You're Dead to Me - Emperor Nero (Radio Edit)

Episode Date: May 1, 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.This is a radio edit of the original podcast episode. For the full-length version, please look further back in the feed.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 Jenner. 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 Pompeii, The Life of 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 Emperor Niro. 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 Ratatouille, 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. 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 a 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 didn't know it 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 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 Deloise but that's just because of the Mel Brooks film. 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 been plays, he's been played by a lot of famous actors on screen from Peter Oostinov in Kvo

artist, Christopher Biggins in I-Claudius, to Craig Roberts as the big baddie in the Horrible History's Kids' movie that I worked on. 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? 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. Where the thinner pickings are found is if you're looking for a standard ancient account of Nero A to Z.

We've got some. They agree on one thing that he wasn't a good thing, right? They are quite, we call euphemously, they're a bit hostile. The reviews are in. The reviews are in and they are not good ones. So Nero's childhood. Let's get to the actual guy we're talking about. He's not called Nero at birth.

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, CE, and his name is actually then Lucius, Demos, a hyno barbus, which means bronze beard. 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?

Well, Nero's surname was Bronzebeard. And his dad was a pretty despicable character called Ginias Damishis, Ahina Barbers. And there's horrible stories told about him, like how he once ran over a child deliberately in the street in his chariot. Happily, perhaps for Nero, he died when Nero was about three. Was his dad in politics? All women were in politics. Oh, okay, okay. Oh, never mind.

Sorry. Right. 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 to 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.

Yeah. Even though 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 program because Mum Agrippina married the Emperor. Who was her uncle? Oh, yes, yes. Oh, boy. And then Claudius adopted Nero.

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. We call those brusbands.

But now we have uncle husbands. maybe hunkle? How do you feel about uncle? Or usbans? Usband? Unbans? Okay, so he's the sort of father-in-law, stepdad to 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. 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 upbringing, it's good education.

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's already got his own son. Yeah, Britannicus. And he's called Britannicus. Call that to celebrate Claudius's conquest of Britain.

So, he names his son especially. Oh. The story is that Agrippina started to engineer Britannicus being marginalized, right? And Claudius does die. Very passive phrasing there, does die. I was using it slightly euphemistically.

Claudius dies, and the allegations are that he was poisoned by mush poison mushrooms. He's at dinner and he's eating his favourite mushroom omelette or whatever it is. The idea is that the mushrooms were actually poisoned mushrooms,

all the agrippina had put poison on the mushrooms. And the doctor's in on it, supposedly. 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 don't. You can die of stuff, right? People can die of ordinary things. They could die of ordinary things, but everybody always wants them to be, die of poison. But so, but when Claudius died, was this at a moment that was opportune to move Euro into position? Of course. And also Britannicus, very soon after, also dies of poison. Or, of course, might have been epilepsy.

An epileptic fit. Might it be an epilepsy. But people on that occasion had clear grounds for suspicion, because it was said that after he'd keeled over at dinner, they had a quick burial, but the funeral pyre had already been 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? would not want my daughter having the remote control at this point, let alone an empire.

Fair enough. 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. We should say, Nero soon gets tired of mum running the show and starts to plot her death. He starts to plot the... So Claudius has been murdered perhaps.

Rutanicus has been murdered perhaps. Mum is now going to be murdered. 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. Does he do a murder paloosa?

What it shows is how easy it is. to invent these stories. Oh, okay. All our three main historical sources are pretty clear that Nero tries to and eventually does kill her. Suetonius has the most possible attempts. Scytonez 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 to protect her body against poison. There's like a fish called Wanda. He keeps trying to kill her. It's surviving. It's like a farce, isn't it?

Yeah, it is. The next attempt is even more fast, good, like, the idea is that he arranged for tiles to crash from the roof where she was sleeping, but... This is like a roadrunner cartoon. She had been tipped off.

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 in the sources, you know, so that they're over the top and unbelievable. There is a temptation to think that this is all very funny. But this is a woman being killed by her son. This is matricide, right?

And in the end, she is murdered. And in the end, he sends a hit squad. 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. the man on horseback riding 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. Got to dance. Let's talk about what he does, right? He performs in plays. 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. So he himself performs. 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.

Nero does go, you know, 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. because people constantly pretend a fake guy. Lock the doors. Come on. The performer doesn't do that. Captain audience, I probably.

Is that where the expression, wow, you killed him? You killed him? Is that where that comes from? Like, man, how'd you do? I killed him. I killed them. Women gave birth. Because they couldn't get out once they got in and the baby came.

And they were forced to flatter him. They were forced to say, Blime you brilliant, Nero. Now, 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 him, I think that was a really lousy show.

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 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 in the essence.

Wow, hiding in plain sight. Maybe. I dare you to call me out. Maybe. It's where the boundary is between the gossip and the hiding in plain sight that's very hot to face. The important thing here, pattern is that

Nero 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 the 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 Istmian games, and all the others. He changed all the events in the Olympics, the things that he liked. Oh, my goodness. 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, 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? I'm on Nero side here, possibly. Okay, all right. Maybe if the Romans had spent more time having triumphal processions and celebrating people who are good at art. and culture, the world might possibly have been a nicer 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. Possibly.

I mean, I think the jury's out. but we have to keep that as a possibility. But, and 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, 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. He was brutal to his lovers.

He had three wives and horrible man, right? Yeah. Nero's first wife is Claudius's natural, as it was. an inverted comma's 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. He divorced her, sent her in.

to 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, because she's supposed to be abused.

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 one of Rome's also horribleest bits of domestic violence, if it's true, he comes back.

back after an evening out and he hits her in the stomach while she's pregnant and she dies. Yeah. And then he conveniently gets remarried. Yeah. To a third wife, Messalina? Yes, actually a Messalina. Yeah. I mean, it's not very nice.

Did Messalina survive or? She survived him. Oh, okay. And she actually had more husbands than he'd had. Fair play. Good. Good. All right.

Thank you for here. There go. So, what are you making of Nero-Sophila? Obviously, pretty monstrous in terms of his personal life. I'm torn because, God, I love the theater. 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. 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 almost like a gangster

burning down a nightclub that he wants to get the insurance on you you also have been an ancient Roman his story because you've just got the right mindset I'm so close you're on the money

because 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 nevertheless, the story arose that Nero had started it. Suetanius 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 going down. I guess I got to buy a little new palace here. Hey, bus, did you just take out fire insurance? What are the odds?

It's weird. All right, anyway. But 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.

Again, there are things to be said in favour of him and against. Well, okay, so in the against column, he blames 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 but Nero is said to have gone too far

Is this like throwing Christians to the lions or what he wasn't? It comes a bit later but in the Christian tradition Nero is said to be the first persecutor of the Christians Nero is a kind of 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 Pizonian 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, it's 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 near Rome, 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 Pito 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 who are executed, 13 and 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 it first he does succeed. They learn from him. You've got to keep showing up and trying. This was a military, you know, a military conspiracy.

It was a military revolt. This is a coup, right? It's a coup. It's basically a coup. 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 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. What do you think his last words are, Pat and tell me his last words or what his supposed last words. words were. He's got more than one lot, I'm afraid. But the famous one is Qualis Artifex perio. What an artist and artifacts. What an artist is dying when I die. Some proper ego there, Pats, 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, Patton?

In his 40s. 30. Whoa. What a life, hey? That's the end of Nero's life. He died in 68C.E. 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, say. We're here willingly. So my stopwatch is ready, Mary. Take it away, Professor Beard. Okay, I've got two mini nuances.

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. an hero, are they actually true, the 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, 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. And 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 sat 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. 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 they're...

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. And historians ought to be interested in things that aren't true as well as things that are. Yes, yes. 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, 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 get episodes 28 days earlier than on any other rap in the UK. 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 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! 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 Junucci. I'm all reset and turbocharged to stress, test to destruction, used and abused buzzwords and phrases from the world of politics. I come with a dazzling array of guest presenters and I'll be exploring the verbal tricks of the political trade, the intentions behind them and the effect they have on all of us. The new series of Strong Message Here with me, Amanda Unucci from BBC Radio 4. Listen now on BBC Science.