Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Emperor Nero

Episode Date: January 19, 2024

In the year 54, the Roman Emperor Claudius died, and his adopted son Nero became the Emperor of Rome at the age of 16.  His reign was one of the most infamous in history, and over 2000 years after he came to power, his name is still used to invoke the image of a cruel ruler and a despot. But what exactly made him so bad, and was he really as bad as the legends say? Learn more about Emperor Nero and why his reign became so infamous on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.  Sponsors BetterHelp Visit BetterHelp.com/everywhere today to get 10% off your first month ButcherBox Sign up today at butcherbox.com/daily and use code daily to choose your free steak for a year and get $20 off."  Subscribe to the podcast!  https://link.chtbl.com/EverythingEverywhere?sid=ShowNotes -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Peter Bennett & Cameron Kieffer   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the year 54, the Roman Emperor Claudius died, and his adopted son Nero became the Emperor of Rome at the age of 16. His reign was one of the most infamous in history, and over 2,000 years after he came to power, his name is still used to invoke the image of a cruel ruler and a despot. But what exactly made him so bad, and was he really as bad as the legend say? Learn more about Emperor Nero, and why his reign became so infamous on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night.

And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. The emperor who was to become known as Nero-Claudeus Caesar Augustus Dermanicus was born with none of those names. He was born Lucius Demisius Ahanabarbis on December 15th in the year 37, in the Italian town of Antium, now called Anzio, which is about 50 kilometers south of Rome. His father, who really has no part in this story, was Nyas Demitius Ahanabarbis. The parent who played an outsized role in his life was his mother, Agrippina the younger. Agrippina was the daughter of Germanicus, who was once in line to become emperor himself, the sister of the emperor, Caligula and the great-granddaughter of Augustus. She was a core member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty

that ruled Brom. Neuro's father died when he was just two years old. His mother later became the fourth wife of the Emperor Claudius. And just to get an idea of how dysfunctional this family was, Claudius was the brother of Germanicus, and thus Agrippina's uncle. Agrippina was, by all contemporary accounts, an extremely ambitious woman who wanted to rule Rome herself. But because she was a woman, she couldn't wield power directly, so she had to wield power indirectly. During the reign of Caligula, she was exiled to a small island off the coast of Italy. It's thought that she was exiled because she was plotting to overthrow her brother. Her marriage to Claudius was largely believed to be so she could position her son as emperor.

Claudius was pressured to formally adopt Nero. Agrippina had the tutors of Nero when Claudius' natural son Britannicus changed to men who are loyal to her, and likewise, she managed to get the head of the Praetorian Guard changed to one of her men as well. All of the Roman historians who covered this period in history, including Josephus, Taticus, and Cassius Dio, all implicate Agrippina in the poisoning and death of Claudius in the year 54. When Claudius died, with all of her people in place, the ascension of her son to emperor went off without question. Nero was only 16 years old when he came to power, and Agrippina assumed that she could easily manipulate her son, and at first she was right. One example of

her ambition was that when Nero became emperor, a coin was issued with the head of Agrippina on one side, not that of the emperor. She also eliminated anyone who could pull. possibly interfere, including Nero's aunt, who cared for Nero when Agrippina was in exile, and other living male descendants of Augustus. However, a rift soon developed between Nero and his mother. Nero's advisors saw how Agrippina manipulated Nero and did what they could to weaken her influence. The issue that caused a major rift between the two was an affair that Nero had with a freedwoman by the name of Claudia Acte. Prior to becoming emperor at the age of 14, Nero had married Claudius's natural daughter, and thus Nero's adopted half-sister, Claudia Octavia.

Agrippina arranged this because she was obsessed with keeping the family pedigree impeccable. She was adamantly against Nero having a relationship with a woman who had been a former slave. Nero eventually exiled his mother, but she continued to have contact with his wife and threatened to throw her support to Nero's stepbrother, Britannicus. So Nero had Britannicus killed. Eventually, Nero began a relationship with another woman, Papia Sabina, which his mother also objected to, so he plotted to have his mother killed. In the year 59, Nero hatched a plot to kill his mother in a boat that would collapse when she was in it.

The boat did collapse, but she swam to shore, not realizing that it was an assassination attempt. On hearing of his mother's survival, he sent an assassin to kill her and to make it look like a suicide. When the news of Agrippina's death became public, Nero was actually sent letters of congratulations by the Senate and the Army. The first five years of Nero's rule, when his mother was still around, were largely considered to be good ones.

He listened to the advice of his advisors, primarily the head of the Praetorian Guard, sextus, Afranius, Burris, and his former tutor and stoic philosopher, Seneca. After the death of his mother, however, something began to change in Nero, Without his mother, he no longer felt he had any constraints. And this became even more pronounced just three years later in the year 62 when Burris died,

and Seneca attempted to retire and eventually just distanced himself from Nero's court. Now with none of his advisors, he divorced Octavia, whom everyone had recommended he not due, and married Papina Sabina. He exiled Octavia to the same island where he exiled his mother and had her murdered. His behavior became ever more erratic. Soon after the death of Burris, the first trial for treason against him took place. He also executed two of his rivals, Cornelius Sulla and Rubelius Plattus. This was widely thought to be the beginning of the downturn in relations with the Senate,

which up until that point had actually been rather good. The thing that came to define the rule of Nero, however, and the thing for which most people remember him today was the great fire of Rome in the year 64. The fire began in July 18th, somewhere around or in the Circus Maximus, the giant chariot racing stadium. Fires happened to all the time in Rome, but this time it was fed by incredibly high winds, which fan the flames and spread the fire. The fire burned for six days before it was brought under control, and then the fire broke out again and burned for another three days. Of Rome's 14 districts, three were completely destroyed, seven suffered serious damage,

and only four remained untouched. Needless to say, the people of Rome were upset and traumatized, and they were looking for someone to blame, and the obvious choice was the person in charge of everything, Nero. Up until this point, Nero had been quite popular with the people. Most of the unpopular things he did only affected the senatorial class. Nero, hoping to preserve his popularity with the people, pin the fire on a scapegoat, a new cult that had appeared in Rome and who called themselves Christians. This was the first great persecution of Christians in history, and the first time that they even gained the attention of historians.

It's been said that history is written by the winners, and that is one of the reasons why Nero has gotten such a bad reputation over the last 2,000 years. The Roman Empire fell, but Christianity, survived, and the stories of Nero survived with them. Nero supposedly rounded up Christians, and had many of them brutally executed. One of the stories of Nero during the Great Fire was that he supposedly fiddled while Rome burned. Regardless of how one defines fiddled, it appears that Nero did nothing of the sort. For starters, the fiddle was a stringed instrument that didn't exist back then. And second,

if you define fiddling as just wasting one's time, Nero didn't really do that. either. When the fire broke out, Nero wasn't even in Rome. He was probably at his villa in the city of Antium. When he heard the news, he supposedly rushed home to aid in the rescue. Things really started to go south with the construction of the Domas Aurea. I've previously done an entire episode on the Domas Aurea, but to refresh your memory, Nero cleared out a massive area of destroyed buildings in the middle of Rome and built what was arguably the largest building ever constructed in the ancient world. It's located where the Coliseum is today. It was a monstrous affront to the people of Rome, many of whom lost everything. Nero also built a gigantic lake and created an enormous statue of himself that was

almost 100 feet or 30 meters tall. The cost of his new palace was greater than all the money in the imperial treasury, and the way he compensated for the shortfall of money was through higher taxes, which nobody liked. As a result, the next year, in the year 65, Senator Gaius Calpurnius, Pizzo, and others hatched a conspiracy to get rid of Nero. Known as the Pisonian conspiracy, it was discovered and reported to Nero by a freedman, and all the conspirators, all of them respected senators, were executed. And there's something else I should note about Nero. He had a very odd personality quirk in that he thought himself to be a great artist. Nero studied poetry, music, painting, and sculpture.

He would often perform in front of his guests who had no choice but to watch the emperor and applaud. One of his top generals Vespasian, one supposedly fell asleep during one of Nero's recitals, and headed to then exile himself to a small town to avoid Nero's wrath. In the year 67, Nero had the Olympics in Greece postponed a year so he could participate. He entered the competition and won every event that he participated in. including a chariot race where he was thrown from his chariot. While studying some arts was considered to be respectable for upper-class Romans, Nero took things too far by actually performing.

Actors were considered to be the lowest rung of Roman society, and Nero's performances were considered undignified for someone of his stature. Ultimately, his highly erratic behavior and his profligate spending caught up with him. In 68, the army and Gaul rose up against Nero when his high taxes. The rebellion of Gaul was put down, but then the governor of Hispania Taraconesas, Servius Salpicius Galba, rose up against Nero, and his support kept growing. Eventually, Nero's own Praetorian Guard turned against him, causing him to flee Rome. He attempted to go to Rome's port city of Austria, where his plan was to get a boat and then go to the east,

but his own troops refused to help him. He went to bed in one of his palaces, and when he woke, up supposedly all of the guards and all of his friends were gone. The Senate then declared Nero a public enemy, and finally Nero took his own life. Supposedly, his body was cremated and his ashes buried in his birth father's family cemetery by his former mistress, the freedwoman Claudia Acte. Nero's death presented quite a problem. After almost a century of rule by the Julio Claudians, there was now nobody to assume the mantle of emperor. Nero and his mother had killed off everyone who could possibly be considered an heir, and Nero had no children.

It ushered in the year of the four emperors, and a period of chaos that eventually ended when the General Vespasian was declared emperor, the same man who fell asleep listening to Nero. History has not been kind to Nero. He is on almost every list of bad emperors, in no small part to the centuries of Christians, many of whom thought him to be the literal antichrist that was prophesized in the Bible. However, many modern historians have been rethinking the reign of Nero, thinking that maybe he wasn't as bad as everyone made him out to be. Personally, I don't think that Nero was the worst Roman emperor,

nor was he probably even in the top five. There were some truly crazy and sadistic emperors that would eventually follow him. That being said, I don't think Nero was by any stretch a good emperor either. The success he had early in his reign was primarily due to his advisors not to Nero. He ultimately became unhinged, bankrupted Rome, and killed his own mother and wife. If there's one lesson you can take away from Nero, which many other emperors who followed him have proved, it said that you should never put control of what on the largest empires in the world in the hands of a teenager. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel.

The associate producers are Peter Bennett and Cameron Kiever. I wanted to give a big thanks to everyone who supports the show on Patreon. Your support helps me put out a new show every day. And if you're interested in everything everywhere daily merchandise, Patreon is currently the only place where it's available. And if you'd like to talk to other listeners of the show and get notified to future episodes and projects, please join my Facebook group or Discord server. Links to everything are in the show notes.