Did Rich Romans Live Better Than Today’s Millionaires?

For centuries, history has painted Nero as the face of excess, decadence, and soulless power. A man capable of murdering his mother, ordering the execution of his pregnant wife, poisoning his half-brother, setting fire to his own city and blaming the innocent, all to keep his throne and feed his ego. But the most unsettling part isn't that. What's truly disturbing, is that he believed he was doing it in the name of art. Who was Nero really? A narcissistic monster. A deranged emperor. Or an inevitable product of a Rome that had lost control of itself. A child raised in the shadow of a manipulative mother. A young man torn between the lyre and the sword. A ruler who forced thousands to applaud his performances, while sending countless others to the circus to be devoured alive by dogs and lions. And yet, in his final moments, cornered, betrayed, trembling before his own death, he didn't think of wars, or of his enemies, not even of his empire, he thought of his art. What an artist dies with me, he said before plunging a dagger into himself. But was he truly a misunderstood artist? Or simply a psychopath with unlimited access to power, who used beauty as an excuse to justify his madness? Today we're going to unearth the truth behind the most infamous man of the Roman Empire. Don't go away. Because this story is not only darker than you imagine, it's also more real. Before Nero, Rome was already a machine of power where the most influential families wove alliances through poison, incest, and betrayal. Being noble wasn't a privilege, it was a sentence. Anyone born close to the throne knew there were only two paths, dominate or be destroyed. Nero wasn't born to be emperor. He was molded into one, like a weapon. His mother, Agrippina the Younger, was the sister of the infamous Caligula and the niece of Emperor Claudius. Ambitious, calculating, and ruthless, Agrippina didn't just survive a Rome ruled by brutal men, she bent it to her will. Her goal was clear, put her son on the throne, no matter the cost. And she did. She married her own uncle, Claudius, and convinced the emperor to adopt her son as heir, thus displacing his true biological son, Britannicus. It wasn't a whim. It was a masterstroke. Agrippina left nothing to chance. She controlled the court, the alliances, the coins, even Nero's tutors. One of them was Seneca, the stoic philosopher, whom she forced to return from exile to become her son's mentor. Nero was educated in rhetoric, music, poetry, but also with a silent lesson, survival depends on your ability to manipulate or eliminate anyone in your way. The day Claudius died, supposedly poisoned with mushrooms by Agrippina herself, Nero was only 16. And Rome, desperate for stability after the chaos of Caligula, accepted him without protest. But Nero didn't rule. His mother ruled for him. She was the empress in everything but name. She appeared on coins, in parades, in state decisions. In public, she was the protective mother. In private, she was the puppeteer of an insecure teenager, molded to obey, but destined to explode. Because behind that facade of control, something was boiling inside the young emperor, a need to be seen, to be loved, to be free. And when that desire met absolute power, Rome became his stage, and everyone around him, disposable characters. Rome had a new emperor, but what it truly had was a teenager surrounded by masks. Behind the throne, his mother wove alliances. Behind the speeches, Seneca wrote words for him to repeat. And behind Nero's public smile, a void was beginning to grow. At first, he seemed like a good ruler. He ordered tax reductions, limited public executions, and funded spectacles for the people. Under the guidance of Seneca and Burrus, his guard prefect, Nero projected a moderate image. But it was only that, an image. What he truly desired was not to rule, but to be adored. Not as a Caesar. As an artist. While Rome debated reforms, Nero dreamed of stages. He loved music, poetry, theater. He wanted to sing. He wanted to act. He wanted the entire empire to applaud him. But there was a They didn't go on stage. They didn't play the lyre like some provincial jester. And then, the conflict emerged. In his half-brother Britannicus, the legitimate son of the late Claudius, Nero saw an uncomfortable mirror. Britannicus was noble by blood, charismatic, and had a legitimacy Nero would never possess. But what made him unbearable, was the contempt. Britannicus called him Domitius, his original name, as if to remind him he wasn't a true Caesar. He mocked his manners, his voice, his love for the arts. He humiliated him in front of senators, soldiers, and even his own mother. And that Nero would not forgive. At an imperial banquet, with a room full of nobles, Nero offered him a cup of wine. A brotherly toast. Britannicus drank, and collapsed to the floor convulsing. Servants rushed over. Some screamed. Others pretended they saw nothing. Nero, calm, merely remarked that Britannicus suffered from epilepsy. He had removed his first obstacle. But he did it with surgical coldness. Without a tear. Without hesitation. He was only 17. And it wouldn't be the last time he used poison to clear his path. The murder of Britannicus was more than a family crime. It was a message, Nero was no longer the teenager ruled by others. Now, he was the one making the rules. And in his game, no one was safe. The murder of Britannicus was the first crack in the fragile structure of power that upheld Nero. But the real earthquake would come later, and it had a name, Agrippina. For years, she had controlled everything, his rise, his image, his decisions, even his marriage. But by eliminating Britannicus, Nero made it clear he was no longer a child. And his mother, couldn't accept that. Agrippina did not step aside. She doubled down. She voiced opinions in the Senate. Intervened in trials. Publicly scorned Papaea, the emperor's lover. She even went so far as to remind him, in front of advisors, that without her, he would have been nothing. And Nero, fed up, frustrated, humiliated, began to hate her with a toxic mix of resentment and fear. He wanted to be free. But for that, he had to do the unthinkable. The first attempt was subtle. Poison. Three times. But Agrippina, cautious, had followed the advice of an oracle who warned her her son would kill her, and she, stubbornly, not only accepted her fate but began to ingest small doses of poison to build immunity. So Nero changed tactics. He had a false ceiling built above his mother's bed, designed to collapse while she slept. But the mechanism failed. Only a few panels fell. Agrippina survived. Ashamed and furious, he planned something more, accidental, a trap ship. During a boat ride in the Bay of Naples, the vessel Agrippina was traveling on collapsed due to a supposed malfunction. Several servants drowned. But she didn't. She swam to shore. She reached her house, injured, soaked, but alive. Nero panicked. He could no longer disguise his attempts. If she spoke, if she denounced him, if the Senate listened, his throne was hanging by a thread. So he gave the final order. That same night, a group of armed men, members of his personal guard, entered Agrippina's house. She looked at them with disdain. It is said that, unfazed, she opened her tunic, pointed to her abdomen, and shouted. Strike here, here, where I bore that monster. And right there, they stabbed her. The Emperor justified the crime by claiming his mother was plotting to kill him. Some senators applauded. Others remained silent. The people suspected. But no one dared speak. That day, Rome understood there was no longer anyone above Nero. Not even the woman who had given him life. After getting rid of his mother, Nero felt, for the first time, that power truly belonged to him. But instead of finding peace, he found emptiness. An emptiness he tried to fill with the only thing that seemed to matter, love, or at least, something resembling it. His first marriage had been a duty. Claudia Octavia, his stepsister and legitimate daughter of Claudius, was the perfect wife in the eyes of the people, noble, modest, loyal. But Nero found her unbearable. He despised her for her seriousness, for her infertility, for the respect she commanded among Romans. He didn't love her. He tolerated her. Until Poppaea Sabina appeared. Poppaea was ambitious, seductive, intelligent. She had what Octavia didn't, beauty, charm, influence. She knew how to manipulate Nero's desires like no one else. She drove him to obsession. She became pregnant by him, and that was the perfect excuse to expel Octavia from the palace. The people were outraged. Octavia was beloved. Protests erupted in the streets. Poppaea's statues were torn down. Slogans were shouted in support of the rightful wife. Nero, ashamed and pressured, decided to cut the problem at its root. He sent a message to Octavia, she must commit suicide. And if she didn't, he would make sure she did. With no options, she obeyed. She was beheaded. She was only 20 years old. Nero married Poppaea, but what seemed to be the love of his life ended in tragedy. Poppaea was pregnant again. Nero, in a fit of rage during an argument, violently kicked her in the belly. She collapsed. She bled. She screamed. She died. The baby did too. It is said that Nero went mad after her death. That he cried like never before. That he buried her with imperial honors. That he never got over her. And that, unable to live with the guilt, he sought to replace her. One day, in his palace, he came across a young slave named Sporus. He bore a disturbing resemblance to Poppaea. Same eyes. Same face. Same aura. Nero had him castrated. Dressed him in his dead wife's clothes. Gave him her name. Displayed him in public, took him by the hand to banquets, spoke to him as if he were truly Poppaea. It wasn't love. It was madness. Grief turned into delirium. Nero's power was no longer political. It was emotional. And that made it infinitely more dangerous. It was summer. The heat pressed down on the streets of Rome like an invisible threat. The city slept when the fire awakened. On July 18th, in the year 64, flames broke out at the Circus Maximus. A spark. A gust of wind. And Rome burned. For six days, fire devoured roofs, columns, temples, and lives. Two-thirds of the city were reduced to ashes. Thousands died. Hundreds of thousands lost everything. And Nero? He was far away. On vacation at his villa in Antium. Or so the story goes. Some say that upon hearing the news, he returned immediately to help. That he organized rescue teams. That he offered food and shelter. That he opened his gardens to the displaced. But others, say something very different. They say he not only knew about the fire, but that he had ordered it. They say that from the terrace of his palace, he played the lyre dressed in theatrical robes while watching the flames light up the night. They say he saw the fire as a work of art. A spectacle. An inspiration. Exaggeration. Defamation. Or a truth too uncomfortable to accept. What is certain is that, shortly after the fire, Nero began the construction of the Domus Aurea, a colossal mansion of obscene proportions, built right where the destroyed neighborhoods once stood. It had fountains of wine. Ivory ceilings. Halls decorated with gold and precious stones. An artificial lake. It wasn't a house. It was an imperial whim. The devastated people soon became suspicious. Had he burned Rome to rebuild it as a theater for his ego? The rumors grew. So did the rage. And Nero, feeling cornered, needed a scapegoat. Then he looked at them. At the Christians. The smoke from the fire still hovered over Rome's ruins when Nero pointed his finger and found the guilty. It wasn't a trial. Nor an investigation. He just needed someone to blame. And he chose the Christians. To many Romans, Christians were already a nuisance. They preached a strange religion, denied the gods of the empire, and met in secret. They were different. And in times of fear, what is different becomes dangerous. Nero took advantage of that tension. He accused them of starting the fire. And unleashed a punishment that still shakes history to this day. The first arrested were tortured until they confessed. Under pain, they said what Nero wanted to hear, and gave more names. And thus began one of the cruelest persecutions of the ancient world. Christians were crucified. They were covered in animal skins and thrown to dogs. They were set on fire, alive, to light the imperial gardens at night. Yes. Nero used them as human torches. He organized circus shows for the people, where Christians were the main attraction. Pain as entertainment. Death as amusement. And he didn't do it in secret. He was proud. He laughed. He applauded. Some citizens began to feel uneasy. Not out of compassion. But because the excessive cruelty, was starting to feel like too much, even for them. Tacitus, one of the few Roman historians who documented these events, wrote that even enemies of the Christians began to feel pity. But Nero did not stop. He was at war with his own guilt. And every victim was a desperate attempt to drown it. Nero grew up dreaming of being an artist, not an emperor. From a very young age, while other boys played war or politics, he sought refuge in music, in verses, in the tragedies of Greek theater. The sound of a lyre moved him more than the words of a senator. His deepest dream wasn't to command armies, but to conquer the hearts of an audience with his voice, his gestures, his performance. But the power he inherited transformed him. The boy who wanted to shine on a stage ended up believing the entire world had to be his theater. And that no one had the right to refuse to watch him perform. Over the years, he became addicted to applause. But not to genuine applause, to the kind born of fear. He staged performances where he was the only artist, and thousands of citizens, senators, and soldiers were forced to attend. It didn't matter if they were tired, if they were sick, if they didn't want to be there. The theater doors were locked from the outside. No one could get up until he finished. And no one, absolutely no one, could stop clapping. It is said that on one occasion, during one of his endless performances, a woman gave birth in the stands and was not allowed to leave. That others, exhausted to their limit, pretended to faint to escape. Some went further, they preferred to jump from the upper levels of the amphitheater rather than endure another hour of his obsessive thirst for ovation. And still, Nero kept singing. The madness was complete. He believed himself a new Orpheus, an immortal poet, a misunderstood genius. But in reality, what stood before him was not an audience, but a terrified crowd, trapped, resigned to fake admiration so they wouldn't be punished. Historians recount that he organized tours of Greece, taking with him thousands of young men whose only function was to applaud him non-stop, no matter the quality of his act. It wasn't love for art. It was power disguised as talent. It was fear in the form of applause. In the last years of his life, when the empire was already crumbling in his hands, when generals turned their backs on him and the Senate prepared his fall, Nero kept repeating his theatrical lines. He kept performing. He kept acting. As if reality were just a bad play he could rewrite. And when it all ended, when he realized he was alone, with no one left by his side, he didn't seek comfort in his army or his political allies. He sought it in his art. He died as he lived, playing a role. Instead of facing justice, he chose suicide. And before doing so, he uttered the phrase that would forever define his legacy. What an artist dies with me. It wasn't a defeated emperor who fell that night. It was a frustrated child, a broken soul, who never understood that true art is born from love, not from terror. Nero was only 30 years old when he realized it was all over. He had ruled Rome for 13 years, but now there was no one left willing to defend him. The Senate had declared him a public enemy. His allies betrayed him in secret. His troops, tired of his vanity and delusions, no longer obeyed him. At first, Nero tried to resist. He asked if he could escape to Egypt, disguise himself, start a new life. But he wasn't the kind of man who could live without applause. He didn't know how to be anyone unless he was the center of the stage. And now, he didn't even have a stage. Hiding in a villa on the outskirts of Rome with a few loyal servants, he spent his final hours feeling, perhaps for the first time, what real fear was. The sound of approaching horses' hooves, the rumor of soldiers coming to bring him before the Senate, all reminded him that the show was over. And that there would be no second act. Desperate, he asked one of his men to show him how to take his own life. But not even suicide was something he dared to do alone. He hesitated. He trembled. He screamed. He begged his servants not to leave him. He pleaded for someone else to wield the dagger for him. No one did. Finally, as the sound of soldiers drew closer, and knowing that if they caught him, he would be publicly humiliated before being executed, he gathered the little courage he had left. With help from his secretary, Epaphroditus, who assisted him in the final moment, he drove the dagger into his throat. His final words were a lament. What an artist dies with me. And thus, the emperor who loved theater more than politics, the man who preferred forced ovations over true respect, died without an audience, without applause, without glory. He died alone. Rome did not mourn his death. Some cursed him. Others felt relief. The senate erased him from history with a decree of damnatio memoriae, condemning his name to oblivion. But oblivion never came. Because men like Nero, those who take ambition, madness, and ego to the extreme, never truly disappear. They become warnings. Dark legends. Reminders of what happens when an empire stops being ruled, and starts being performed.