Doomed to Fail - Ep 2 - Part 2: Nero: The Fiddling Tyrant

Episode Date: September 15, 2023

Emperor Nero and his wife Poppaea had a wild ride that involved the entire city of Rome burning, join us for this week's re-release!Step into the tumultuous world of ancient Rome with our podcast 'Nero: The Fiddling Tyrant.' Join us as we unravel the captivating and controversial life of Emperor Nero, known for his extravagant excesses, artistic pursuits, and ruthless rule. Explore the scandals, conspiracies, and the great fire of Rome that have forever etched his name in history. Discover the enigmatic personality behind the myths and legends, and delve into the fascinating tale of Nero's rise and fall in this immersive historical journey.Orignial episode - https://doomed-to-fail.simplecast.com/episodes/ep-2-things-i-xiii Photos via Creative Commons & AI Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail]  Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

everyone, Taylor from Doom to Fail. Today we're re-releasing episode two, part two, where I talk about Emperor Nero and his wife Pompeia. I want to apologize again for all the times that I said South Korea when I met North Korea in this episode. I 100% blame Fars. He knows better. He should have stopped me. Also for the ums. I apologize for the ums. It was our second episode. I'm trying to get better every day. But thank you for listening. I hope you enjoy. California versus Horanthal James Simpson Case number B.A.019.

And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Okay, well, that was terrible. Thank you, Fars. Happy to hear that terrible story. So I have like seven pages of notes

I've been working on. But today we're going to talk about Emperor Nero and Papaya Sabina, who was his second wife. And so a lot of these word names are like a smidge Italian sound things. I'm going to do a terrible job saying them. It's also a very confusing timeline. So just know that too. People spend their whole life studying these stories and writing books about them. And I'm trying my best.

So Nero was the fifth emperor of Rome from 54 to 68 AD. So we're going way back in the past, about 2,000 years ago. We're a little bit past when Jesus lived and died, but at least we're going up because I'm really bad at BC timelines. I can't figure it out. Like I'm bad at time zones and I'm bad at BC timelines. So I'm glad we're in on the up and up. So 54 to 68, Nero was the emperor of Rome. So Pompeia is his second wife.

Are you saying Pompeia? Papea, P-O-P-P-A-E-A. okay I was thinking about the not Vosuvius thing it's different than that okay uh yes but that comes that comes back we'll get back to that um so it's not it's not coincidence her name sounds like that is got it got it um so she's a second wife um having a first wife is not a red flag you're talking about that's fine you can have a first wife you can even have a second wife it could be it could be like have a divorce and it didn't work out and whatever that's no big deal um but so the idea of having a second wife, being the second wife is not the red flag.

What happened to the first wife is the red flag, but we'll get to that in a minute. It was bad. So to study, you know, get prepared for this. I watched some YouTube videos, some Wikipedia, some other articles. And also, per usual, cannot recommend enough Dan Carlin. He has a great million part series called Death Throws of the Republic that talks about when Rome was a republic up to Julius Caesar. And that's when they started to have emperors. So in the very beginning of the empire, the Republic is over.

So they get the background on the Republic. Listen to that. It takes like three days, but it's totally worth it. And so it's a direct next step in that story. So I want to talk about the background, cast of characters, and then what led to their marriage and what happened after. I also got to do the most exciting thing ever in my life. Now I can find it. Oh, I got to reference my own library.

I was like, I think I've seen this before. So I got to pull a book out of my own library that gave me information that I needed, which is like my dream. What's the book called? This is a fatal thing happened on the way to the forum. It is a book about murder and death and humanity in ancient Rome. It is by Dr. Emma Southen. It is very funny. It's like funny.

She's very sarcastic. I feel like she's probably younger than me. Like I could talk to her. She's awesome. So she wrote this amazing book and it is, it talks about like just how much of violence there was in this time and the way that people saw other human beings. So if you were an enslaved person in this time, you were not considered a human, like at all. And a lot of people who were enslaved didn't look physically different than the people who weren't because it was like spoils of war from like another part of Italy. You know, it wasn't like, it wasn't like, you know, African people that you could like see and really like make that a thing.

It was like just other people. But they weren't seen as actual human beings. So they died a lot. People died in like the arena and they died, you know, working a lot and like to death, like working to death, you know. And like for spilling wine, you know, you get eaten by a lion. And people didn't think that that was wrong. It was just sort of like par for the course. So it's kind of like hard to understand because it was a long time ago.

We also have like very little actual details and information about this. Like we have stories that we heard like passed on and like bits of pottery and things like that. We don't know exactly what happened. But it seems like, you know, people like wives and children, like they weren't, you know, treated like people. So if your wife dies, that's sort of a you problem. There's no, like, police force. You're not going to go to jail. You know, it's like your family's the title what to do.

And if your family decides that means that you die too, problem solved, you know? So it's a lot of like, there's a lot of murder. So it's violent, it's smelly, it's sticky. There's blood everywhere. Like, that's the world over in right now in ancient Rome. And what did we learn last week if you kill your spouse, cremate the body before the autopsy? A hundred percent. Yes.

Don't, like, kill them with a knife that has your name engraved in it. Absolutely not. So, you know, we see a lot of Christians being burned for fun. We see a lot of people like hanging from trees and on spikes and a lot, a lot, a lot of death in here. But you just kind of feel, you get the impression that people felt a little bit differently. And that's a lot of that is in this book, A Fatal Thing Happened on the way to the forum that I totally recommend. But just kind of have that in your head. You have these like people that you don't.

And murder isn't like. You're not going to go to jail. There isn't a jail and people get murder. Nobody cares. Yeah. Nobody cares. So that's where we are right now. We're in ancient Rome. And some of our, you know, important characters, of course, there's Nero, the emperor. And to continue with our noodle analogy, Nero is like the spoon that you use to get noodles out of the pot. Like he's not going to noodle. He's like that, like, spoon with like the little things on it that you used to pull out spaghetti. can we okay so you know what's funny is my head went directly to the spoon you get when you get ramen a little boat tray thing or is not that no that one's that one's lovely and gentle i'm talking about

the one like the big one with like the spikes on it that you used to like hand out the spaghetti so that's what picture picture painted yes great um no i feel like if we do find someone gentle and nice they can be like a ramen spoon like the spoon you get when you get like miso soup that seems like a kind spoon but so Nero our emperor his mother Agrippina Claudius is his uncle and his septa and an emperor so there's a lot of like

there's a lot of family tree stuff very Game of Thrones that I do not understand but I will try to clarify it as best as I can there's Octavia who's Nero's first wife Pompeia is his second wife and then some supporting characters there's a witch there's actually a fourth wife and then there's a man called spores who will get to.

Great. So Nero was married four times. Yes. Got it. Okay. Yes. Kind of five, the last two kind of go on top of each other, we'll get to that. So most of history talks about Nero as being just the worst emperor ever.

He's being violent and selfish. And some of the things he did are terrible. Like all of the killing, lots of sexual assaults. Actually, he's actually a model for the. Antichrist in the Bible. So some sex believe that when the Antichrist comes back, he'll look like Nero, which means that he will be chubby and have a neck beard, because that's what Nero looked like. Even the statues of Nero, he's chubby with a neck beard.

So you know that's like what he looked like and what he wanted to look like. So picture that. And some things he did that are like bad, but like I feel like they're part for the course for an emperor in this time or like a supreme leader in any time. So it reminds me of things. Like, you know, he's not paying attention to things happening in the far reaches of the empire. Right now, the Roman Empire goes all the way up to Britain. So, I mean, how is he even going to know what's happening over there?

It takes, like, months to get over the Alps to come back and tell him. And he just doesn't care about, you know, the empire itself. He cares about, you know, himself. And some of the things that he does involve him, like, being the best sportsman and being the best actor and being the best. Oh, no. He's the Kim Jong-un of. So that, that personality, is that what you thought? that personality trait seems to exist like it's ubiquitous with like power it sounds like absolutely

absolutely that's i wrote it's like kim kong un being the best basketball player all of south korea and like uh do you remember when putin like went scuba diving and tending to the ocean and found those like ancient pieces it's like that so good so that stuff is like you know it's bad but i don't feel like that like makes him the worst but what i do think it is is it is a red flag for a lot of shit happening underneath the surface you know so obviously like we know there's like so many terrible things happening in russia and south korea um and they have these leaders who are like hey but i'm the best and you're like people are serving you know so you're not the best kempjung un is also chubby but i don't think he has a nice beard no i don't know if he can grow

a beard um oh yeah if i can't grow a beard yes yeah but it's a very similar idea you know someone being like oh my gosh and then like when you watch like i don't know i watched a documentary of eye doctors going to South Korea and curing people's glaucoma and after they would like remove the bandages and they could see they would go up to like a picture of the Supreme Leader and be like, thank you Supreme Leader. I'm so grateful for you that you did this for me, that you got me this doctor, blah, blah, blah. But you're like, this could have happened like 15 years ago if the Supreme Leader allowed doctors in, you know, like he, what? So the amount of brainwashing is just unbelievable. Yeah. So there's a lot of that, I think, in this episode for for both things.

But so, you know, the stuff that he's dumb that is bad. Some of it's legitimately bad. Some of it's red flags for other things that are happening. Nero himself was born in the year 37. His name was, ready? Lusus, Demetis, Inobaris. Nope, I can't do it. That's so terrible.

He was generally a member of the upper class. That was his name. His dad was kind of terrible. He died when he was two. His mother was Agrippina the younger, and she was very, very power hungry. Like she was like distantly related to the Julio Class. And Claudia Caesar and Claudia is the first emperor. And the current emperor at the time when Nero was born, Caligula was afraid of Agrippina.

He was afraid of her ambition. So we had her banished. And Nero got sent to live with an aunt. And he got tutored instead of by like a normal tutor. He got tutored by an actor. So he has like actor who like was his tutor. And also actors are like the lowest of the low. it's like it's like sheep slave actor in like the thing you know like it's real bad so so he he's like

brought up by this actor for a little bit um and caligula is obviously gets assassinated because there's a lot of assassination and this story and a lot of murder yeah yeah so the next in line is a man named claudio uh claudius oh my god claudius in claudio line so he's really he's actually agrippina's uncle so he's Nero's great uncle and Agrippina and Claudius get married so she's married her uncle I know this is a lot

I wrote this is confused so she so the there's a new the new emperor Caligula is is murdered the new emperor is Claudius Claudius is Agrippina's uncle so he is Nero's great uncle

they're in the they're in this like Julio Claudian line of the line of the original emperors of Rome going back you know a couple like a hundred years or so and that means that he adopts Nero so the new emperor

is now Nero's stepdad and also his great uncle. It's got to be so confusing especially when we're being taught by an actor if we can't string the logic together some actor is probably not going to be able to stream the logic that family lineage together either, right? Totally. It's like a VC Andrews book.

I just like don't know what's going on. So now the Claudius is the Emperor Agrippian, is Empress. And also, Claudius has a young son named Britannicus, who's a little bit younger than Nero. Okay. So now they're in this, like, incestuous family, whatever. And Claudius was right to be worried, you know, about Agrippina. She was definitely, wants to be in power. That's her whole thing. She wants to be power, but she can't be because she's a woman. So she needs to be, you know, just like, you know, related to power. So she's married to the emperor, but she really wants her son to be emperor. So she cooks up a plan to kill Claudius. So Agrippina, Nero's mom, gets this woman who is super fun.

Her name is Lucasta, I'm going to my best, but she is a poisoner. So she is a kind of person where you would go to her and ask for poison to kill someone. So you're like, my husband's abusive. I don't like the emperor. Like, I want to kill my rival. Like, she would give you the poisons. So you could do, like, all sorts of different kinds of poisonous things. You know, she could make it like a slow burn or immediate death or like, whatever.

She was like this like witch who made poisons. I say witch because like she feels witchy and fun. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. I love, I love the witchy body. But in this case, given where the request is coming from, she knows that she's doing something to kill the emperor. Absolutely. Yeah.

Okay. Nobody cares. Again, nobody cares. Nobody cares. She knows. She knows. So she gets. So Agrippina asks for like a slow.

poison that will kill him slowly over a meal. So not like drink it and you die immediately, but like start to get sick and then die at the end of the meal. So you could like attribute it to bad food or like something else. I'm like playing out the whole story about like Rasputin's assassination of my mind right now. Where he's just sitting there like, please, when are you going to kneel over? When are you going to fall face first into your bat of wine? It's incredible. Exactly. And then what happens is Claudius doesn't die from this because he throws up because he throws up because he drank a bunch of wine. So if you drink like seven casks of wine and

eat a bunch of food, like you're probably going to throw up. So he does. And so he doesn't, the poison doesn't work. So Agrippian has to go back and get something that would kill him a little bit quicker, which is a bit more suspicious, but it has to be done. So they do it. And Claudius is he dies and Nero becomes emperor. Do we know what age Nero is at this point? He's 16 when he becomes emperor. Oh my God. Yeah. So that's actually, that's exactly what we're talking about. So he keeps uh lecusta the witch she gets to live in the palace with him and just like be on hand to make poison so i picture her like um in robin hood men and tights like in the basement with like do you know what i'm talking about latrine no and robin hood men in tights the witch's name is latrine

and she lives in the basin and like gives them like there's like the bones and stuff is really funny um it'll be a fun thing to have in a basement just you have an in-house witch to go to whenever you need some potions i love that i love it i love it um she probably also did like skincare stuff i imagine like other fun things um so she lives in the in the in the palace with nero um he's 16 years old so i'm glad you asked that because i did watch a couple videos where they like talk about him being 16 and how that is um you know a very young age to become emperor and like imagine yourself at 16 and that kind of thing um one of the videos even like it was like a i can't remember i'll put it in the notes but a british documentarian talking about it and they had like

clips of like young british dudes at the pub and i'm like yes and no like yes you're young when you're 16 but also i don't know what this ancient roman 16 is you know like being a teenager is new like do you remember learning that in school like you weren't teenager became a word like after world war two like other 16 year olds probably married and hijabs you know is that like yeah like once you consider if you were like a single woman or girl at like 16 weren't she like considered an old man i mean the lifespan was so short back then I would assume yeah totally so like I don't know I don't know if I don't know if I can compare him to a 16 year old now and say he was super immature like he was definitely like

not the best statesman of all time but I don't know if his age is like as big of a thing as we can say it is but he's young um but either way like he wasn't going to do all of the work his mom was so even like a really kind of um crazy thing is that they're both on the coin from this time him and his mother. So which is like super unprecedented. They're staring at each other. Like they're both the same size. So like they're both on the coins. Like they know that like she is a big part of this of ruling Rome as well. So eventually she's like trying to get more and more power. She's thinking of maybe siding with Britannicus, who's her stepson. Remember Claudius's son? So Nero has him killed. So he's out of the picture. He gets poisoned. And then he's like his mom continues to try to

you know get power from him so he has her killed um eventually he has his mom killed oh yeah so that's a red flag you know if you're killing a lot of your family members for power i imagine so no the red flag is like the witch in the basement who's like constantly creating poisons to kill your relatives i mean why is nobody there a lot no that's definitely bad but he could you know he could kill you at any moment in any number of ways the first time the first way he tries to kill his mom is he stages like a boat crash so he like puts her on a boat it's another boat to hit it and expects her to drown but she doesn't that's so needlessly elaborate i know because he wanted to make it look like an accident but he was like forget it he ended up ordering assassins

to um to kill her and make it look like a suicide but okay so she gave the basement gave in the basement which uh night off basically yes exactly exactly so his mom is uh his mom is dead um he's now like the sole leader of Rome. And now, let's talk about his wives. I think this timing overlaps a little bit. Like he's married when he's stuff happened to his mom,

but we'll just talk about his wives in general. So his first wife, Octavia, was his step sister. That's very crazy. So, I mean, they're not related. They're step siblings.

But I, so she fits into this family. I mean, it kind of makes sense because it's not like you can, like, if you're that, high up in royalty like your network is probably very insular yeah the people that you interact with on a daily basis probably like it's just like everybody that lives in this tassel because you're not

going to go down to the market and buy fish right so yeah i guess i guess it tracks it tracks i mean queen elizabeth married her cousin so is that true you know that's like charles is her cousin no charles is her son but um philip was her cousin yeah yeah wow okay like like maybe second cousin but like not a great number of cousins. Don't get mad at me, England, but that's, they're related. So he's married to Octavia. She's a step-sister.

She's also quite a good wife. She really wants to be subservient to him. She wants to help Rome. She loves Rome. She loves, like, you know, being a wife, all the things. And he hated that. So we tried to kill her several times by strangling her because the people loved her and like that was annoying.

And like he just like didn't, she wasn't super exciting. They didn't have any children. So we kind of used that as a weapon. over her because they've been a couple of years and they hadn't had kids. So during this time, he obviously has girlfriends and things like that. And he's trying to, you know, he's doing other things. So he meets Papaya during this while he's still married to Octavia. So Papaya is from Pompei. So that's where I like brought that up. They actually think that they have her house in Pompeii excavated. So you can like go into where she might have lived. She wasn't like there

during the, I don't know when Mount Vesuvius erupted, but she wasn't there during that time, but they think that they have her house. I've been there. It's awesome. It's really fun to walk around Pompeii. I don't recommend climbing Mount Vesuvius because it costs like 10 euro and it takes forever. You get up there and it's just sand. It's not very exciting. But so she's from Pompeii. She's been married two times before, actually. There's actually a fair amount of divorce in ancient Rome and it seems to be fine. There's no, no one has like any qualms about it. Her first husband was actually executed by Agrippina, Neur's mom, because she didn't trust him. So he was like in like the guards and she didn't trust him. So she had him killed. Now she marries her second husband. And they got divorced. So whatever.

So she has one son from her first marriage and she meets, meets Nero. And it seems like this is the, this is the thing. Like they really like each other. They really want the same things. But she's from like a noble family. She wants to get, you know, ahead. So does he.

it seems that this is like this is their love they really really like each other um so he gets her pregnant um and he banishes octavia his first wife which i was reading it and i was like well that's great he banishes her i'm like banish me to an island with someone it's not going to end that way though like it's it's bad isn't it it doesn't he kills her almost immediately so he he banishes her and people are sad because they liked her and they miss her so he's like oh my god i don't want to bring her back here so he has her killed as well um so we thought for maybe he didn't but like no he did so um but also taylor if if you get banished you're probably not getting banished like hawaii right like you're probably getting banished

like somewhere awful i would assume i kind of think i don't i don't remember where she's banished you but i kind of think it's okay i think you get banished like the seaside actually italy yeah there's not really that many bad spots in italy yeah i think it's like like napoleon like on elba i'm like what are crying about dude you know but like you still like want a lot of power so people loved her wanted her back so he had her had her killed um so he marries his pregnant um papaya in 62 ad um and you know they generally like each other chose to get married um she helped him with his reign the roman people didn't love her because they really like octavia and they're obviously like this is suspicious and weird a manor love her um she also

had a child from her first marriage that nero drowned on a fishing drip so that's bad so bad i keep i keep seeing things that were like new new historians are like maybe he wasn't that bad but i'm like maybe he was like that stuff's real bad i mean it's one child and you're bad should be the role till your mother some shopping yeah talk about a family and i later okay for real so he kills he kills that that kid because he wants like the only kids of of papaya to be his um but unfortunately the first baby that they have um she only lives to be four months old which is kind of like part for the course I feel like for most of all time so um but now you know Nero's only 26 he's not like it's been 10 years he's had he's like killed his mother he's

has two wives like you know a lot of stuff has happened but he's still only only 26 and then something crazy happens um Rome burns down in 64 I've heard this zero and the fiddle right exactly exactly except fiddles weren't invented until a lot later and wasn't there. So wamp-wom, that's not true. I was lied too. So he was actually at his beach house, you know, like 30 or so miles away on the coast. And he did come to Rome immediately once you heard that it had happened. And Rome burned for almost nine days. So what we see now of Rome and like Pompeii and ruins now, you know, you see stone and you see like whatever like the stuff that could survive, you know, 2,000 years and survive fires and earthquakes and all of that thing.

But there's also, like, tons of wooden houses, you know, there's wooden houses, there's fabric, there's people, there's life sacs, there's hay, there's so much stuff that can burn. So a lot of Rome kind of burns to the ground. The same thing happened, you know, in the Great Fire of Chicago, where a lot of Chicago was burned down. The same thing happened to Moscow. And I think in like the 1800s, Moscow burned down because it was all wood, you know? So a lot of that, what we see is kind of what is left. so he did return to Rome

and one thing he did that was good is he did open his palace to let people in which I wanted to note that Joel Osteen did not do remember that guy he's like kind of a mega church somewhere and then like there was a disaster in Houston and he didn't let anybody in the church to like say he was trying to preserve the carpet

which yes I mean right and all the money he had like in the walls yeah the worst so I mean he's worse than Emperor Nero in that in that case which I think is pretty bad. So one thing that people are suspicious about in history is that after the Great Fire, Nero built a huge castle on some of the empty land.

So some people think he might have done it to clear the space for his castle. I mean, it's fitting with everything else you said. I mean, I like that was like a little caveat there saying, look at him, he opened his castle up to let the people come in. He murdered like half his... family and they killed his wife, the step-kid, the mom. This sounds more in line with his character than he's just a normal emperor.

Totally, totally. And he, like, he also, like, stuff like that. Also, I'm saying, like, it's 2,000 years ago. We don't know what life was like then, all those things. But also, 6,000 people died making the stadiums and guitar for the World Cup this year, you know? I did not know that. That's insane. They brought people in from other countries, took away their paperwork, and worked them to death.

And that happened this year. You know, so, like, there's still so many bad things that happen in the world that are very similar. It has to do with power. So after the burning of Rome, while this palace is being made, Nero does the most hilarious thing. And he goes to Greece, because Greece is part of Roman Empire. And he goes on, like, an artistic tour because he wants to be, like, a singer and an actor. And he, like, wants to play all the instruments and wants to, like, perform. he actually brought a lot of like performance to like the gladiators and the you know the arena like he had like you know if you're going to kill have like a slave killed like have him dressed like hercules you know so you can like make it more of like a story so we really like that like showmanship part of it so he goes to greece where they're having this like annual festival where every town and every place has like a competition like who's the best singer in town who's the best blah blah blah in town there's the best blah blah in town there's

about 1,800 competitions throughout Greece, and guess how many Nero wins? Wins? Yeah. Well, given his pedigree in that he was raised by an actor to teacher, he probably did pretty good. I'm going to say 1800. I'm going to say 800. You won 1,800.

No. He won all of them. Because if he didn't win, he's going to be a course it was rigged. Of course it was rigged. I'm sitting here, oh, my pure heart. I know. Good for you. Good for you. No. Like he definitely, he won every single one of them. So he goes to Greece. He comes back. And people are just mad. They're like, did you kill all this women in your life? Did you burned on Rome? Where have you been? You know, all that. And during this time, him and Papaya get in a fight. And it could have been normal. I'm sure that he was like not a gentle man. But she was pregnant. And the story is that he kicked her to death while she.

she was pregnant, which is terrible. The, like, the newer, there's, like, other things people are, like, maybe she just died in childbirth and the people who wrote this story hated Nero, but either way, it's not like he was kind to her at this point in her life, you know? Yeah. Yeah. So he wasn't great before this. So it's definitely, he was definitely abusive and she died.

He probably kicked her to death, which is absolutely terrible. So now things are crazy. Like, now things are crazy. He's actually devastated that. she's dead and he like instead of having her cremated per usual he has her like mummified and he has like all of these um he spends all this money on like a huge memorial to her and all these things like he's very very sad that she's gone even though he probably had a lot to do with it um and the empire is crumbling people are really upset with him he hasn't been paying attention he's been a jerk he spent all the

money on palaces and these like competitions that he was in and he's never around so people are like this guy has got to go um so before that happened I'm going to tell you the worst thing that he did. It's subjective because he's done a lot of bad things. But, like, clear your mind. You never could have imagined this. I'm nervous. So he's sad that his wife is dead.

And he marries a woman named Stilicia Messalina in 66. And she actually turns out fine. She leaves us under the story. someone else and has a life. But she's not what he wants. He wants his wife back. So what does he do? He gets a young man who has an uncanny resemblance to his wife, has him castrated, and marries him. Oh my God. That is pretty bad. That is buried in a lot of the stories. And I'm like, that feels like the worst thing. Like, I know people died. But like, could you imagine if like you had a friend whose wife died? And then later they were like, oh, here is this, like, person that kind of looks like her.

I imagine him, like, wearing a veil and being like, I'm prepared, you know, like. They just slap a dress on me and shave my beard and they're like, this is my new buxom wife. It's just incredible. It's horrible. So he married, he married him. Maybe he wanted to live that. You know, maybe he was like some poor beggar kid. And he was like, well, I get to sleep in the castle and I get to eat.

have clean water and wine and I gotta just I don't know well there is no clean water oh well um but maybe but I feel like it's just I feel like also your situation has to be like pretty dire to where this is an upgrade yes yes yes so it probably wasn't an upgrade no probably not because I'm sure that he was also very abusive towards him like he was and then he would like this is all making this up but I imagine he would like beat him up up and then cry and be like, I miss you. Like it's not great. You know, so he's married to this dude. And now people start like trying to kill him all over. People start, you know, having all these revolts all over the empire. So he starts kind of running around trying to hide. He's like in his

palace and he's like trying to find his guards and they're not there. Like people are abandoning him and he knows that he's kind of in danger now. So he decides that the best thing to do is to kill himself. So Nero plans to kill himself, but he can't do it. Um, He doesn't have the guts. So he tried to be like, he's 30 years old. And he tried to say my last words are, what an artist dies with me is what he wanted his last words to be. But he couldn't do it.

So he had his private secretary, Hipparoticus, kill him instead. And he ended up actually getting executed from murdering the emperor, which is super unfair because emperor asked him to do it. And then the others tried to save him. and Nero, his words were actually too late. This is fidelity. So, like, stop trying to save me. I want to die.

Do we know how he was killed? I think he was stabbed. It was like a lot of, like, very bloody, I think in the neck. So he only lived to be 30. And it was actually the end of the Julio Claudian line that his mom was from. And then the next year in 69, there were four emperors. So it was called the year of four emperors. So things were kind of crazy.

They didn't really get there. together until a little bit later and yeah that's i mean after after nero died rome went to some time trying to figure out like what it was and what they wanted to do but he definitely left like this a lot of devastation and a lot of death in his wake and i feel like his relationship with papaya was so violent he killed her he killed her son she you know he killed ended up killing her and they felt so bad about it and like had to speak her maid and all that stuff which I think is crazy. That's it.

So one thing that I thought of when you first started telling the story about how violent and awful it was during this time period. And I'm thinking on what life is like today is I wonder which is the natural state of humanity. And then you said something else that I think solidified it for me. you mentioned how he probably beat that kid who he had castrated but then would cry afterwards he probably killed Pompeo and would cry afterwards and it just reminded it's reminding me of like every abusive relationship that I see a story happening up on ID investigation discovery of like

this kind of dynamic and I was like what I mean those that still holds true today as it did back then. So maybe that is the natural state of people as just being just crazy. And we just put rules in place to prevent that from happening. But I don't know. It's kind of a wild story. Yeah, totally. Yeah, he definitely was like, yeah, you're right. Because I'm like, you want to say like we're less violent than, you know, ancient times, but maybe it's just more hidden. They're still like. You said 6,000 people died in Qatar. I didn't know that. I think there's like 40,000. million people in slavery in the world right now um so there's like a lot going on we just like we choose to not have it as part of our like daily life i feel like so things have always been things have always

been kind of awful at least for the most part in america you can't murder your wife and get away with it and your mom and your step kid and your stepbrother but maybe people have i don't know yeah yeah yeah what's your takeaway what's your red fight takeaway i think that like there's definitely like a takeaway of like you know if everyone around you die suspiciously i'm suspicious of you um is a big one and also that like quest for power and control of the empire being more important than family and relationships and people um i think is is is wild that you would just be like i will kill anyone and i will um you know betray and poison and stab and do all these things just because I have to be in control.

I think that's crazy. I'm going to extrapolate one layer beyond that to, I think that. Okay, so everybody got involved in this story. Obviously, this guy was the emperor. And obviously, look, there had to be some inkling that he was a nut job who was telling people constantly and doing crazy shit. And they still went for it. And so there's something around, if you are drawn to personalities of power or to institutions of power, it can have an effect on you where you subjugate your own logic of like, this could end badly for me because look at all the other facts in the story, you might abandon that in the interest of being closer to that power or to that personality.

and so I guess check yourself if you start being drawn to that like why am I drawn to that and what are my boundaries that you know I'm not going to over sub totally I think that's good for the turpins too like if someone is controlling you and you're doing things that are that are objectively bad um when like yeah how do you when do you check yourself because it should have been earlier it should have been yeah exactly and if you have a cell phone in your trapped inside please use it to call somebody um so yeah our kids i know i know for everyone poor everyone um well that was our stories for this week on doom to fail plenty of red flags and thank you taylor for your story and we'll do this again next week

awesome thank you far as i feel like i'm getting my stride and try i don't know i what exactly my shtick is, but I'm working on it. But I like these stories. They're fun. And I'm like, they involve relationships and just like crazy, crazy shit that happened in the past. I think is really fun because it's like we're all, people are always the same and times are different. And it's just, it's interesting, which is why I like started becoming a history nerd in my old age. Which is why I became a true crime nerd in my old age. And the through line between the historic and the modern is kind of remarkable. Yeah, absolutely. We'll keep pursuing it.

Cool. Well, I will see you next week. Hey, everyone. Thanks for listening. I hope you enjoyed episode two part two on Emperor Nero. If you have any questions or any ideas or feedback, we'd love to hear it. We are at Doomed to Fail pod at gmail.com. Find us at all your social media at Doomed to Fail.

And our episodes are up anywhere to listen to podcasts and on YouTube. Thank you. We'll see you next week. Thank you.