The Debauchery of Rome's Fifth Emperor | Nero | Absolute History

It's become one of the great symbols of the corruption of power, the maniac fiddling while his city burns. The tyrant was Nero, the city, Rome. Fiddling while Rome burns is just one of the stories that's made Nero's reputation as one of the most evil men in history. The psychopath who killed his wife and mother, who threw Christians to the lions, who was condemned to an early death. All these things are true, but the fact that he never even played the violin should alert us to the fact that there's more to him than the monster that historians have consigned to the dustbin of the past. Because there was another Nero, a man who loved peace, not war, the world's first rock star, cheered by his adoring fans, an enlightened lover of music, theater, and the arts. And it's this Nero that I want to try and rescue from the ashes of his terrible reputation. Nero's story was played out here in Rome, in the imperial palaces on the Palatine Hill. These walls are all that's left of the corridors and darkened rooms where a drama played out that was half political thriller, half domestic tragedy. Nero's life has all the elements of a soap opera, political intrigue, bitter jealousy, passionate love affairs. This hostile picture was built up by propagandists after his death. As the centuries passed, historians exaggerated the myths of Nero. My job is to sort the fact from the fiction, to balance the later propaganda against other sources and plain common sense. What we know for certain is Nero came to power when he was just 16. At an age when most kids are deciding which subjects to do for A-level, he was made ruler of half the world. That's when his history as emperor began. But in order to understand Nero, we have to go back further, because it's what happened to him as a little boy that made him the emperor he became. Nero was the name he adopted later, but he was born Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus on the 15th of December, 37, here at Antium on the coast near Rome. It was the playground of the Roman elite, and these are the ruins of Nero's own palace. Nero's family had links to the emperors going back to Julius Caesar. Family connections were everything to the Romans. In terms of social standing, Nero had a great family, although in terms of a healthy psychological background, they were a disaster. First, there was his father, a tough and brutal alcoholic called Gnaeus. This is a man who killed an ex-slave during a drinking bout, gouged out a fellow senator's eye when he criticized him in the forum, and deliberately killed a young boy in a traffic accident in a fit of road rage. But the real aristocratic blood came from his mother's side. Nero's story is about the women who influenced him, and central to that story is his mother Agrippina, the ultimate pushy woman. She created him, she made him, and in the end, she all but destroyed him. Agrippina's father, the war hero Germanicus, had been heir to the imperial throne, but had died tragically young. She was ferociously ambitious, and well aware that the only way to power for a woman was through a husband, or better still, a son. She saw Nero as her passport to power. Agrippina, like sort of a lot of mothers in particular, has an ambition for herself. She has a son who is going to become powerful, or could become powerful. Nero had rich, powerful parents, but he also had an uncle who was emperor. In the year Nero was born, Agrippina's evil brother Caligula became emperor. Caligula was paranoid, he saw treason everywhere. There were secret trials, political murders, and terror throughout Rome. When Nero was just two, Caligula sent Agrippina into exile on suspicion of being involved in a plot against him. The toddler Nero was left in the care of his alcoholic father. Then, just as he was getting used to having no mother, tragedy struck again. His father died. Nero was abandoned, brought up by household slaves, a dancer and a barber. Hardly a good start for a future emperor. But in 41 AD, Nero's luck took a turn for the better. Caligula was assassinated by senators determined to stop his reign of terror. Nero's mother was brought back from exile. Caligula was replaced by Nero's stuttering great-uncle Claudius, a figure of fun who'd survived by looking harmless. Anyone who's read the book or watched the TV series of I, Claudius will assume that Nero's problems were over, but far from it. Claudius was much more than the wise, stuttering clown we're led to believe he was. He also shared the sadistic characteristics of his predecessor and kept the levels of terror at court just as high. There were secret trials in private chambers, suspects tortured in front of him just for the fun of it. Nero grew up knowing that anyone he was close to could be murdered at any time. But the chief threat to his existence didn't come from Claudius, but from his third wife, Messalina. The seven-year-old Nero became the pawn in a power struggle between two ruthlessly ambitious women. Messalina wanted her son to be emperor after Claudius. Agrippina wanted it to be Nero. Both women were willing to fight dirty. Around 44 AD, while the young and handsome Nero lay sleeping, an attempt was made on his life. Messalina sent two assassins into his rooms in the dead of night and he was saved by a miraculous event. As they pulled back the sheets to finish him off, a snake slithered out of his bed and they fled in terror. It's a colourful way of dramatising this dynastic squabble, but this episode only emerges a century later and it's got suspicious parallels with Roman folk tales of the time. The only bit of evidence for this is actually a snake's sting he's found in the bedroom, which his mother has made into a bracelet for him. So it's one of those stories that... It's rather like sort of Hercules and the snakes and sort of Hercules kills the snakes. It's one of those stories which you make up about childhood. It's a lovely story, but it's probably not very true. It was Nero's mother, Agrippina, who... Messalina had a reputation for being hot. She'd begun a scandalous affair that was the talk of Rome. Agrippina made sure that the news was leaked to Claudius and Messalina was forced to kill herself. With her rival out of the way, Agrippina put the next stage of her plan into effect and married her uncle, Claudius. Part of the deal was that her son was adopted by Claudius, changing his name to Nero. It effectively made him heir to the imperial throne, but Agrippina strengthened the bond with an arranged marriage. A wife for Nero would also need political clout and Agrippina realised she didn't have to look far for that. She arranged a marriage between the 15-year-old Nero and Claudius's 13-year-old daughter, Octavia. Not surprisingly, she had to have the law changed first to avoid any charges of incest. The next stage in Agrippina's plan was to tighten her grip on power by making strategic appointments. This is where emperors were made and broken, the Viminul Gate, a military camp on the outskirts of Rome that's still used by the Italian forces today. The legions weren't allowed inside Rome, so the emperor had his own elite force called the Praetorian Guard who were based here. Any aspiring contender for the imperial throne who didn't have their support didn't stand a chance. Usually, they were under the command of two prefects. Agrippina created just one boss, a tough, straight-speaking soldier called Burrus. He and his fellow officers knew that they owed their loyalty to her and her son. Burrus was to be one of the twin pillars of support for the teenage emperor. Her second appointment was a masterstroke. The most respected philosopher of his day, Seneca, was employed as Nero's teacher and speechwriter. With Burrus and Seneca, Agrippina groomed the teenage Nero for power. But it seems Nero found his official role quite a bore. He hated the endless formal dinners with his stuttering uncle, Claudius, who slobbered over his gourmet food and got slowly but steadily drunk. But according to the historians, these dinners had a much more immediate consequence. They gave Agrippina the opportunity to murder her husband. Claudius loved mushrooms. The historians say Agrippina employed the most famous poisoner in Rome to prepare a powerful potion for his favorite dish. Claudius had a food taster to guard him against poisoning, but Agrippina had bought him off. This man put the poisoned mushroom onto the plate after she'd taken her portion. Claudius swallowed the bait literally. The poison was designed to act slowly. Claudius retired drunk and with the first symptoms of stomach ache, which got worse. But then news arrived that he'd thrown up shortly after supper. If he survived, then he'd know there'd been an attempt on his life and both Nero and Agrippina would be done for. Agrippina went into overdrive. The poisoner was brought in again. This time a feather was dipped in a quick-acting potion. Agrippina gave it to another of her stooges, Claudius's doctor. He told Claudius that if he tickled the back of his throat with the feather, he'd vomit again and feel a lot better. Claudius followed the doctor's orders, gave a sigh, and lay back dead. Historians writing later enjoyed telling the story of Agrippina killing Claudius, but we now know that there wasn't any poison that could work that quickly at the time. Claudius was pushing 60 and in poor health, and it's far more likely that he died from drink, overindulgence, or even food poisoning. What the stories really tell us is how people saw Agrippina, a ruthless politician who was quite capable of murdering her own husband. Whether natural causes or foul play, the next few hours followed the same course as imperial deaths have done from Maoist China to the Queen Mother. Agrippina didn't announce his death straight away. She needed to play for time. Prayers were offered up for the emperor's recovery, and musicians were invited in to cheer him up, even while his body was growing cold. As a precautionary measure, she called out the Praetorian Guard from their barracks to surround the palace while she worked on the official announcement with Burrus and Seneca. Finally, at midday the following day, the pronouncement was made. The emperor is dead. Long live the Emperor Nero. The crowds loved their glamorous 16-year-old ruler. Claudius's palace on the Palatine had been a place of fear, secretly run by the emperor's pleak. Now Nero announced a new regime. The Senate would be restored to power. Tyranny was over. It seemed a new era had dawned. Agrippina and Nero both knew that he owed her everything. When the Praetorian officer came to him that evening to ask for the official password, Nero told him it was to be Optima Mater, the perfect mother. But if Agrippina thought that Nero was gonna be her puppet, she was very much mistaken. The perfect mother didn't want compliments. She wanted power for herself. Thanks to his scheming mother, Nero was emperor of Rome at the tender age of 16. But now Agrippina wanted payback for her investment. She craved power. She'd been the sister and wife of an emperor, and now with her novice son in charge, she tried to fix the system so she could have even more power. She got the Senate to meet up here in the palace rather than down there in the forum so that she could listen to the all-male assembly from behind a curtain. But her stranglehold on power was about to be loosened. And political office. But it's clear from these coins minted at the beginning of Nero's reign how Agrippina wanted to be seen. The important thing about these coins is they're contemporary documents. They're not later writings. And they give you the official imperial view, the imperial spin, if you like. There's no court gossip there, but there's exactly what the emperors wanted you to see about them. The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford houses an extensive collection of coins from ancient Rome that vividly tell the story of Nero and his mother. As soon as he becomes emperor, the power of Agrippina is absolutely apparent. Is that his mother? That's his mother facing him, and it's the first time an imperial woman had ever been shown on the same side of the coin as the emperor. And you can see she's actually, in some ways, she's given precedence, because her name and titles are on the head side of the coin, and his name is on the other side, and they're staring at each other almost as equals. But of course, it doesn't last. And the next coin shows the next stage in that process, because his mother, Agrippina, is still there, but Nero is shown side by side with her, but he's in front, and she's relegated to being behind him. So what caused the rift? Not the economy or foreign policy, but an argument over a girlfriend. Nero had fallen madly in love with a woman called Actae. He had his official child bride, Octavia, but this was a real woman. Actae was older than Nero, mature, sexy, but she was Greek and an ex-slave. Nero wanted to keep news of the affair from his mother, but he wanted to get rid of Octavia and marry Actae. And when you want to divorce your wife and make a slave girl the Empress of Rome, it is a bit hard to keep it a secret. Agrippina went ballistic. As far as she was concerned, Actae had to go. Poor old Nero was forced to go scurrying round various senators trying to persuade them that Actae was actually an Eastern princess and therefore eligible for the throne, but nobody bought it. Nero had to give up love for duty and it hurt. Agrippina may have won, but in the long-term, it damaged her. Bullying Nero forced him further and further into the arms of his advisors, the philosopher Seneca, the head of the Praetorian Guard, Burrus, and a few elder statesmen who were quite prepared to put up with Nero's foibles, but not those of his mother. Within a year of taking over, the balance of power had shifted in favor of the 17-year-old. Nero moved Agrippina out into a separate palace. For a time, he barely spoke to the woman who had once been the perfect mother. He was his own man. And here, we begin to unpick the myth of the tyrant Nero, because even historians like Tacitus, who destroyed Nero's reputation after his death, had to admit that the first five years of his reign were a huge success. He gave power back to the Senate, he administered the provinces fairly, and cemented his popularity by giving every citizen a cash handout. As a fun-loving teenager, he seemed to have a natural touch with the man in the street. Bread and circuses has always kept the mob happy, but now Nero came up with a brand new ploy, the lottery. He showered little wooden balls with numbers on them into the crowd, and if you got a prize-winning number, then you could turn up at the palace and claim a lavish free gift. Horses, slaves, even a holiday home. Nero's popularity, I think, stemmed from his youth, the fact that he really tried to be such a good boy at the beginning and did all the things he was supposed to, but his relationship with the populace, I think, was particularly strong because he was very generous, spent a lot. He gave very good entertainments, and they really loved bread and circuses, as we know, and also he was rather accessible. That is, we're told on a number of occasions there are banquets or entertainments in which Nero is walking among the crowds, and they actually see him, and I think that means quite a lot to them. Nero started well, but he found the constraints of being in charge wearing. He had a personality that needed to break out. Like a typical adolescent anywhere, he loved to go out with his mates and get drunk, but preferably without anyone realizing he was the emperor, so if they went to a pub or a brothel, he'd go in disguise, which had its downside because after one particularly rowdy night, he came back home with two black eyes. Although his advisors, Burrus and Seneca, gave Nero a long leash, a Roman emperor wasn't supposed to act like Jack the Lad, and his mother kept nagging him to behave himself. The increasing tension with Agrippina came to a head again over a new affair. Nero was 22. This time, the object of his affections wasn't a slave girl, but a member of the aristocracy called Poppaea. Nero was, of course, married to Octavia, the princess who'd given him his passport to one half of the imperial line. Poppaea started pressuring Nero to get divorced, and this became all the more urgent when she discovered that she was pregnant and could provide Nero with an heir. The only opponent to their relationship was his mother. Things disintegrate. He starts ceasing to have public or private meetings even with his mother. He won't be alone with his mother. He doesn't trust his mother. Poppaea kept up the pressure. She taunted Nero for being a mummy's boy, told him an emperor should be able to do what he wants. Subtly, she persuaded Nero to think the unthinkable. No one knows for sure when Nero decided to kill his mother, but we do know exactly how he did it, and no one but him could have thought up such an extravagant plot. He got the idea at the theater. He went to a show with some friends, and part of the entertainment was a boat that collapsed, and out through the holes ran a whole series of wild animals. The idea of the collapsible boat must have stuck. He had one specially built to take his mother home from a dinner party. On the night of the murder, it was waiting at the quayside, crewed by his loyal naval commander, Anicetus. Right on cue, halfway across the bay to Agrippina's home, the boat started to sink. There was general panic, but Agrippina was a natural survivor. She persuaded her maid to pretend to be her while she jumped ship. The maid thought this would save her life, and shouted, I'm Agrippina, save me! But when the assassins heard her, they beat her over the head and killed her. Meanwhile, Agrippina managed to swim until she was picked up by a fishing boat, which took her safely home. Home, but not safe. It can't have taken long for the truth to dawn on the exhausted and fearful mother, that her son wanted her dead. On the other side of the bay, word reached Nero that Agrippina had survived. Terrified, he panicked. He ordered Burrus to get the Praetorian guard to go and finish her off. Burrus refused, saying that his men would never agree to kill a member of the royal family, particularly the daughter of their hero, Germanicus. In the end, it was the naval man, Anicetus, who agreed to do it. Nero's thanks are revealing. You've given me my empire, he said. At dawn, the sailors broke down the doors of Agrippina's villa. As they burst in, her servants fled, leaving her alone to face her executioners. At first, she stalled, playing for time, saying, thank you, please go back to the palace and say that I've fully recovered. But as they moved closer, she screamed that her son would never have ordered her murder. In reply, they beat her over the head with a club. She fell to the ground. She pointed to the womb that had born Nero and said, strike me here. They did as she requested, and she died. Back in Rome, Burrus and Seneca invented the story that Agrippina had killed herself because her plan to murder Nero had been discovered. Although they were prepared to cover up for the emperor, they gradually realized they'd lost control of him. With this unforgivable act of murder, Nero had crossed the line into tyranny, and there was no going back. Nero's reign as emperor had started with great acclaim, but by the age of 22, power had already corrupted him. He'd murdered his mother so he could divorce his wife, Octavia, and marry his mistress, Poppaea. But Octavia was still a woman of influence in Rome with all the clout of the royal family, so Poppaea persuaded Nero for his own sake that he needed to get rid of his ex-wife permanently, and there was no one left to tell him not to. Unable to deal with Nero, the philosopher Seneca had retired to the country, and his military advisor, Burrus, had died. He was replaced by a ruthless yes-man, Tigellinus. If Seneca and Burrus had managed to keep Nero on the rails, it was Tigellinus and Poppaea who derailed him again. They invented a plan for Nero to humiliate and discredit Octavia with a trumped-up charge that she'd slept with an Egyptian musician. Her maids were systematically tortured to provide the evidence, but Octavia inspired such loyalty that they refused to crack. Even in her death throes, one of them used her last ounce of strength to spit into Tigellinus' face the words, my mistress's vagina's cleaner than your mouth. But their plan to humiliate Octavia backfired. They'd not only underestimated the loyalty of her servants, but they'd also reckoned without the affection of the Roman mob, who adored their old empress. They came out on the streets in force, hurling Poppaea's statues to the ground, reinstating Octavia's and covering them in flowers. The people didn't like a descendant of the noble Augustus being treated like dirt. Nero knew he'd have to come up with a pretty convincing plan to discredit Octavia if he was gonna have any chance of survival. So he invited Agrippina's assassin, Anicetus, to the palace and he offered him a stark choice. He could either go to the Senate and say he'd slept with Octavia, or he could be executed. He went to the palace and he gave a very convincing performance. He said that Octavia not only wanted his body, but she also wanted to get the navy on side so she could affect a political coup. Everything was going to plan, and Nero waved goodbye to Anicetus as he set sail for rich exile in Sardinia. Octavia was taken off to a prison island near Naples, where she was murdered quietly after her arrival. Her severed head was sent to Poppaea as a trophy. Somehow Nero weathered the storm that followed. The mob were pacified with more free gifts and entertainment, and Nero was left to enjoy life with Poppaea here on the Palatine. He wrote poems, studied singing and acting, and hosted soirees with poets and artists. He might have been remembered as a noble patron of the arts if it weren't for the greatest catastrophe of his reign. Here's the Circus Maximus. 2,000 years ago, this place would have been as full of people and as exciting as the Cheltenham Gold Cup. All the way round here was the chariot racing track with free seating for 300,000 people all the way around on massive wooden structures with wooden slums behind. Up there was the palace with Nero's royal box where he had a bird's eye view not only of a day at the races, but of the first flames from the fire that swept through Rome. In the earliest historical account, Tacitus writes that the great fire of Rome probably started as a simple accident. A brazier got kicked over just outside the stadium, but a strong wind was blowing, and in moments, the flames took hold. It was a devastating blaze. It tore through the tightly packed wooden slums, spreading quickly to the posh houses on the Palatine and onto Nero's palace itself. Rome had a form of fire brigade. They couldn't cope with the inferno. It was the worst fire in history until Hamburg and Dresden in the Second World War, and it literally burnt itself into people's memories. As time went on, people started telling stories about Nero himself seen on the palace balcony with a lyre manically reciting his own epic poem, The Fall of Troy, as the flames lapped the Palatine. And it's these stories recorded by later propagandists that sealed Nero's reputation. But Tacitus tells us he wasn't even in Rome. Nero was actually miles away here at his holiday villa in Anzio when it happened. Immediately he heard the news, he jumped on his horse, rode back to Rome, and took charge of the firefighting and organising shelter and food for the homeless. Day and night, he could be seen rushing around the city completely without any of his bodyguards who he'd told to go and help fight the fire, until eventually, after nine long days and nights, the flames gradually abated. And it didn't stop there. When the fire was eventually put out, Rome was devastated, and there were thousands of homeless refugees. Nero acted swiftly to solve the problems caused by the fire. He slashed the price of grain and let people camp in the temples of the Forum while their homes were rebuilt. He also commissioned innovative plans to design a safer city. So why do we remember him as the villain of the peace? The answer is the simplest in history. All these good plans needed funding. Nero imposed a fire tax. It made him far more unpopular than killing his mother. He'd come good in a crisis, but hitting people in the pocket afterwards was the unforgivable sin. And despite his labours putting out the fire, when he started to rebuild his palace, rumours began to spread that he'd had something to do with starting the fire himself. He needed a scapegoat, and his choice was to seal his reputation throughout history. He picked on a small religious sect who were already deeply unpopular. They were called Christians. The Romans already deeply distrusted them. They refused to take the vow of allegiance to the emperor, which was tantamount to treason. So when Nero needed someone to blame for the fire of Rome, they were perfect. We know that the persecution was completely unjustified and that the fire started by accident, but at the time, the idea of a conspiracy didn't seem that far-fetched. The Christians believed that the world was about to end, in a massive conflagration. Their leader had said, I will cast fire upon the earth. The punishment was harsh, even for such a despised group. The Christians were crucified, fed to wild beasts in the arena, and used as flaming torches in Nero's own gardens. These punishments weren't invented for the Christians. They were all standard Roman ways of dealing with common criminals. But Nero's remembered because he was the first emperor to create a Christian martyr. The leading disciple, St Peter, who'd come to Rome to preach the gospel, died in the first wave of Nero's persecution. St Peter's Basilica is built where he was killed, a lasting monument to Nero's scapegoats. In 64 AD, nobody cared about a few Christians being massacred. Pinning the blame on them might have put a stop to the rumours that he was responsible for the fire, if Nero hadn't gone on to commit the biggest blunder of his life. Nero had done his best to squash rumours about his part in the fire of Rome. With two architects, he'd redesigned the city for the public good. And people might have thanked him for it if a key part of the scheme hadn't included him fencing off a great slice of the devastated city, for his own pet project. Nero's palace up on the hill there looked pretty flashy before the fire, but now he and his architects were conceiving a house that would make Louis XIV or Elton John look shy and retiring. The Golden House was a fantastical design. Villas and palaces, gardens and parkland, a vast lake, and at its entrance, a golden statue of Nero as a god, 120 feet high. If you look at the plan of ancient Rome, the Golden House took up about a quarter of the city. Most of it's destroyed, but one section of this amazing architectural feat remains because it was used for the foundations of the public baths that were built after Nero's death. In Nero's day, all this would have been open to the light, but now it's a vast underground labyrinth. Rome had never seen anything like it. All the walls and ceilings were covered with great art. 14 centuries after Nero, Renaissance artists were still being lowered down through the roof to study the paintings. Walking where he walked, I begin to get a real sense of Nero's mind. He was obviously refined, but detached from political reality. He wanted popularity, but he couldn't see how something so beautiful would wind people up. Two things strike me as really obvious about this building. First of all, it demonstrates that Nero had really good artistic taste. But secondly, how affronted the citizens of Rome must have been who just had their houses burned down when they saw this huge edifice going up. I don't think I'd ever realised until now that there still existed anywhere in the world a Roman house as big and magnificent as this. And what a house it was. There would have been huge, elaborate hangings over these walls, and the rest of the walls would have been encrusted with gold and precious stones and pearls, and there were pipes coming out of the walls and out of the ceiling to shower the visitors with scent and with flower petals. And this room, which was the centrepiece, revolved, it was a rotunda, and it rotated day and night in synchronisation with the stars. It was the biggest, plushest, most elegant Roman nightclub in the whole universe. Nero poured public money into building the Golden House, and that alienated him from the mob, who before that had always supported him. Nero could have survived that unpopularity if he hadn't terminally offended the aristocracy as well. The ideal Roman emperor was a great military leader like Julius Caesar, someone who'd expanded the empire like Augustus. But Nero didn't like war. He didn't even like watching gladiators. He wanted to be a different sort of leader, one who promoted poetry, theatre and peaceful games like the Greeks had. To the Roman elite, this created a huge division between them and Nero. To them, it was all effeminate foreign nonsense, and what's more, highly inappropriate behaviour for an emperor. Worse still, Nero didn't just promote these cultural pursuits, he actually took part. This is singing practice Roman style. Weights, usually made of lead, placed on the chest to strengthen breathing. Nero embarked on a Greek-inspired athletics and artistic career that was all-consuming. He wanted to be a professional lyre player and singer. Other emperors, like Caligula, had performed in private, but this was really serious. A strict regime of diet and exercise. He detoxed for days, drinking only chives preserved in oil. And when his muscles ached from the rigour of exercise, he'd rub them down with dried boar's dung. Everything was focused on getting him into tip-top professional shape. Nero was putting himself at the forefront of an artistic crusade. Rome might have conquered Greece, but the emperor was now giving prominence to Greek ideas and culture. But for Nero, treading the boards wasn't just a cultural campaign, it was a way of boosting his self-esteem. He'd always acted, sung, played the lyre, and recited poetry to invited audiences. The applause gave him the illusion of instant affection and adulation. And so in 65 AD, when he was rapidly losing political popularity, naturally, he went on tour. Nero decided to go public, and stepped into the limelight of a professional performing career. His first performance was in Naples, then a Greek-speaking city, and the crowd went wild. Mind you, his thin, reedy voice was helped by the amphitheatre's acoustics. If you speak from here, you sound pretty ordinary. But if you stand here, your voice sounds like a god. The Greek population of Naples loved it. They cheered, they clapped, they encored. But like a rock star, it went to his head. The adulation he'd always craved was finally in his grasp, and now nothing would stand in the way of his ambitions. On a wave of popular acclaim, he set out on a wild, crazy, artistic conquest of Greece itself. You couldn't say it was a modest affair. 2,000 carts of men and equipment, including 5,000 paid applauders, to ensure he received a rapturous reception at every gig. The four major Greek festivals went in yearly rotation. But to fit into Nero's schedule, he got them all to take place during his visit, and he entered every one. In front of the judges stood the ruler of the known world. This was a man who'd made them change customs established over centuries and reschedule whole competitions. But he sweated, he wiped his brow with his arm. He was so nervous that on one occasion he actually dropped his sceptre while he was performing a dramatic play and really thought that the judges would mark him down for it. Of course they didn't, and when they solemnly awarded him the victor's laurels, he was pleased, flattered, emotional. There were 1,800 competitions that year, and Nero got first prize in 1,800 of them. In Greece, Nero was genuinely popular, not least because he declared the country free from taxation. But back in Rome, they were horrified at Nero's antics. To make matters worse, he awarded himself a triumph, the traditional celebration of a returning military hero. Instead of the emblems of successful battles and captured prisoners, he paraded with his laurels and his medals. To members of the Senate, it was demeaning to the name of Rome. It wasn't what a Roman emperor should be doing. Nero's grip on reality was loosening, and his time was running out. He was 30. He'd been away from Rome for over a year. Leaderless, the neglected empire was falling apart. He'd never bothered to visit the military outposts, and this lack of interest was coming back to haunt him. But as rebellions broke out and his army began to defect, Nero seemed paralysed. He simply sat at home, unable to act. Then, in June 68 AD, the emperor woke up one night to find the palace deserted. This wasn't a good sign. His Praetorian guards had gone to a secret meeting at the Senate. The very Senate he'd given power to was now turning its back on him. Cold, hard reality finally sunk in. Nero was on his own. Still in his nightclothes, he fled the palace looking for somewhere to hide. The sensible thing would have been to head for the port of Ostia, where he could have gone overseas to rally his loyal forces abroad. But he wasn't thinking straight. He bumped into three slaves who got horses and took him to a villa on the outskirts of the city. When they arrived, they found that the front door was locked and they had to crawl through the undergrowth into the side entrance. They were holed up now, and there was nothing to do but wait. Eventually, a messenger arrived with the news that Nero had been declared an enemy of the state and had been sentenced to death in the ancient manor. Nero had no idea what that meant and asked one of the slaves, who told him he'd be stripped naked and paraded through the streets of Rome with his head clamped in a forked branch. Then he'd be stoned to death. The slave politely added that suicide might be the better option. As dawn broke, he watched as they dug his grave. Then some Roman soldiers approached, and with the help of a slave, he stabbed himself through the throat. His last words were, What an artist dies with me. He was 30 years and six months old, the last of the Julio-Claudian line that stretched back to Augustus. Nero marked the end of a dynasty and the end of an era. The first emperors, Julius Caesar and Augustus, had persuaded the Roman people that one-person rule was a good thing. Over the course of a century, there'd been six emperors, but the dynasty had degenerated into corruption and self-indulgent tyranny. Rome stuck with the idea of an emperor, but after Caligula and Nero, it was clear that just being related to Caesar and Augustus wasn't enough. After a year of chaotic civil war, the next emperor, Vespasian, wasn't related to anyone special, but he was what the empire needed, a common-sense leader. In an attempt to wipe out Nero's memory, he knocked down the Golden House, drained the lake, and where the great Colossus of Nero had stood, he built the public theatre we call the Colosseum. But Nero was too colourful a character to be forgotten. Nero saw himself as an artist. His enemies thought of him as a tyrant and a buffoon. The truth is, he was all three. He certainly wasn't very good at running an empire, but then what did Rome expect? If you put a messed-up 16-year-old in charge of half the known world, you're asking for trouble. Rome learnt the hard way. From now on, it abandoned the Julio-Claudian line of emperors in favour of skilled administrators. But Nero did leave his mark on history. Whatever else he wasn't, he was a showman. He did everything in a big way, from building his house to killing his mother. He thought of himself as an actor, but no part he ever played on the stage could match the drama, the spectacle, and the sheer theatricality of his own life.