Early in his reign, he promised to model his rule on that of Augustus. He lowered heavy rates of taxation and also increased the amount of free grain issued to the poor. But what they truly loved him for was his generosity in providing public games and entertainment on an immense scale.
His public festival included plays and athletic contests as well as the donation of lavish gifts of food and money to the poor. Nero himself took part in various games-festivals across Greece and even attended the Olympic Games in A. He competed as an actor, singer, lyre-player, and chariot-racer and apparently he won each of his contests!
The Roman golden age in 5 steps. The sources tell us that his particular passion was for singing, which he took very seriously. Suetonius says that he went everywhere accompanied by a vocal-tutor and that he also suffered from stage-fright before many of his performances. However, his nerves did not stop him from regularly giving performances lasting many hours, during which no one was permitted to leave. In June A. Emperors therefore needed to recognise, at least formally, the role of the senate.
This traditional council, to which belonged only the members of the aristocracy, had long played an important role in the government of Rome.
With the Civil War and the end of the Republic, however, senatorial power was severely weakened. Nero, like other emperors before and after him, often clashed with the senate, his superior authority at odds with the views of this traditional aristocratic assembly that was slowly but irrefutably losing power.
Nero was depicted as a mad tyrant by ancient historians belonging to the senatorial elite, but we should keep in mind that they were far from impartial. It is not surprising that members of this group, when writing about Nero, were keen on representing him in the worst possible light. However, when we consider the lower classes, quite a different picture emerges.
A number of graffiti found in Rome hail Nero and his name is the most commonly found on the walls of the city, more than any other Julio-Claudian emperor or of the Flavians that came after him. If we turn to Rome, we see how his actions benefited the people of the capital. Nero built magnificent public baths and, through the construction of a grand covered market and the improvement of the connections between Rome and its harbour, he made sure that his people would have had access to food.
The new building regulations he introduced after the Great Fire also drastically improved the living conditions of the people of Rome. You can read more about Rome in the first century AD in our historical city travel guide blog. It is difficult to fully appreciate what common people thought of Nero, as they left very few traces. The partisan views of the Roman elite ended up shaping our understanding of the past.
Was it Caligula, who allegedly wanted to make his horse a consul and thought of himself as a god? Or the autocratic Domitian, who feared conspiracies against him and executed or exiled many leading citizens of the time? Maybe the cruel Commodus, who fancied himself a new Hercules and fought as a gladiator in the arena? Caracalla is also a good candidate: he had his own brother murdered so he could rule alone and he wiped out all of his opponents.
The similarity of these allegations should not come as a surprise, considering they were all made by dissatisfied senators to slander their political enemies.
Even Augustus, epitome of the good emperor as he might be, did not have a spotless reputation. His rise to power was a bloody one, as testified by the proscription list he signed with Mark Antony and Lepidus, with whom he governed Rome at the time. How do we judge then? Is senseless cruelty worse than calculated ruthlessness? And how can we tell fact from fiction, since what we know of these emperors comes from sources that are anything but impartial?
Decide for yourself whether Nero was a tyrant or the victim of vicious propaganda in Nero: the man behind the myth 27 May—24 October Buy the beautifully illustrated exhibition book from our online shop. Become a Member and enjoy access to all our exhibitions over the 12 months. Map Data. Terms of Use. At the age of twenty-four, Nero divorced her, banished her, ordered her bound with her wrists slit, and had her suffocated in a steam bath.
He received her decapitated head when it was delivered to his court. He also murdered his second wife, the noblewoman Poppaea Sabina, by kicking her in the belly while she was pregnant. He spent a fortune building an ornate palace, only to have it burn down, along with the rest of the city of Rome, in a conflagration that lasted for more than a week.
Nero watched the destruction from a safe elevation, singing of the decimation of Troy. He was famous for never wearing the same garment twice. He sought out sexual thrills like a hog snuffling for truffles.
He had a favored freedman, Sporus, castrated, then married him in a ceremony in which Sporus was dressed in the traditional garb of a bride and Nero played the groom. Later, Nero repeated the ceremony with another of his freedmen playing the groom while he adopted the role of bride, sans castration; the pseudo-nuptials were consummated on a couch in full view of guests at a banquet.
He was attention-seeking, petulant, arbitrary. He had the senator Publius Clodius Thrasea Paetus murdered on the ground that his expressions were overly melancholic. In a more recent popular depiction, a TV movie directed by the late Paul Marcus, Nero is represented as a pretty-boy prince traumatized by having witnessed his father being murdered by the emperor Caligula ; Nero starts his reign with good intentions before embarking upon his own program of Caligula-style excesses.
All of this, according to some recent scholars, is at best an exaggeration and at worst a fabrication: a narrative derived from biased histories, written decades after Nero died, that relied on dubious sources. Nero was the last of the Julio-Claudian emperors, and these posthumous accounts were calculated in part to denigrate this dynastic line and burnish the reputations of its successors. The museum has just opened an exhibition that, if not quite aiming to rehabilitate Nero, challenges his grotesque reputation.
Moreover, much of what was destroyed was slum housing constructed by exploitative landlords. Descriptions of Nero as unhinged and licentious belong to a rhetorical tradition of personal attack that flourished in the Roman courtroom. Other rivals were executed in the ensuing years, allowing Nero to reduce opposition and consolidate his power. The blaze began in stores at the southeastern end of the Circus Maximus and ravaged Rome for 10 days, decimating 75 percent of the city.
Although accidental fires were common at the time, many Romans believed Nero started the fire to make room for his planned villa, the Domus Aurea. Whether or not Nero started the fire, he determined that a guilty party must be found, and he pointed the finger at the Christians, still a new and underground religion. With this accusation, persecution and torture of the Christians began in Rome.
In order to finance this project, Nero needed money and set about to get it however he pleased. He sold positions in public office to the highest bidder, increased taxes and took money from the temples. He devalued currency and reinstituted policies to confiscate property in cases of suspected treason. These new policies resulted in the Pisonian conspiracy, a plot formed in 65 by Gaius Calpurnius Piso, an aristocrat, along with knights, senators, poets and Nero's former mentor, Seneca.
They planned to assassinate Nero and crown Piso the ruler of Rome. The plan was discovered, however, and the leading conspirators, as well as many other wealthy Romans, were executed. Just three years later, in March, 68, the governor Gaius Julius Vindex rebelled against Nero's tax policies.
He recruited another governor, Servius Sulpicius Galba, to join him and to declare himself emperor. While these forces were defeated and Galba was declared a public enemy, support for him increased, despite his categorization as a public enemy.
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