You're Dead to Me - Emperor Nero: ancient Rome’s most infamous ruler

Episode Date: January 30, 2026

Greg Jenner is joined in ancient Rome by Professor Mary Beard and comedian and actor Patton Oswalt to learn all about Emperor Nero. Nero has gone down in history as one of Rome’s most infamous rulers – the villain in any number of films and television programmes, and the man who fiddled while the eternal city burned. He was also emperor during a number of momentous moments in the history of ancient Rome, including the revolt in Britain led by Iceni warrior queen Boudica. But does he deserve his notorious posthumous reputation? This episode explores the man and the myth, examining Nero’s complicated path to the imperial throne, his relationship with famous philosopher Seneca the Younger, his murderous behaviour towards the women in his life, and the numerous plots that swirled around him. Along the way, we take a look at the more ridiculous moments in Nero’s life, including the athletic games he founded, the festival to himself that he instituted, and his numerous dramatic appearances on the stage. If you’re a fan of evil emperors, political plots and the bloody history of Ancient Rome, you’ll love our episode on Nero. If you want more from Patton Oswalt, listen to our episode on the American War of Independence. And for more Roman history, check out our episodes on Agrippina the Younger, Boudica, and the Rise of Julius Caesar. You’re Dead To Me is the comedy podcast that takes history seriously. Every episode, Greg Jenner brings together the best names in history and comedy to learn and laugh about the past. Hosted by: Greg Jenner Research by: Aimee Hinds Scott Written by: Dr Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Dr Emma Nagouse, and Greg Jenner Produced by: Dr Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner Audio Producer: Steve Hankey Production Coordinator: Gill Huggett Senior Producer: Dr Emma Nagouse Executive Editor: Philip Sellars

Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenna. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster. And today we are flouncing back to the first century and fiddling while Rome burns, as we learn all about Emperor Nero. And to help us tell apart our Giulio Claudians from our Flavians, we have two very special guests. In History Corner, she is a renowned classicist, author and broadcaster. Maybe you've read one of her best-selling books, including SBQR, Pompeii, The Life of the Roman Town, 12 Caesars, Women in Power, or her most recent Emperor of Rome.

You'll know her from all kinds of BBC TV programmes, including Pompeii New Secrets Revealed, and she's the co-host of the acclaimed Instant Classics podcast. It's only Professor Mary Beard. Welcome Mary! Well, it's great to be here and be with both of you, and even in the company of the Empreniro. We'll see about that. We'll see how we feel about him later. And in Comedy Corner, he's an Emmy and Grammy Award-winning comedian and actor.

He has appeared in many of my absolute favourite sitcoms, including AP Bio, Bojack Horseman, Veep. He starred in films including Rattatooie, Ghostbusters Frozen Empire, and Secret Life of Pets, too. Or you've caught him on the celebrity edition of the American Great British Baking Show. I think it's called, I have not quite sure the title, but he's a culinary master.

And you'll definitely remember him from our episode on the American War of Independence, making a triumphant return. It's Patton Oswald. Welcome back, Patton. Thank you so much for having me back. I can't wait to talk about Nero. I've seen all the Matrix films.

He's one of my favorite movie characters. Ah, okay. Right. Near row. Hang on. I don't have spell check on my phone. That might explain a lot. Okay. Sorry. That's all right. Last time out, we did the American War of Independence, and you knew quite a lot. I actually did. I mean, you know. I was surprised. I didn't know I knew so much. I wasn't surprised because you were a learned man, but we're now into ancient history, ancient Roman history. How comfortable are you in the ancient Roman world? Not at all. Those literally and figuratively. I'm not. not comfortable in that world. Okay. Do you know the name Emperor Nero? I know the name Emperor Nero, and for some reason I just picture him looking like Dom Deloese, but that's just because of the

Mel Brooks film. That's fine. I don't mind that. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So, what do you know? Well, that brings us to the first segment of the podcast. This is the So What Do You Know? It's where I have a go at guessing what you, our lovely listener, will know about today's subject. And you might know Emperor Nero is a bit of a naughty emperor. In pop culture, he's in books. He's plays. He's been played by a lot of famous actors on screen from Peter Oostinov in Quo Vardis, Christopher Biggins in I Claudius to Craig Roberts as the big baddie in the Horrible History's Kids movie that I worked on. Eric Banner has even played a version of him, the evil Romulan, Romulan, Nero in the Star Trek film 2009.

Wait a minute, was that character supposed to be like based on Nero? He's a Romulan. Oh, a Romeo. Oh, okay. I'm going to go. Is my car waiting down to you? We've lost pattern already. But do Hollywood depictions get it right? What does Nero's roguish reputation tell us about Rome? And why were Romans faking their deaths at the theatre? Well, the play is really that bad?

Let's find out. Right. Professor Mary, Nero was born nearly 2,000 years ago. So this is a properly old story. And the first thing I have to ask is, what are our sources here? Do we have trustworthy sources? Well, there's quite a lot of sources around Nero. So there's loads of poetry we have, which is dedicated to him.

There's even a kind of little essay on how to be a good emperor. It was written by his tutor, and it was called On Mercy, so perhaps he didn't take the lesson quite hard enough, right? Where the thinner pickings are found is if you're looking for a standard ancient account of Nero A to Z, right? The life, the rain. got some. They agree on one thing that he wasn't a good thing, right? They are quite, we call euphemistry. They're a bit hostile. The reviews are in. The reviews are in and they are not good ones.

Okay. Patton, how do you imagine the city of Rome, ancient Rome, in the time that Nero was born? In your head, what are you imagining in terms of the architecture and the scale? Well, okay, I do know enough to know that a Roman city of all white columns and white buildings is actually false, because it was actually very brightly painted and it was that paint that of course chipped off over the centuries and that's where we have the white ruined

but it was actually a very colourful metropolis with kind of their version of time square signage everywhere and graffiti and all of that am I right in thinking that? Not far on. It's not the Rome

of the holiday trip to Italy is it? It's kind of like there's no Coliseum yet. No, I mean it's the centre of this vast empire It's a million inhabitants probably It's the biggest city in the west Until Victorian London So early 19th century London But there are some bits that we might expect to see

That we don't see The Coliseum is one obvious case You go to Rome now And okay, it's in the middle of a roundabout But it's really, really impressive Now the Coliseum was built after Nero's reign by the next dynasty. But interestingly, its name

preserved a little memory of Nero because it was erected very close to the site of a colossus, a colossal statue of Nero, 30-something metres tall it is said, and that's what gave this amphitheatre

its name. It was near Nero's colossus. What we tend to forget, I mean, you were partly right, pattern, you know, this is actually bright and there's graffiti everywhere and it probably stinks, absolutely stinks, right? But it is not all

those great monuments, no matter what colour they were. So it's a mixture of vast display buildings put up, often bankrupt by emperors, and terrible slums. In the middle, like abutting each other almost? What's interesting is, I think

in modern city, certainly in British modern cities were used to a kind of zoning in city architecture. We think there's the rich part, you know, and there's the poor part. And, you know, there's almost unseen boundaries between these two different levels of the city. What's really striking in Rome is there's a bit of that, but the slums are right there next to the grand staff. You know, you can walk past the great capitaline hill. And at the bottom, there's a slum tenement that you can still look at. Okay.

So, Nero's childhood. Let's get to the actual guy we're talking about. He's not called Nero at birth. That's not his name. What was he called? When was he born? What's his childhood like? Well, he's in a dysfunctional family, I think, would be the our way of putting it.

He's born in 37, C.E. And his name is actually then Lucius, Domitius, Ahenobarbus, which means bronze beard, right? And he had a bronze beer When he was a baby? That was what we would call his surname. Oh, look, I'm called beard And I don't have one, right? Nero's surname was bronze beard.

And his dad was a pretty despicable character called Ghanius Damishus Ahenabar. And there's loads of stories, horrible stories told about him, like how he once ran over a child deliberately in the street in his chariot.

Even worse, No, not worse, but about as bad. He killed one of his staff when they refused to drink as much as he told them they should. Right? I mean, and these are recounted as, you know, in his defense, Friday night, man.

You knew that when you took this job. Okay. Yeah, anyway, happily, perhaps for Nero, he died when Nero was about three. Was his dad in politics? What did his dad do? All women are in politics. Oh, okay, okay.

Oh, never mind. Sorry. The key to Nero's success, one of the keys to Nero's success, though, was that his mum was about as well connected within the imperial family as you could possibly be.

She was a direct descendant of the First Emperor, Augustus, and her dad had been the most glamorous prince of the ruling house. So that gave Nero a good start in life. Even though, as I said,

dad died when he was three, that was the same year as his uncle happened to be assassinated. That was the Emperor Caligula. And new Emperor Claudius comes to the throne. And before too long, we find that Mum... Agrippina. Oh, yes, sorry. And you've done a programme on Agrippina.

We have. We've got an episode on her, so listeners can check back in. You should go back and listen to the Agrippina programme because Mum Agrippina married the Emperor. Pra Claudius. Who was her uncle? Oh, yes. Oh, boy. And then Claudius adopted Nero.

Right? And he got a new name, which is why we call him Nero, because he's called Nero-Claudius, Kaiser Drusus Germanicus, right? Yeah. For short. For short. In the show before, we've done husbands who are brothers,

that's in ancient Egypt, we call those brusbands. But now we have uncle husbands. We're thinking maybe uncle. How do you feel about uncle? Hunkles? Or usbans? Unbans?

Munkbans. Wait, I'm sorry. Claudius was the one with the stutter. You've been reading Robert Gros. No, I watched the Derek Jacoby series. But I know that Claudius the King is a great read. I will read it someday, but I've never read it. I have to say that my early education,

in Roman history came from that television program. It's a classic, isn't it? So Claudius, you know him as sort of the TV character. The nice Derek Jacoby guy. You think maybe he was a little more sinister? There are very nasty statistics about how many senators he had put to death. Let me just say that. Wow.

But again, a historian. So we can't, I'm not going to judge a historian. Okay, so he's the sort of father-in-law, stepdad to Nero. He's named Nero, he's given Nero his name He already has a son But that's going to be a problem That's me a problem In due course

There is a problem there And Nero is getting a royal education Because he's now suddenly Sort of in line for the throne maybe So he's getting a fancy royal education He's got the fanciest of tutors Have you ever heard of Seneca? I have heard of Seneca

He's a big Stoic Yes Yeah Okay Yeah Stoicism has quite a good rep in the modern world. Especially right now, there's all this rediscovering stoicism.

Exactly. And we kind of think of it as a sort of stiff upper lip, rather kind of, you know, a rather positively admirable way of conducting yourself to be a stoic. I mean, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius are still best-selling authors 2,000 years on, right? Yeah, I sometimes look at the best-selling charts on the online bookstore that we all use.

and you can guarantee that Marcus Aurelius is still selling quite a lot more than I am which I think is a tribute to him but Seneca was quite a famous stoic and tutor to Nero one of the things the stoicism suggests you should do is entirely keep your passions in right and passions widely defined so greed last human wants should be kept in and you know it's fine so far as it goes The other thing we know about Seneca is he was absolutely loaded. Yeah, he's the richest man in Rome.

Really? He's got some Ponzi deals, I think, and scam things on the Roman stock exchange. Now, somehow, Seneca manages to make that align with his stoic philosophy, but quite a lot of people have thought he might have been a bit of a hypocrite. Yeah. So Seneca is teaching Nero. So we've got a teenage boy who's learning,

from one of the great philosophers, but also one of the great political men of the Roman Empire. So it's a good, it's a good upbringing, it's good education. Important question for you here, Patton. How did you celebrate your first shave? How did I celebrate your first shave? Oh my gosh. I don't know.

I probably went and played some Gallagher or something. I don't know. Are we leading up to a really creepy story right now? Not creepy, but kind of interesting. Here we go. But you didn't necessarily celebrate by, I don't know, inviting everyone in Nio and then having like a games night? No.

Weirdly. know. What did you do with what you shaved off? I'm sure it went right down the sink. Okay. I think you've been missing out here because actually Patton, what you should have done, Mary is throw an enormous game. Well, first of all, you should have been a bit older than 13. Oh. Because Nero and I think most Roman elite men usually didn't do their first shave until they were into their 20s. So they grew big beards or are they? I think if you don't shave, I mean, I'm not an expert. I'm not an expert in male facial hair.

Sorry? Okay. I'm sporting my own, but, you know. But I think if you never shave, it's a lot kind of softer and down here than you would imagine. So Nero did what a lot of young posh romans did. Early 20s, he shaved it off. He then put it all together, a nice little gold box.

And he dedicated the clippings to Jupiter. So that was the first thing. But he didn't stop there. Most Roman men, I think, did stop with something like that. Nero didn't. He had a fantastic, or it was claimed to be, fantastically lavish set of so-called youth games, juvenalia, full-on public games,

in which lots of things happened that some people felt or reported to feel a bit uncomfortable about. He apparently pretty much forced people to act and sing and do performances. And there's the story of one 80-year-old. lady and as I approach my eighth or ninth decade, I feel more sympathetic to this, was kind of made to do a dance

and of course Nero also performed and you can see the biases creeping in here can you? It was said that he didn't really have a very strong voice. It was all a bit weedy. And all were stories about how he forced people to do this. That's what the old lady was made to dance. It's

one of the cases where I often think, well maybe you could reverse this story. You know, you could tell it in a way that was a lot more favourable and you could say, look, there was one 80-year-old lady, she was so excited and so enjoying herself that she got up and she did a dance too.

Different impression. Sure. I'm just so depressed I never had a pew party. I did not realize that was a void in my life. You could have dedicated I could have dedicated to the gods. I could have dedicated so many people. You could have had a granny come and dance for you. Okay, so meanwhile, we should talk about Britannicus. This is the son of Claudius, who is the rightful heir to the throne in theory. But Agrippina and Nero are starting to just make some moves.

You know, it all looks great for Nero in a way, because he's the descendant of Augustus, through his mum. He's the adopted son of the reigning emperor. looks super. The problem is that the reigning emperor has already got his own son. Yeah, Britannicus. And he's called Britannicus. Call that to celebrate Claudius' conquest of Britain.

Names his son specially. Oh. It's all making sense now. How big was his pew party? What did he do? Well, I think that's one of the sort of problems because what Agrippi... The story is that Agrippina

started to end up. a Britannicus being marginalised, right? So I bet he didn't have a great pub party and he was made to wear sort of childish clothes rather than posh grown-up clothes. And there's one story about how she sacks his tutor and replaces the tutor. So he's got this nice tutor that he's attached to

and she gets rid of him. He's also said to have met a nasty end shortly after this, the tutor, not Britannicus. Well, Britannicus comes to meet Anastrian. She booted his tutor? She boot? Yes, that's right. Shoot a Buddha.

It's a good. Yeah, it's like a great laugh. It's a tutor and then shoot him? But it all works. You can't shoot a booted tutor? It all works fine because Claudius does die. Dying a very passive phrasing there. It does die.

I was using it slightly euphemistically. Claudius dies and the allegations are that he was poisoned by mush poison. poison mushrooms. Yeah. He's at dinner and he's eating his favorite mushroom omelette or whatever it is. The idea is that the mushrooms actually poisoned mushrooms, all but Agrippina put poison on the mushrooms. And the doctor's in on it, supposedly.

In the story, everybody's in on it. When they try, because you'd think that if somebody's looking a bit ill after eating something, you might make them sick, what the doctor does is put a feather down his throat. so he can puke it up. But it's a poison feather. That is the story. Wow.

The trouble is, as an old teacher of mine, always used to say, it's very hard in the Roman world to tell a nasty case of poisoning from a nasty case of peritonitis. Yeah. People die of stuff, right? People can die of ordinary things. They could die of ordinary things,

but everybody always wants them to die of poison. But when Claudius died, was this, at a moment that was opportune to move zero into position. Of course. And also Britannicus, very soon after, also dies of poison. What? Or, of course, might have been epilepsy. An epileptic fit.

Might have been epilepsy. But people on that occasion had clear grounds for suspicion because it was said, again, it was said, that after he'd keeled over at dinner, they had a quick burial, but the funeral pyre had already been. mean prepared. There are too many clues in this room. Once Britannicus is out the way, of course, you know, Nero is now the emperor.

He's the emperor of Rome, which is an incredible amount of power. How old is he when he becomes emperor? Sixteen. There you. Oh, perfect. Great age to run an empire. I mean, your daughter's, what, 16? I would not want my daughter having the remote control at this point, let alone an empire.

Fair enough. Oh, God. Teenage emperors, they don't tend to do too. well, which is why mum tends to run the show from backstage Well, one story is and it's not without some evidence that the power behind the throne

was Agrippina. Stage mom. Stage mom. And she indeed does appear on the coins with Nero. Now, I have to underline that this was not something entirely new.

Roman women connected with the Imperial family had appeared on coins before. But there were also rumours of incest with Nero that she was trying to control him. Again, how do we know? We don't know what happened between Agrippina and Nero really and incest is not impossible. But it absolutely fits the kind of the stereotype stories of Roman women who, when their sons are in position of power or their husbands, They are trying to control things using rather kind of classic quotes female wiles. That is what it said.

That's not a story which is restricted to the Romans. We should say, Nero soon gets tired of mum running the show from behind, you know, backstage, stage mum, as he said, and starts to plot her death. Yeah. He starts to plot the... So Claudius has been murdered perhaps. Britannicus has been murdered perhaps. Mum is now going to be murdered How do you think

How do you think he goes about that now? Bear in mind this is someone who threw a pub party involving a thousand people singing choral songs Talk us through how you think he's going to He throws a poison party Where he invites everyone to sing and dance And then there's donkeys And does he do it

Does he throw like a party or a big gala And then try to kill her then? Well you're not so far Oh my good Does he do a murder paloosa? What it shows is how easy it is to invent these stories. Oh, okay. Oh. All our three main historical sources are pretty clear that Nero tries to and eventually does kill her.

Suetonius has the most possible attempts. Sootinus records that there were three attempts to poison her, But like many Romans, she took a daily dose of antidote in order to kind of protect her body against poison. There's like a fish called Wanda. Yeah. It is surviving. It's like a farce, isn't it?

Yeah, it is. It's like a proper silly. Well, the next attempt is even more fast. The idea is that he arranged for tiles to crash from the roof where she was sleeping, but... This is like a roadruner cartoon. She had been tipped off. Now, you look at both those stories

and you say, they are both absolutely untestable, right? And they're so over the top. They're so theatrical. Collapsing ceiling. And she wasn't killed by them. And they say, oh, yeah, you tried to do it, but she'd been tipped off. She was taking antidotes.

So what in the end happens? which is... What's the one that works? Well, the one that fails is obviously most notable is the boat, right? Well, yes, sorry, that's... But that half works.

The boat half works. He got her to go on a cruise with Leonardo DiCaprio. And the boat in an iceberg. You're very close. That he has a nice dinner with her down the coast of Italy, of my eye, I think is.

How romantic. And he has rigged up a collapsible boat. and when she's out, he sends her home by boat and the boat collapses. But I'm going to tell you off in a minute, Patton, because I've got a sad end to this. Oh, sorry.

Hang on. Oh, that's horrible. She's thrown into the water, but he's forgotten she could swim. She's a champion swimmer, right? She sort of makes it hard. Nero didn't remember that mum could swim. Now, what I think is very,

well, puts us all in the spot here, is that these are ludicrous. stories. And they are hammed up. They feel like tropes. They're hand up in the sources, you know, so that they're over the top and unbelievable. You know, I sometimes try to read these and to say, look, there is a temptation to think that this is all very funny. But this is Nero. This is a woman being killed by her son. This is matricide. And it's entered the Nero tradition as a kind of Oh, do you know how near a child to killy's mum story? And there is a terrible little bit of tragedy in the collapsible boat

because one of Agrippina's servants is with her, and she goes into the water too. And she thinks the best way to save herself, because she doesn't realize it's a trick, is to say, I'm Agrippina, save me. Yeah, save me. I'm the emperor's mom. Save me, save me, save me. And of course, that gets her murdered.

The crew come over and they kill her. I hear everything you're saying, but I'm sorry, a collapsible boat and mistaken identity is just inherently funny. And I'm sorry to be laughing at this. No, I'm not sorry. It's funny.

It's insane. The story is again that he invents the idea that she was trying to kill him and gets rid of her. So he can go, oh, it's self-defense. I'm just trying to protect me. Yes, it's self-defense. Yeah, self-defense.

And so she is stamped by, you know, And it is said that he then goes and looks at her body while drinking a glass of wine. Which is a psychopathic thing to do. That's not funny. That's dark, isn't it? Just occasionally, I think we ought to, I like to remember mum. I think that she was... 100%.

She was murdered. Yeah. She had murdered perhaps Claudius and her husbandic. Maybe she wasn't innocent. There's no innocence here. This is a dysfunctional family. And nobody in it is a... All right, let's move on then.

So the interesting thing about Nero is he's not the great warrior. Julius Caesar was the great warrior. He was the man on horseback running around. The Conqueror. The Conqueror. Claudia said invaded Britain and defeated Britain. So we have Conqueror models. But Nero is the theatre kid.

He's the showtunes guy. Gotta dance. This is another place, I think, where kind of modern readers and critics are being consistent. Because on the one hand, We say, oh, Romans, they went and they massacred everybody. Look at Julius Caesar. He's genocidal maniac. And then we find a Roman emperor who actually likes culture.

And we start to laugh at them a bit. And to say, well, he was a bit weedy, really. And he was just a theatre kid. So we can't have it both ways. Oh, I think we can. Let's talk about what he does, right? Okay. He performs in plays.

there really are some funny things coming up here it's a great age of culture it is a huge literary renaissance not quite clear what Nero's role in that is but it certainly is

and that he himself as he tried at his at his beard games he himself you should have beard games where's the marketing here Mary your name is right on it boom you own it

so he himself performs and It is said that perhaps wasn't as brilliant as he liked to be told it was. And there are amazing stories. It's like Florence Foster Jenkins, isn't it? It's sort of like hiring out the theatre and getting all your friends to come. But Nero does go a stage further.

So he locks the theatre doors so that once you've got in, so it is said. And that in order to get out, people used to fake their death so they could be carried out. I do that at my shows. People constantly pretend to think. I lock the doors. Come on. Performer doesn't do that. Captain audience, I probably.

And women gave... Is that where the expression? Wow, you killed him. You killed them. Is that where that comes from? Like, man, how'd you do? I killed them. Women gave birth.

Yeah, because they couldn't get out once they got in and the baby came. Yeah. And they were forced to flatter him. It's said they were forced to say, Blime you brilliant, Nero. Now, yeah. There is something pretty ludicrous and pretty unpleasant about flattery, but, again, I think it's a place where we need perhaps to stop and say,

well, would we say to Prince William or President Trump or someone like that? After seeing them before, I think that was a really lousy show. We'd probably say. I can't imagine Donald Trump doing Hamlet personally, but I don't know, maybe. He is an amazing dancer, though, that a wine-pnea dance is. That was just brilliant. I think... It's poetry. It's poetry.

I'll say it. It's poetry. So we tend not to notice our own flattery and to notice flattery when it's done by others. That's fair enough. In fairness to Nero, supposedly he plays starring roles in the play Orestes in which the character murders his mother. He plays in Oedipus in which the character has incestuous relationships. And he plays Hercules.

And also, of course, he plays women roles. So he plays sort of drag roles. and also there's a play called Can I see, I think, in childbirth, which again... Hanasi, yes. Again, incest. So if he's a guy who's like trying to sort of say, I didn't have incestuous relations with my mum,

it's quite on the nose to then perform in numerous plays about it. Wow, hiding in plain sight. Maybe. I dare you to call me out. Maybe. Or after dinner gossip, saying, do you know what, Roll Nero is going to play next? Ha, ha.

Orestes. Yeah, yeah. Maybe, maybe. And it's where the boundary is between the gossip and the hiding in plain sight that's very hard to fix. The important thing here, Patton, is that Nero took it on tour. He didn't just play Rome.

There you go. He didn't just play Carnegie Hall. He took it on tour. Do you know where he toured? I mean, did he tour through every land that they conquered? Or where would he tour? He went to the most cultured place that a Roman emperor could go to, the land of culture, the land of philosophy.

Greece? He did. Oh. Yeah? He took it on tour to Greece. And he went around. And what did they think? Well, he went around all the major games, the Olympic games, the Ismian games, all the others.

He was like a side stage at a music festival. No. Main stage. No, he was main stage. He changed all the events in the Olympics, the things that he liked. And he won everything. Wow, so he was a really good athlete, is what you're saying. Well.

He is reported even two of one when he kind of fell out of his chariot and didn't finish the course. Yeah. The story of his chariot race is that he has a 10 horse team chariot. So he's got a chariot pulled by 10 horses, which is way too many chariot. That's way too many horses. You're going to crash with that many horses. But no one said to him, that's a bad idea, sire. You know, there's no health and safety officer saying, ah, four horses is fine.

So he crashes in that, but they declare him the winner. He comes home with all his garland prizes. He has a big triumph back in Rome. Most emperors try to have a triumph for killing people. What? The Julius Caesar thing, right? Julius Caesar thing, Claudius has a big triumph for conquering Britain, triumphs and great procession through Rome, parading your captives and everything.

That goes with massacus, you know? Yeah, yeah. That's Roman massacus. Now, what Nero does is come home and he has a slightly different sort of tribe. entering up at the Temple of the God of Music, Apollo, celebrating his sporting and cultural victories. He's the Simone Biles of the ancient world. Best lead in a comedic performance. I tend to think

that I'm on narrow side here, possibly. Maybe if the Romans had spent more time having triumphal processions and celebrating people who are good at arts and culture, the world might possibly have been a nice place. So you're saying shows like the voice in British Idol are keeping us from worldwide war and conquest. You could take it off.

Yes. You could take it. And that's why I did the Great American Baking Show. Maybe he's trying to find another way of being an emperor, and we just have not got on that his wavelength. That's interesting. He's trying to create a new model of what power looks like. I mean, I think the jury's out, but we have to keep that as a possibility.

But we're going to do this quickly because it's pretty horrible. And I'm actually going to give a trigger warning to listeners because the content warning, because this is horrible, the violence, the, we're going to talk about enforced suicide, we're going to talk about domestic violence. Patton, don't make any jokes, Paton. Hang on, Patton, don't make any jokes right now. Turn it off.

You know what? Absolutely. Just like, this bit's just grim, right? Yeah, let's do it. Feel free to just go, oh, what a horrible man. But like, he was brutal to his lovers. He had three wives and horrible man, right? Yeah. I mean, Nero's first wife is Claudius' natural,

as it were in inverted commas, daughter, Britannicus's sister. a woman called Octavia. And it was a kind of a brilliant move in a way for sewing up Nero's, you know, perfect right to rule. And the picture we're given of her is that she was very virtuous. And that what then happens, according to the standard story,

is that Nero falls madly in love with somebody else. Then in order to get rid of Octavia accuses her of sterility, because there was no children. Roman men didn't usually think that no children was their problem. It was the wife's problem. He divorced her, sent her into exile, and then had her killed.

And it is then said that her head was sent to Nero's new lover. Right? You know, this is about as horrible. I mean, the story is horrible, whatever the truth. I'm afraid what happens next to the new woman. A woman called papaya, right, is not much better, honestly. She's supposed to be a beauty. Nero nicked from her previous husband.

She does get pregnant. He's wanting an heir. And it's when she gets pregnant that he finally divorces Octavia. Nero and papaya have a daughter, but she soon dies. She's made a god very quickly, but she dies. papaya gets pregnant again and then in what is kind of one of Rome's also horribleest bits

of domestic violence if it's true he comes back after an evening out and he hits her in the stomach while she's pregnant and she dies. Sorry, Patton. It's truly, you know, Roman history is full of stuff like this

and you have to... History is full of stuff like that. Yeah, and people are sort of it. And it's a cruel, cruel story. And, of course, he does the big sort of tears. The classic kind of remorse come hypocrisy line. And he says he's so upset, he wants to keep her. So he has her embalmed, not cremated.

And then he conveniently gets remarried. Yeah. To a third wife, Messalina. Yes, T'a Messalina. Yeah. I mean, it's not very nice. Did Messalina survive or? She survived him.

and she actually had more husbands than he'd had. Yeah, play. Good, good. All right, thank you for here. And he also had a lover who was called Sporos. In some ways, this is even, it's even worse partly because it is probably not as untypical as we might imagine. Because Nero has an enslaved boy who he thinks looks like papaya. Oh, no. It looks very like papaya.

He has him castrated, and then he makes him his lover. I mean, there's another person in his life who he sort of, you know, is another enemy of his. Have you ever heard of Queen Budica? I've heard it. Budica is that with her breastbear, like fighting the... She's topless at one point, isn't she? Right?

Might depend on the movie you've been watching, I'm not sure. It depends on the statue or the movie. Exactly. She's queen of the Icini tribe, or the Icani tribe, who are in Britain. She leads a rebellion against Rome. And it's a pretty interesting story. Have you ever heard of this story? Is this one new to you? Vagely. Vagely, okay. She's kind of iconic. I know she had her boobs out.

Sometimes it's called Bodicea. You might know her by Bodhisia, a different name. Anyway. Anyway. We have an episode on Budikov. If this is one, I'd check it out. It's our first ever episode. You said that she was his lover? No. Enemy. No, no, no. Enemy. Enemy. So she was the queen of Icini in what, Essex? In East England. East England. And she, I mean, she's an example of an appalling consequence of Roman cruelty, really. Her husband, the king, Prasutagas, is like many of the tribal kings in Britain and is a collaborator with Roman. He would have called himself an ally, we might say collaborator. When he dies, he rather can't. makes his heir jointly, Nero and his two daughters,

thinking that that would somehow kind of sew up the safety of his kingdom. What actually happens is that the Romans in the province come in, they ransack the place, they trash it and they rape the daughters. At that point, Boudicca says, according to the story, no thanks. And she leads a rebellion. And she's successful for a bit. She destroys London. She destroys St Albans.

Colchester, yeah. But the governor of the province, a guy called Suetonius Paulinus, who's no relation of the historian, brutally squashes this. I mean, in the end, most rebellions are put down because the rebels just can't withstand the Roman legions.

And he completely trashes them. He takes the most violent reprisals against the rebels. And it's the upshot, and it kind of is strange and slightly more optimistic because it shows you that not all Romans are as nasty as others. There's a whistleblower on the governor's staff. And the whistleblower writes to Nero and says these replies have got to stop. And Nero very soon replaces the governor,

replaces Suetonius Paulinus, with a guy who has a wonderful name called Petronius Terpilianus, which means lazy sod, basically. It means what? Lazy so-and-so. Lazy-so. Lazy-so. You know, kind of torpedoinous.

It means kind of slow, lazy. Oh, oh, okay, torpid. Torpid, yeah. Mr. Sluggish, do nothing. Mr. Sluggish. But it was a right move. There had been this absolute monster of a governor, really wreaking havoc against,

okay, the rebellious Britons, but horribly. Right. And to the credit of Nero's administration, whether Nero really had anything to do with it or not. We don't know. They took notice of the whistleblower and they replaced the governor. So, and what are you making of Nero so far?

Obviously, pretty monstrous in terms of his personal life. I'm torn because, God, I love the theatre. No. Have you ever heard of the Great Fire? Have you heard of Nero fiddling while Rome burns? I mean, I've heard that phrase. In what context have you heard the phrase? In the context of Rome is burning to the ground,

then he is, I've always pictured it as him just alone, just amusing himself playing the fiddle, which did they have fiddles back then? So was he playing a liar, leir, a liar or a lute, or what was he doing? People say it must, it's a liar. Yeah, it's a liar. I like to imagine. The truth is it's a liar. He's a liar, it's a lie.

Okay. And the Great Fire of Rome happened. Oh, it did? Did happen. What do they think started it? Oh, this is a good question. What do you, okay. Who do you think?

I, again, because of the phrase he fiddled while Rome burned, doesn't it, to me, it feels like he set the fire. Oh. It's like a gangster burning down a nightclub that he wants to get the insurance on. You also have been an ancient Romanist. Yeah. Because you've just got the right mindset for this. I'm so close.

Yeah, you're on the money. All the time. Because, you know, one thing we know about Rome is it was, It was a Tinder books that fires happened in the city. It was always on fire. Always. At any point, Rome was always on fire. Really?

And they didn't have very good firefighting equipment. And the most that they could do in, they did in this case, was actually just knock down buildings so that to have a firebreak. Oh. And nevertheless, the story arose that Nero had started it. So itonius thinks he started it

in order to clear the ground so he could build himself a fantastic new palace because that's exactly what he did. That's your mob boss argument, right? That's the mob boss thing, yeah. You know, the golden, it's called the golden house. He built it. Fast palace, fantastic.

Yeah, what a shame this city just burned down. I guess I got to buy a little new palace here. Hey, boss. Did you just take out fire insurance? What are they, what are the ads? It's weird. All right, anyway. Another historian Cassius Dio,

he doesn't have that argument so much as saying, look, he just wanted to kind of go down in a blaze, right? He really wanted, as it were, to be like the King of Troy and see his city blaze around him and go down with his city, you know because it was such a great way to go. So he wants to sort of cosplay as King Priam in the I. Yeah. Yeah. The story is...

King Priam fantasy camp. Yeah. The story really is that he... Nero was outside Rome when the fire started, but people said that they'd seen some of Nero's staff going around, you know, setting fire to things, you know, the kind of... We'd say with a can of oil and some matches, but it was... Wearing the Nero merch, right?

You know, with the football jackets. I'm with the king, yeah, I'm with the emperor. And he does come back and it is repeatedly reported that he goes and what he does go and watch it from just a little bit, you know, from into safety. And while he does that, he plays his lion. He sings a song about the destruction of Troy, the city of Troy. I mean, that's what, yeah, I mean, you know.

Look, if you got to seize the moment, that's such a great moment for the Graham. You got the city burning behind you. You sing that song, man. Again, there are things to be said in favour of him and against. Well, okay, so in the against column, he blamed Christians. He blamed the Christians. And he punished that there was already a relatively small sect of Christians in Rome.

Roman pagan writers thought it was perfectly fine to trash the Christians. So they're fine with this. Suetonius, Tacitus, Tacitus, they're like, yeah, good. Blame the Christians. The punishments that he meted out were so awful. that it was said that there was even pity for the Christians because of the horrible ways in which he put them to death. So basically Christians were partly fair game in this kind of PR campaign,

but Nero is said to have gone too far. Is this like throwing Christians to the lions? That comes a bit later. But in the Christian tradition, Nero is said to be the first persecutor of the Christians. Nero is the devil incarnate in Christian teaching and it goes back to this. It goes back to him blaming them for the fire of Rome

and punishing them horribly. There is a genuine conspiracy against him. There's a thing called a Pisonian conspiracy. There's this conspiracy of people hating me because I suck. It's terrible. Arguably, justified, right? This conspiracy. Yeah, it comes after the fire, the year after the fire.

In 65 CE, this one, yeah? And it's in 65 CE. and tens, 50-odd people are charged with being in a conspiracy to overthrow Rome, overthrow Nero, not Rome. Well, he is Rome. He is Rome. What they want to do is they want to have a new emperor. They've got a guy called Piso as a potential candidate and replace Nero. Now, why it's important in the Neronian story is that Seneca, the tutor,

was said to be implicated in it. So Nero's tutor, by this stage, has turned against him. and he is forced to suicide because that's a standard form of Roman execution. So Seneca is implicated, 19 people are executed, 13 are banished, 51 people are charged, Nero crushes the conspiracy. But three years later, another one comes along.

Because he's alienated enough people now that people are like, well, look, the first, I mean, he tried five times to murder his mom. You know, if at first he does succeed. They learn from him, you've got to keep showing up and trying. You can't give up. And they don't collapse the ceiling over his head. They don't send in an unthinkable boat.

No, this was a military, this was, you know, a military conspiracy. It was a military revolt. This is a coup, right? It's a coup. It's basically a coup. And it's not trying to kind of, it's not a few of the kind of not terribly effective elite,

like Seneca and his friends, doing it in Rome. This starts in the provinces. And Nero is, sees the game is up. There's fighting, but in the end it's clear that, that people are turning away from Nero

to the rebels. And what he does is he goes out to a suburban villa and he realizes he has to kill himself. His Praetorian guard have deserted him, right? His bodyguard have switched sides to this guy Galva who's coming in. Everybody is doing, everybody is deserting him. And he goes out and there's a pathetic, there are very really pathetic stories.

Again, believe it or not, I don't know, about how he was hopeless even in when he came to try to die. And he has some very odd last words. Yeah, what do you think his last words are, Patan? Tell me his last words or what his supposed last words were. He's got more than one lot, I'm afraid. But the famous one is Qualis Artifex Pereo. What an artist and artefacts.

What an artist is dying when I die. some proper ego there, Pat, isn't I? That's some confidence, my friend. Isn't it? Yeah. With your last gesture to say, The World is about to lose a great artist here. That is ridiculous. I've got to remember that for when I die.

Hang on, let me write that down. I'm going to say that when I die. All right, go ahead. So his famous last works are, what an artist in me dies, he is assisted in his death, and dies aged. How old do you think he is, Paton?

In his 40s. He's 30. Whoa. What a life, hey? Well, all the Beatles were 30 when they broke up So he did the same thing, man He got it all in quick. I feel like Paul McCartney was slightly less monstrous

than Nero. Yeah, if only Nero, it said The Love You Take is equal to the love you make, I don't know, I mean, good Lord. Yeah. 30? He was 30 years old. He did all that in 30.

It did. God, I'm so lazy. I've got to do more with my life. I wouldn't, I don't know. I personally, I wouldn't like, you know, mirror yourself against Nero. He's not one of the great. emperors in terms of modeling.

Yeah, yeah. But it's a hell of a life, right? So, that's the end of Nero's life. He died in 68C. The nuance window! Time now for the nuance window. This is where Patton and I sit quietly for two minutes while Professor Mary takes to the stage and sings for us, perhaps, I don't know. Unlike Nero, she is not locking us into the theatre. Oh, you wait. You wait for you.

We're here willingly. So my stopwatch is ready, Mary. Take it away, Professor Beard. Okay, I've got two mini nuance. and the first one picks up a theme that we've been playing with actually quite often in our discussion, tried to pull that together. And it's what I suppose I call the T word, and it's T for truth, right? Are the kind of amazing, intriguing, memorable, brilliantly evocative stories that we read about Nero, are they actually true, with a capital T?

Now, we can't actually, literally know that. A long time ago, I used to really worry about that, but I've sort of become a post-truth person now because what I think is really important about these stories, and they are important, is that the fact that the Romans told them about their emperors, and they sometimes told the same stories about different emperors. And in a way, it was their way, I think, telling these stories,

is thinking them up, construction, was their way of getting their head around what the power of autocrats was, what you might fear about them, what they might do to you. And so in a way, I think there are a way of getting inside the heads of the Romans to think about how the Romans thought about emperors.

My second nuance is that it's easier to complain about the gaps in our knowledge about emperors like this than to celebrate what we know about Nero. I'm guilty of that. I'm complaining about what we don't know all the time. But really we should be turning this on its head, I think. And we should say, what is amazing is that 2,000 years on, we know so much about Nero, not just in the amazing writing that we've been looking at, but we can still hold the coins of Nero.

We can still visit Nero's golden house, or at least part of it. We can walk through Nero's corridors, and we can see where he's, down or lay down to dinner. So my message to people is, if you're in Rome, go and see Nero's Golden House. Because you still can. You still can. Are you going to go and see Nero's Golden House?

I'm leaving right now. I'm going. I'm going to go get a taxi. It's interesting, isn't it? The idea of if these are scurrilous rumors, if these are kind of monstrous lies, they still tell us about the Romans. No, I love that aspect of it. You can tell what their daily lives

and also what their... It's almost like you can tell the psychological scars that are left on a population by almost the nursery rhymes and myths that they tell later on if those things are, you know, like how Dracula is really just about how terrified they were of foreigners coming in. They just couldn't handle it. Victorian England was so wound up. So, yeah, this is them. You know, the emperors were bad enough as they were, but it had such an emotional impact on them that all the stories got blown up even crazier. Yeah. And historians ought to be interested in things that aren't true.

as well as things that are. Yes. Yes. Because the things that aren't true were still made up by somebody for a reason. Yeah, exactly. So what do you know now? Time now for the So What Do You Know Now?

This is our quickfire quiz for Pat. Hang on me look at my notes. To see how much is learned. Paton, tell me about your notes. They are extensive. I can see. Oh my gosh. I mean, it's just they,

I've written them so, I took so many notes that actually just looks like lines on a blank page. Yeah. That's how small I had to write. Yeah, your font is so beautifully accurate that it's actually imperceptible to the eye. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, okay, so no notes at all. Let's see if it's gone in. Okay, ten questions for you. Question one. What was the name of Emperor Nero's mother? Oh, Agrippina? Yeah, very good. Well, um, Agrippina the younger.

Question two, through what method did Nero's uncle, Emperor Claudius and stepbrother Britannicus both allegedly die? They were poisoned by different modes of poison. mushroom or whatever. It would have been mushrooms every time. That would have been a little. Question three. Who was Nero's famously stoic tutor and advisor who we later turned against?

That would be Seneca. It would be Seneca. Very good. Question four. Name one of Nero's three wives. Oh, dear God. Wait a minute. Wait a minute.

I can't remember the names. It begins with O? Olivia, I don't know. I'm so sorry. I'm telling you right now I'm drawing a blank. It's all right. Octavia and it's not coming. A messalina.

Most people forget the names of Emperor's wife. Question five. What did Nero do after his first shave? Well, what didn't he do? Have he got an hour? He put all his shavings in a little gold box and dedicated it to Jupiter. And then he threw basically a raging kegher where there was singing and basically a pewpe party. And can I just say I'm so glad that I got Dame Mary Beard,

historian emeritus to say pub party that is going to be on the top of some of my the next time I'm on the show I want to be Grammy and Emmy Award winning and maker of Mary Beard saying the term pew party Pat Nosswald. Done. Question six. Nero still won the Olympic chariot race despite falling out.

How many horses were pulling him? He had ten. That was a ten horsepower chariot baby. Way to many horses. Yeah. He crashed out, but he still won. Question seven, which queen led the British revolt of the Isini against Nero in Britain? That would be Baudica. Yeah, Budica or Bodicea. Yeah, very good.

Question eight, name one cause given by classical authors for how the Great Fire of Rome allegedly started. A conspiracy theory, please. One of the alleged thing, and it's the third one, because it's the one I thought of, is it was started by Nero himself in order to, A, build his big new gold palace. and also have someone to be able to persecute Christians. Yep, that's two. Very good. Well done. Okay.

Question nine. What were Nero's last words? Oh, his last words were, it's better to burn out than, no. His last words were, what a great artist dies in me. Very good. Well done. Very good. Question 10.

Oh. How old was Nero when he died? Dude was 30. He was very much 30. 30. 30. A young at 30. Wow. Yeah, very good.

And I'm going to give you a bonus question. See if you can get 10 out of 11. Yeah, yeah. Okay, okay. Okay. Bonus question. All right. Which country did he tour in the 60s? He did a tour, much like Elton John in the 80s. He did tour of Greece.

I'm giving you a 10 out of 11. There you go. Perfect score. You earned it. You deserved it. Fantastic. Thank you, Patton. And thank you, of course, Professor Mary Beard.

If you want more from Patton, of course, we have our episode on the American War of Independence, which was an absolute hoat. And for more Nero context, if you want to put him in context, we have obviously the episode on Agrippina, his mum. We have the episode on Budica, his mortal enemy, and we have an episode on The Rise of Julius Caesar. In some ways, a model, and otherwise not. They're all very interesting episodes.

And remember, if you've enjoyed the podcast, please share the show with friends. Subscribe to Your Dead to Me on BBC Sounds to hear new episodes 28 days earlier than anywhere else. And if you're outside the UK, you can listen at BBC.com or wherever you get your podcast. But I'd just like to say a huge thank you to our guests in History Corner. We had the magnificent Professor Mary Beard.

Thank you, Mary. Total pleasure. Yay. And in Comedy Corner, we had the outstanding, what, Pube Games inventor, Patton Oswald. No, Pube Party, Sir. Sorry. Pube Games. We're not animals here, please.

We had Patton Oswald. Thank you, Patton. Thanks for having me on again. I really appreciate it. And to you, lovely listener, join me next time as we reassess another historical figure and possibly decide they're just as bad as we thought. But for now, I'm off to go and launch my own. podcast awards in Greece that only I can win. Bye!

You're dead to me is a BBC Studios production for BBC Radio 4. Political language can seem archaic. It's like the light from one of those stars that actually died. Sometimes bamboozling. It's a theme park with a five-foot log flume from one thought to another. And very often, beyond words. I don't mean how to describe the language I use. I'm Amanda Unucci. I'm all reset and turbocharged to stress, test to destruction.

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