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Things changed as he grew up, and in his early twenties, Nero was determined to break free of his mother by any means – so he had her dispatched by a palace hit squad. It is from this influence of mother over son that the lurid, and entirely unproven, tales of incest arose. It is commonly believed that she schemed to get Nero onto the throne instead of Claudius’ own son, and that at first, she had a huge influence over the young emperor who was only 16 at the start of his rule. Agrippina, the fourth wife of the emperor Claudius, was one of those powerful women in Rome who were probably blamed for many more crimes than they actually committed. Did he really murder his mother Agrippina?Īlmost certainly, yes. With permission of the Ministero della Cultura ̶ Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli. Fresco of a landscape with architectures and boats, Pompeii, AD 1–37. Nero’s Domus Aurea drew inspiration from luxury villas, many of which were around the Bay of Naples.
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Nero himself actually blamed the Christians, as a radical new sect, and had many of them horribly put to death (some burnt alive, others torn to pieces by animals). But there is no evidence at all that he torched the city in order to build the palace. One graffito ran ‘Romans escape, the whole city has become one man’s house’. It goes back to the fact that he used some of the parts of the city destroyed in the blaze to build himself a vast new palace, called his ‘Golden House’ or Domus Aurea, complete with a revolving dining room (archaeologists may have found traces of this) and a pleasure lake where the Colosseum now stands. But what about the rumour that he actually started the fire? And he introduced new fire regulations, insisting on a maximum height for buildings and the use of non-flammable materials. It is clear that after the disaster, he organised efficient relief operations, opening his own palaces for shelter and paying for emergency food supplies. But the singing doesn’t mean that he didn’t care. One writer, not long after the event, describes how Nero watched the blaze from the outskirts of the city, singing to his lyre (though another claims he was actually 60 kilometres away at the time). The character of Nero plays the lyre as Rome burns. But is the original story true? Peter Ustinov plays Nero in Quo Vadis, 1951.
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Everyone from Barack Obama to Gordon Brown and Donald Trump has had the Nero treatment. When they want to show a politician not caring about some national disaster, they dress him up in a toga, put a laurel wreath on his head and a lyre in his hands, with flames behind. It remains a favourite with modern cartoonists. This is the most famous story about him: as Rome blazed, the emperor enjoyed the spectacle while he played his lyre (his ‘fiddle’ as later ages put it). Did Nero really ‘fiddle while Rome burned’? © Roma, Sovrintendenza Capitolina ai Beni Culturali. Roma, Musei Capitolini Archivio fotografico dei Musei Capitolini. Marble, AD 50–100 (with later restorations). It skillfully translates them into a compelling but misleading image of Nero as a tyrant. However, only a small part of the face is ancient, the rest of the sculpture is a restoration from the 1660s, relying on hostile accounts by ancient writers. Famous for centuries, this is still the most-illustrated portrait of Nero. So here are 10 questions and answers to shine a light on different sides of Nero, starting with the ‘Great Fire of Rome’ which destroyed large parts of the city in AD 65. But we can bust some myths and confirm others. We can never see through all this to the real emperor. And, of course, a bad emperor always makes for more exciting history than a good one. Romans told very tall stories about their emperors in general (like the stories we tell about celebs and royals, usually without the murder), and the Roman rulers who came after Nero found it very useful to exaggerate his faults, to show how much better they were. That’s an almost impossible question to answer. He is remembered as a monster and sadist with a chilling list of crimes to his name, from burning down his own capital city to sleeping with his mother and murdering many of his close relatives. After 2,000 years most people still recognise the name Nero, emperor of Rome between AD 54 and 68.