, they're too young to rule. I'll do it for now. There has to come a point where the person who's too young is no longer too young and they're going to say, all right, you can fuck off now and they never want to fuck off ever. Yeah, that's precisely. Essentially, one day Agripener says, no to him and then it all goes downhill as it would with a 16, 17 year old. He's in charge of the world.

Yeah, and it's answerable to absolutely nobody and has Praetorian Guard at his command. Although it's a tricky dynamic because she's also the daughter of Germanicus, so she's also kind of beloved by the guard. So I think they're always in two minds when it comes to having to pick between Nero and Agrippina. Was Nero married at this point? How old was he when he got married? Was he just a little kid then? He was 15. He was 15 when he married. Octavia. And then she's a very unhappy figure, poor Octavia.

So she has to... Briefly. Oh, okay. Yep, there we go. Very briefly. And it's a lovely island. I'll give it that. Pandateria.

It's off the coast of that too. It's not a bad island. Yeah, she's a very unhappy figure. She's kind of like a bit of a people's princess. Everybody loves her apart from Nero. Oh. They share no interests. They have a really toxic relationship.

it seems. All of it's on his part. Apparently, he repeatedly tries to strangle her. Do we know why? Do we, for anything in the sources? I mean, whether that's true or not, but what's the reason, just for fun, a kink gone wrong? He doesn't like her. Doesn't love her. He's really into this woman called Acte, who is a freedwoman, a former slave. And this is really the beginning of the rift with Agrippina, because Nero falls in love with Acta. He tries to convince the Senate to invent her, this genealogy, saying that she's related to the Parthian kings. They're having none of it. And then he just kind of falls in with a bit of a bad group.

There's Akde, there's Otho, the future emperor, and they kind of all go out together doing lots of cluckwork orange stuff and just kind of dressing up as slaves and beating people up around the Milvian bridge. While Octavis at home presumably weaving, knitting togas, that's kind of the image we get of her, although it's definitely kind of very archetypal. We don't really get anything if her real character, it's like black and white.

Yeah. She's very much the white. I do like to think that maybe she objected to her husband getting dressed up and beating up homeless people. Even being a Roman. Possibly. I mean, he came home once with a black eye. I think so. It wouldn't have been great. I mean, he did also loot stuff and then kind of sold it among his friends at the palace. God knows why. I mean, if you're the emperor, what's the point in looting and selling stuff when you have commanded the treasury? So what happens to Octavia then? Tell us.

So after Britannicus is murdered, and that's very much on Nero's order, a faction forms between Agrippina and Orch. Octavia. And essentially, Agrippina goes first. Nero first has Agrippina killed on the advice of his new paramour, a woman called Poppaea Sabina, who is his second wife. She's a really interesting character. She's the black to the white of Octavia, but she's a very interesting figure. So the two of them form a faction.

Agrippina's killed, and then Octavia loses all supporters. Nero has her accused of, firstly, adultery and then being in first. That's the standard, isn't it? That's what they do. Adultery, off to an island. Proper fuck-boy behaviour of this, because he also says that she's barren, infertile. And then when he finds somebody a flute player from Egypt to say that he actually did have an affair with her, he accuses her of having had an abortion. So no logical sense.

He just is kind of throwing any charge he possibly can to get her away, divorce and sent to an island. Yeah, she goes to this island, Panditria, where she stays for a matter. of weeks and then Nero changes his mind and has her killed. And it's really sad and tragic. Like she kind of begs for her life at the end and the poor girl's terrified, dies at the age of 20. I'll be back with Alex and Nero after the break. We've got to talk about him killing his mum because that's some Oedipal shit right there. Like what even is that? That's, is there any, could that's not even fuck by, I don't know what that is, but tell me what happened. I mean, that's one of the charges of Nero's. Like a lot of these charges you've think,

maybe he did, maybe he didn't. There's a lot of difficult, we have problems with the sources, but he definitely killed his mum. And then I suspect he also then ceded allegations and seeded a rumor that she had tried to seduce him in order to try and retrospectively justify. I have heard that. I have heard that they were shagging,

and I was wondering how true that was. We have no way of knowing, but I just can't personally see it, but I see that it would have been in his interest to convince the courts and others that she was so desperate for power that she would have tried to seduce her own son. So what does he do then?

How does he do? I'm going to assume that Nero isn't the one that actually does the killing. No, he's far too cowardly for that. He never kills anybody directly. It's always with poison. And then he will always kind of later say, oh, if only they had waited for my pardon. I may have pardoned them.

Oh, well. He's very avant-garde in the way he kills Agrippina. He finds out that poison won't work. So he briefly flirts with the idea of constructing a collapsible bedroom roof that will just like fall in on it. That's like a James Bond village. Like, just like the weird, like the most implausible, most like open to risk strategy. A collapsible bedroom. Okay.

It is. But it's also very theatrical and kind of everything about Nero is really theatrical. It's kind of big into, big into the theatre. I've heard that. The ASX Machina kind of death. So when he finds out that's not a goer, he contrives to have her killed on a similarly collapsible boat. Can imagine being one of his builders that like they've been summoned

to like a consultation at the palace. I'm sorry, what do you wanted to do? We were just going to do some lovely back walls. Could you have them collapse? Pardon? It's like half a bit through the room. We're actually going to do boat, but considering that you've already got the collapsible element,

can we just shift? It's like a collapsible boat, right? Yeah, he invites her to dinner, to dine with him down near Bayer, which is kind of in modern day Campania, just northwest of Naples. In antiquity, it was like the idea. Ibiza of the ancient world. Nero loved it because he was like a 20 year old.

He invites her there. They dined together. He says farewell on the shore, kisses her on the eyes, weirdly, and on the bosom. There's a warning. And then send her off to sea. That's, I'm sorry, what's happening here. Yeah, it's one of those moments where the sources kind of just glitch.

Yeah, yeah. It's like AI. So on the eyes, on the bosom. Imagine like, you know, somebody, like you haven't seen for a while. Just like they're saying goodbye to you and they kiss you on the eyes. And then they kiss you on the buddard, and they go, please get onto this boat I've had made. It's fuck off. I will walk.

Thank you very much. It's both eyes as well. I mean, I check the Latin because I'm always curious about this stuff. I'm like, yeah, both eyes. So that's kind of a maybe both bosoms. It's a singular bosom. I don't know if it's a triple tap or a... It's weird is what it is.

That's a massive red flag. But she gets on the boat. She gets on the boat. The boat sails out to the middle of the bay. It collapses. And then kind of this slightly comic scene. in shoes where she immediately clock shots going on, dives elegantly into the water because she's a really good swimmer, thanks to her time in exile, on an island, and she swims to shore. Meanwhile, one of her

slaves cries out, I'm Agrippina, thinking that will get her saved, and it ends up getting a beaten to death by sailors bearingles. Oh, that's unfortunate. Right. So Agrippina swims to land. She washes up in some villa, takes refuge there, doesn't really know what to do. Nero, meanwhile, is panicking. And it's kind of his advisors, Seneca and Burrus, who acts appallingly, and go, well, at this point, you've probably just got to finish the job. So he sends the Navy. The Pretorios won't do it because she's Germanicus's daughter. So he sends the Navy to go and do away with her. The Navy, the entire Navy. Just a few, just enough to overpower a few sailors under the command of some guy called

Aniketus, who is also involved. in Octavia's downfall and rewarded with a retirement in Sardinia. So he has a pretty good life. Do we know what the public's reaction to Agrippina's death was? Because she sounds like for all her pushiness and being a power mad lunatic, reasonably popular because she is related to Germanicus, who was a big deal. It's mixed. But Nero himself was petrified, and he actually hangs around in Campania for three months

after killing her before going back to Rome, because he expects he's going to find a really hot. hostile public. In reality, he rocks up and he finds the Senate there in their holiday attire, whatever the fuck that means, with all of their families kind of line. Beachballs, beached house, interrupt it on their way down to the coast of osteos. And they've got all their families kind of lined up on bleachers and they're all applauding the emperor. And then basically they throw Nero a triumph, which is kind of a military celebration you normally celebrate when you've just defeated an enemy.

Well, that'll show him. Well done, senators. That'll learn him not to do that again. Yeah, it's awful. I mean, there's one senator with principal, a guy called Fraseyapaitus, who walks out of the Senate House when Nero gives the speech about how he's uncovered a conspiracy and saved himself from his mother's machinations. But everyone else just goes along with it.

So it's just spinning bollocks. It's just like outright lies. He's going to give it. He didn't even try and say she died accidentally. Now it's that she was scheming against me. Yeah, I think so, but it's really odd because he definitely then, for the rest of his life, he tries to frame it in his own terms. So, for example, he'll go on to the stage subsequently in the year six. She dies in 59.

In 61, he performs in private. In 64, he performs in public. And when he performs, he performs roles like Oedipus. And he performs roles like Orestes, who is the most famous matricide in Greek mythology. And so Nero embraces the role of matricide. And when he kicks his second wife to death when she's pregnant, he plays the role of a woman giving birth with her mask on. So he does very weird things on the stage. What the fuck is that?

Trying to take control of the narrative, I guess. It's the only possible interpretation. Or it's just fucked. Yeah. So actay, she's out then this. Acta actually lasts for the entire reign. Well done, Acta. She's behind the scenes, but she's there from pretty much day one.

up until the very end. She's the one who actually scatters Nero's ashes and gives the funeral eulogy. So she survives all of his wives. So who's the second wife then? Octavia dead somewhere? Popaya Sabina. So she is responsible pretty much for driving Nero

against his mother and then later Octavia. She has a pretty incredible write-up in Tacitus. He calls her Super Papylex, which translates as like a proud whore. Oh, I like that. It's pretty good, actually, as far as ancient accolades go. Yeah, I'm sure it wasn't supposed to be. But it sounds cool.

It sounds really cool. It sounds very cool, yeah. But we don't like her. She's like a villain type, supposed to be. Yeah. I mean, she was meant to have everything. So really ravishing dark, good looks, fierce intellect. She was really good at playing hard to get.

She was actually married to Otho, one of Nero's friends. Possibly Nero had her married to Othor so he could spend time around her. she had everything apart from apparently a decent character and she was like just as debauched as he was well see this is the thing the rule of dating is if they'll do it with you they'll do it to you that's the thing so don't be scheming he kicks her to death though I mean that's that's the predominant version we have yeah so it's like an act of domestic violence he gets home late from the games in 64 I think it is maybe 65 she complains about I'm coming home late and he tramples her, is the ancient description.

At least he did it himself. That's, he doesn't normally do that. Does he normally have some guards do it? Yeah, this is true. That's not a plus point. What earth might be talking about? How low is that bad? Look at me trying to scramble anything back.

At least he organised it himself. Shut up, Kate. Right, okay. So a horrendous act of violence is committed. She's dead. And then presumably everyone's just standing around going, Okay. How does he spin that one? She tripped and fell on my foot repeatedly. Something like that. It gets very weird after this. So he has her embalmed. Instead of burnt,

he has her embalmed and he has a seated in a public space for all to kind of see and pay respects to. Then he finds a boy, while he's away in Greece on a kind of musical artistic tour, he finds a boy who looks a bit like Papaya. And he has this boy. castrated, married, he marries him, and then he kind of parades this boy around marketplaces during his campaign in Greece. It's not a, it's not a military campaign, it's basically a musical campaign. And he calls this boy Sporus, which in Greek means seaman or seed. The sound hasn't glitched everybody. I just don't know what to fucking say to that. It gets weirder. It gets way weirder. So it can't get weirder. Genuinely, I think Sporos has

the most bizarre story possibly in history. So Sporos survives Nero. He's there at Nero's death. And after Nero dies, Sporos is then passed down to the Praetorian prefect of the time, a guy called Nymphidius Sabinus,

who also calls him Poppaea and treats him as his wife. What the fuck is going on? What is happening in ancient Rome? And then when Namphidia Sabinus dies, he goes to Otho. Now, bear in mind, Otho used to be married to Poppea.

He also takes Sporus in, calls him Poppeia, claims him as his wife. What's on earth? And then when Otho dies, Sporos passes down to Vitellius, who doesn't treat him as a wife. Instead, he tries to get Sporris to perform on stage in a play about the rape of Pesophony, and Sporos won't do it. He doesn't want the humiliation. He can't bear it anymore.

Oh, my God. Do we know what happened to him? No, he committed suicide rather than performing that play. That was the straw that broke the eunuchs back. Oh my God, what? Do you think that's true? I know, I know the sauces are all. You know, I kind of weirdly do.

I kind of weirdly do. I think Nero probably did have this guy castrated and paraded around, but I don't really know why. It's either going to be, I can do what I want to everybody because I'm the emperor, or it's some really sick joke, like calling him seed, even though he's cut his balls off. Or it's something kind of a bit Greek. that we don't understand. It's like a saturnalia inversion of roles. Always had some kind of psychotic breakdown.

Could be, yeah, also this. I mean, that's kind of madness is probably the best explanation here. It's just he's grieving her so much. He just wants this guy to replace her. Yeah, there's some things that get said on this show that just even catch me out unaware. And that's got to be one of them. I don't even know what you do with that. Can't marry him. Or did he actually marry him? Was that like a legal marriage? Not legal because it's not between a man and a woman. It's between a mock man and a man. But it's with all the fanfare of marriage, but this has done over in Greece.

In Rome, he marries, we're told, another guy called, well, this is where it gets difficult because the sources can't even agree this guy's name. He might be called Pythagoras. He might be called Doriophorus. Okay, all right. So Nero likes the boys. Well, likes is a strong word. He seems to be attracted to the boys.

Yeah. With Pythagoras, he plays the passive role. We're told that they get married. No, not at all. Again, is that because a lot of these sources, they were written after the fact, and they're all about, like, demonising the emperor as much as possible because he's dead now and no one cares. I don't know.

That sounds like a very, like, pointed attack on his masculinity. I don't, I mean, I've got a lot to work with, haven't we? I'm not sure they needed to go that far, but. I agree with you. Yeah, I think the whole Pythagoras story offer's thing is a complete mystery. I mean, spores too, and it's weird to kind of believe one and not the other, but I think maybe the sources are confused here. If you believe one awful story, why not believe them all? Does he marry any more women?

Do you have any more wives? He does. His third and final wife is the much-married Statilia Messalina, who's had plenty of husbands before. She's kind of like a Jane Seymour-esque figure. She survives him and then just disappears from history with loads of money. Could you even imagine, like, getting the offer of marriage from Nero? like after everything that's happened you just be like

no I'm all right actually I'm fine thank you for asking I'll be back with Alex and Nero after the break do we know about his sex life because we do need to talk about when we've touched on it already

quite extensively but is apart from castrating people and kicking women to death do we have any more information that might help us ascertain whether or not he was a he was a fuck boy I think we've done it to be honest

yeah he kind of redefines the paradigm, doesn't he? I think with Nero, he's, he kind of does sex to shock as much as he does it to enjoy himself. I see him as a bit of a Bonnie Blue-esque figure. Oh, that's interesting. Okay. So we know a few things. We're told that he had an instructor of lust, Magisra Libinidum called Calvia Crispina, who was his kind of sex teacher when he was quite young. How weird? Yeah, it's really odd that. We're told he was into one particular game. Well, told that he basically tried a bit of everything. And when he basically couldn't get excited,

when he considered everything to be vanilla and he couldn't get excited anymore, he devised one particular game with Pythagoras, which involved him dressing up in the pelt of a wild animal and being released from a cage. Okay. And he would, dressed in this wild animal pelt, he would attack the genitals of people who had been tied to stakes

and then he would retire to the bedroom to be run through by Pythagoras. Wow. I mean, you know, I'm all for role-playing kink, but I think that's a stretch too far. That one, isn't it? It's a bit much, isn't it? It's a bit strong, that one, Nero. If we could just take it down a notch, that would be marvellous.

All right, okay, so he's doing that. Is he interested in women, do you think, or is he sort of want, does he sort of marry women because he has to? Does he have other women lovers? I think he's probably interested in both in that, typically. male way, but it's all very much based on power and being able to do what he wants with people. He's not like Caligula. There's no evidence of him stealing Senator's wives from dinner parties and going and having

his way with them and bringing them back to the table to comment on their performance. The bar is low, but good. Okay. Yeah, he doesn't do that. It seems that he's a lot more calculated and everything he does. And again, a lot of this has probably been completely taken out of context and refracted through the prism of our sources. Like the whole people tied to stakes thing, to me that sounds a lot like public execution.

So it could also be that he's on stage, he's involved in this somehow as an actor. That's an awful lot of planning for bedroom antics, isn't it? But he's got the builders. He does have the builders. He does. And if anyone could do it, it would be him. What a way to go out. Involved in someone else's awful kink play.

But God. And one thing that I do know about him is that he, thought he was a brilliant musician. That might, you know, as if everything else wasn't awful enough and quite frankly, it should be. But he would be that guy who went to a house party and then got out of guitar and started singing. Yeah.

Wonderful. Some terrible cover of it. Yeah. Yeah. He's really into performing. I mean, kind of the tragedy of Nero really is that he was an emperor and he was supposed to be doing military and administrative stuff, whereas he wasn't. And he didn't want to do it.

All he wanted to do was to sing. to play the liar, to raise chariots, later in his life to wrestle. If reality TV had been around in the ancient world, Nero would have been on all of it. He loved popularity. He'd be on Love is Blind, strictly. And I bet everyone would hate him then as well. He'd be one of those just fame-hungry cretons, so you just can't get off the telly. He wasn't good at playing music, though, was he?

We don't know. Conflicting sources. I mean, Suetonia says that his voice was thin and husky. But I think Cassius Dio says that he had quite a honey, sweet, melodious voice. He hired the best liar player of the age, a guy called Turpnus, to teach him. I think he was probably quite talented at most of the things he did, just not ruling the empire. No, shit at that, absolutely awful. And relationships, dreadful.

And relationships. As well. Did he fiddle while Rome burned? That's the question. No, definitely not. because the fiddle had not been invented. Well, that'll do it then. That's the big one.

But also, I mean, so the Great Fire of Rome in 64 burns like two-thirds of the city to the ground rages for seven days. There are rumours that Nero was complicit. And Nero doesn't help himself by building the Domo Saoria, a giant golden palace to himself in a big area that was laid waste by the fire. So a fire breaks out, it wastes Rome. and rather than rebuild the homes for his citizens, he builds a giant golden palace for himself. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, I mean.

Oh, dear. Yeah, it's got a lake. It's got a nice little kind of woodland area. If I, I'm trying to come to his defence a little bit here. There's nothing to suggest it's entirely private. It could be like Mar-a-Laga with a day pass. It could be like... Oh, nice.

Right, okay. I'm sure that helped everybody. I'm sure they were thrilled. You're going to go and watch the emperor live in a house. you could never afford. Watch him live in a house where yours used to be. He also does rebuild the city, and he rebuilds it in a really smart way.

He's got the builders. He makes sure it's pretty much fireproof. And actually, kind of, we don't see anything of Rome today nowadays that doesn't predate Nero, because everything was burnt down. And he sort of restructured the city. Okay, okay. So he's a visionary, if nothing else.

This is another point to his detriment, though. So, like, all right, so good at, architecture and possibly playing the guitar. He was the one that burnt Christians to death, though, wasn't he? He did. So he blames them for starting the fire. Easy peasy. Jobs are good, and why not? There are lots of rumours swirling that he was behind it, that Nero was behind it, and there are rumours swirling that he was playing the liar while Rome, burn, or singing a song about the fall of Troy. In reality, he probably, he was going around for several days leading the relief efforts, but he probably did make some Homeric quip. And then this was taken out of

context to be like, ah, he was singing. But he blames the Christians who were a very fringe group at the time. I mean, Christianity's like 60 years old or so. So it would be like blaming Harry Krishna or something. Quite a weird choice when there are so many other scapegoats. But he scapegoats them and then he goes a bit too far. So he has them crucified and burned alive in his gardens in the Vatican. And he parades around, dressed as a charioteer among his people. I would say that's too far. Yes. I think a line's been crossed there. Although that is the traditional execution for arsonists. So he didn't technically go beyond what was legally expected. Just awful people. Yeah, they're horrific. Right. So he's doing that. You've got to tell me how this all ends for him. So he

gets married again to Messalina, but not the really naughty one, a different one. How does he meet his end? Painfully, I hope. It is pretty painfully. And it's at his own hand. So he spends the last couple of his years just away on tour. He spends, quite a lot of time in Greece at the Olympics, picking up various crowns for charioteering, singing, heraldry, doing everything apart from what an emperor should do. And kind of people around the empire, the legates and those in charge of the legions, realise this is unsustainable. So this is like having a prime minister or a president, but instead of actually doing the job, they send themselves on a tour of their own music around the country.

Yeah, it's that kind of scenario. So there's a revolt. A guy called Julius Vindex, who we are told had a love of freedom, whatever that means, leads a revolt against him in Gaul, modern-day France. Nero is initially more annoyed that Vindex has slighted his ability as an artist than his... Focus, Nero, focus. He kind of prevaricates for a couple of days. Eventually he summons the Senate for a meeting, but he goes off topic and he starts talking about

an innovative way of playing the water organ that he's just happened. He's got to go. He's got to go. He's got to go. By this stage, yeah, no, support is draining away. And then Nero finds out that other legions have rebelled, including a guy called Galba, a future emperor over in Spain. Upon hearing this Nero feints, it's all very dramatic. So he kind of momentarily passes out and can't speak. Comes to his senses, retires to the palace, and then summons the Senate again, and he comes up with a plan. So his plan, genius plan, is that he's going to assemble a procession of prostitutes, with a head shaved look like Amazon Warriors, he's going to march to the revolting legions,

and he's going to present himself in front of them, and weep. And the legionaries, seeing their emperor in such a plight, will also weep. Imagine being there, listening to him, explain his plan. Like, you've all gathered for what could be the most important speech of this lunatic's life, like literally his last chance of what he's going to do to fix it all. And it starts with, I'm going to get a load of hookers. and shave their heads. He's redefining the narrative of what it means to go on campaign, I guess.

Wow. So was anybody there in the forum? Like, yes, this is exactly what we need. I like to imagine there was at least one guy. One lunatic, one other. Slow clap at the back. Yes, my leash. All right, so they didn't go for this plan then I assume.

This would have been people looking at one another going, what on earth? Yeah, this is the final straw. So the Senate convene, they declare him an enemy of the people and support drains away overnight. Nero wakes up in the middle of the night to find everybody abandoning him apart from sporous, actae and a few other freedmen. I think even Statilia Messalina's bugged off by this thing. Yeah, you would do. Yeah, once you'd heard that plan, yeah, you'd be long gone. You're going to take who? Yeah. I think, I think, just get my bags ready, please. Just start the car. We're about to go. So he finds himself abandoned in the middle of

the night. He resorts to leave the city. He makes his way out of the city. He makes his way out of the city to a Friedman's villa where he takes refuge because there are all of these passing Praetorians who are looking for him as he's been declared an enemy and therefore anybody can basically kill him and bring his head back to the forum. And yeah, essentially he takes shelter in this Friedman's villa. He asks one of his slaves to show him how to kill himself. The slave says, no, not going to do that. And then Nero kind of goes on a bit of a long-winded speech about what a great artist

or builder the world is losing. The Latin he says, This Artifex perio. And Artifex has often been translated as what an artist the world is losing, but it also kind of means builder. Maybe he's referring to his... His landscaping skills.

His landscaping. And eventually he kind of plucks up the courage to stab himself in the throat. Sporos is there kind of wailing, but presumably stops wailing the moment the knife goes in. And then a couple of Praetorians turn up and Nero turns to them and goes, you're late.

What loyalty? and then dies. Oh, well, good, actually. No, it should have happened earlier, quite frankly. What an awful person. Was everyone happy that he'd gone then? Not really. Oh, interesting.

We're told, like, the people put on, the Romans love doing this when a tyrant dies. They put on little liberty hats, caps, and they run around, like throwing their hats up in the air and going, freedom, like little smurfs. We're also told that quite a few people mourn him. Weirdly, we have this phenomenon of false Neros that keep cropping up all throughout the Roman Empire.

for the next few decades. And then Nero appears in kind of Christian thought and medieval thought as kind of this Antichrist type figure or this figure who will fight the Antichrist. Yeah, given his CV. Yeah, fair. Hardly surprising. And so it does seem like there was a lot to be gained

from pretending you were Nero. And I guess all you had to be was a redhead who could play kind of Wonderwall on the liar. There's loads of them. Turn a penny, them are redheads who could play monster. songs on the guitar. Loads up at the house party with the acoustic and just serenade everyone and tries to lead a rebellion.

Right. We've got to round this up, Alex. Here we go. Right. So, on his rap sheet, he has murdered his first wife, Octavia. Not nice. Also kick to death, Pompeia, Sabina. Very not nice.

Murdered his mother after a weird boat plan went awry. Definitely not very nice. Then we've got the castration of that poor. lad who looks a bit like his second wife and parading him around, right? Then we've got Pythagoras nonsense. Then we've got this weird kink that he's got where he wants to dress up as an animal and mall people's genitals. I mean, who hasn't? But that's what he wants to do. Then we've got the persecution of the Christians. And on top of all of that awfulness, just being a really shit emperor. Yeah, and that's just what we can fit into an hour.

Yeah. Do we think that Nero can be classified as a fuck boy? I think I'll go back to what I said at the beginning. I think he redefines the term of what it means to be a fuck boy because he's doing it with men, women, eunuchs, mothers. I think we might have to say no for this one, not because we're going to let him off the hook or because he was quite a kno, but because he's so awful, he's a rung below whatever a fuckboy actually is.

That's how bad he actually is. Yeah, he doesn't deserve to be on the list. He doesn't deserve. He sullies the name of fuckboy, quite frankly. If all he was was a fuckboy, I think we'd have all been let off quite lightly. So I don't think that he is. I don't even know what the word is for him, but he's not that. No, just like a pioneer of awfulness.

A pioneer of awfulness. There we go. So Nero, not a fuckboy, but not for positive reasons. Alexander, you have been horrendous to listen to, quite frankly, but it's been a lot of fun. And if people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you? I have the best places that would be my website, alexandermedings.com, where I organise private tours around Rome, or Appia with Alex.com, where I specialize on the Appian Way. Thank you so much for coming to tell us all. about this genuinely horrific historical person. It has been marvellous. Thank you so much for having me.

Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Alex for joining me. And if you like what you heard, don't forget to like review and follow along, whatever it is, you get your podcasts. Coming up, we have got an episode on History's Nautiest Pope and the final installment of this series of the historical fuckboys, rah-rah Rasputin. But if you would like us to explore a subject, or maybe if you just wanted to say hi, then you can email us at betwixt at historyhit.com. This podcast was edited by Tom Delaggy and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The Senior Producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again, betwixt the sheets, The History of Sex Scandal and Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.