ARTIST
Other men were emperors; Nero was a star. A celebrity, he broke all the rules, which made him immortal.
Nero took the business of government seriously, but he considered himself first and foremost an artist. Singing was his forte, but he had wide interests. Nero issued coins that are probably the most exquisite in the entire history of Roman currency. He sponsored beautiful buildings. Whether or not he deserves credit, Latin literature flourished during his reign. Seneca wrote philosophical dialogues and letters as well as tragedies. His nephew Lucan wrote the Pharsalia, an epic poem about the civil war between Gnaeus Pompey and Julius Caesar. The writer Petronius published the Satyricon, a darkly comic novel about the decadence of the Roman elite.
Augustus understood that one of the emperor’s many tasks was to entertain the public, but for Nero it became the task. If he were alive today, he would rate as a genius in public relations; a communications giant.
Putting on games was serious business for the emperor. It spoke to his personal interests, but also reflects his political priorities. Every emperor knew that part of the job was serving the people of Rome. Nero did so by entertaining them in the grand style, but he considered entertainment to be educational as well. As he saw it, he was elevating Roman society by introducing elements of Greek culture that ordinary people could understand such as singing, acting, and exercising.
Besides, Nero did not restrict his benevolence to games and shows. He made a major effort to distribute grain and also gave various cash gifts to the public. Still, the games were an efficient way to reach the people. The Circus Maximus, used for horse racing, the amphitheater, and Rome’s three great theaters collectively held more than two hundred thousand people, or one-fifth of the city’s total population.
Games, races, and shows were special occasions with their own rules and rituals. Spectators sat in sections according to their rank, with senators and knights in front. These events were the only times and places where the Roman people felt free to express their opinion to the emperor.
The Roman elite loved and hated the games. They found them immoral and seditious, yet irresistible. For all the sanctions against it, senators and knights began performing in public. Nero was the first emperor to do so, and his taste for chariot racing was indeed unusual for Roman nobles. Some nobles abhorred his behavior, while others approved, but the common people cheered heartily and applauded their emperor the performer. Not to leave things to chance, Nero organized his own supporters, consisting of thousands of young men, to lead the applause.
In their number, novelty, and production values, Nero’s games and shows outdid anything that Rome had seen before. Refreshments were subsidized, and the audience received gifts—often extravagant gifts, including jewels, horses, slaves, and houses, making Nero at least the equal of any modern television game show host. The emperor’s main innovation was introducing Greek games to Rome. Chariot racing, gladiatorial bouts, and boxing matches were the common fare in Roman games, but Nero wanted more. Like many elite Romans, he was educated in Greek culture, but he was unusual in the extent to which he admired all things Greek. He knew that Greek games included running, wrestling, the long jump, and throwing discus and javelin as well as boxing and horse races; many events were performed in the nude. They also included musical contests. Nero’s new games combined music, athletic and equestrian events, and took place every five years. They were called—what else?—Neronia.
Nero loved singing, accompanying himself on the lyre, as well as racing chariots. He practiced wrestling and might have been planning to compete eventually. Was Nero a good singer? He was not without creative talent. Copies of his poetry, in his own handwriting, including erasures, survived him by decades, and a later observer judged them to be good. As for singing, the sources differ, but it’s probably safe to say that his limited talent was improved by training. As a chariot racer, he was game and bold. In addition to singing and playing the lyre, Nero enjoyed performing in tragedy, where he played roles ranging from Hercules and Oedipus, to a woman giving birth. For the latter part, he wore a mask resembling the face of his late wife. In his later years, he also took up solo ballet, which the Romans called pantomime.
Nero was famous for the elaborate parties he threw for the public during the annual celebration of the Saturnalia, the Roman winter festival in December. The festivities featured costumed banquets on boats on artificial lakes in Rome, performances by the emperor, plentiful participation by nobles both male and female, and an abundance of roses—and of prostitutes.
Before Agrippina’s death, Nero sang and raced in private. Right after her death in the year 59, he performed and competed before the people in what were technically invitation-only private events. Finally, in 64 he performed in public, first in Naples and then in Rome.
In 66 Nero went to Achaea, the Roman province of Greece. His purpose was to compete in the five great games, from Actium to Olympia. Normally they took place in different years, but Nero ordered them to be bunched up for his visit. It was the first time in the eight hundred-year history of the Olympic Games that they were held off schedule. Nero took part in four different types of contests: he sang and accompanied himself on the lyre; he acted in tragedies; he raced chariots; and he joined in the contest of heralds. To no one’s surprise, he was declared the winner of every event in which he competed. That included a race in a ten-horse chariot, a demanding and dangerous event in which Nero fell and almost got run over. Yet he returned to the race and won.
Unlike Augustus, who led armies and toured provinces, Nero made only this one trip beyond Italy. The visit to Achaea was as self-indulgent as it was unusual. As one who fancied himself a performer, Nero naturally focused on the stage. And his greatest stage was Rome. So, like an old-school Hollywood mogul who never left California, Nero stayed close to home. Except for Achaea, the provinces suffered. He treated them like a bank when the government needed money, and eventually they revolted.
A major revolt in Judea broke out in 66 during Nero’s stay in Achaea. When he got the news Nero sent one of the few generals whom he still trusted to put it down. It was a wise choice but Nero might have avoided the revolt in the first place by choosing a better governor. In Judea and elsewhere he appointed too many unqualified men as governors; they provoked the revolt in Judea as well as an earlier rebellion in Britain. Fortunately, Nero’s generals suppressed the British revolt. Turning to the East, they also worked out a compromise peace with Parthia over Rome’s former client state of Armenia, and Nero wisely called it a victory.
Yet Nero faced mounting problems upon his return to Italy. He spent too much time as a performer and not enough time as a ruler. The Senate plotted; a major revolt against him broke out in the West, and Nero responded by consulting his voice coach. His efforts to regain control were feeble and vain. Nero didn’t fiddle while Rome burned, but he certainly played while he should have ruled.
TYRANT
Seneca and Burrus wanted Nero to rule as a Civilis Princeps—a Courteous or Civil Prince—showing respect to the Senate and paying at least lip service to the old constitutional forms of the republic. Not that either man was a republican. Seneca, for example, wrote that only the goodness of the ruler protected liberty; the Senate no longer had the power to do so. But after Agrippina’s death, Nero’s goodness was no longer a given. Seneca and Burrus increasingly lost influence. In the year 62 Burrus died, probably of natural causes. Seneca retired.
That year was a turning point in the reign. A new Praetorian prefect was appointed and encouraged Nero’s worst impulses, apparently with Poppaea’s support. Soon Nero would be sending a prominent man into exile merely for recognizing one of Caesar’s murderers in his family tree. Nero was far less tolerant of people who wrote or said anything critical of him. He brought back the charge of treason that he had promised not to use. In 62, for the first time, he executed his enemies in the Senate. When the prefect convinced Nero to order the execution of two men of noble
lineage, the emperor is supposed to have joked as each man’s head was brought to him. One, he said, was prematurely gray. When he saw the other’s head, he said, “Why, Nero, did you fear a man with such a big nose?”
That same year, Nero finally divorced Claudius’s daughter. He was waiting to get rid of prominent political opponents before daring to turn on such an esteemed figure. He falsely accused his ex-wife of adultery, banished her to a barren island off the southern Italian coast, and finally had her executed. Her wedding day had been her funeral, the historian Tacitus later commented.
Not long afterward, the emperor finally married Poppaea. He remained calm when the daughter she bore him died as an infant, but in the year 65, Nero finally lost his temper with Poppaea. It is said that he kicked her, even though she was pregnant again. She died. It was said that she had prayed to die young, before she lost her good looks, and so she got her wish.
It’s hard to believe that even Nero could have wanted such a terrible outcome to his misbehavior. As usual, though, he put on a show. He gave Poppaea a public funeral, where he burned a vast quantity of Arabian incense. Her body was stuffed with spices and embalmed and deposited in the mausoleum of Augustus. She was deified and a shrine erected to her. All of this amounted to no small expense for the Roman state. Within a year of Poppaea’s death, Nero married a Roman noblewoman, after first forcing her husband to commit suicide on a trumped-up charge of conspiracy while the man served as consul.
As Nero became more abusive and ruthless, a rebellion against his tyrannical behavior grew. A year after the fire, in the year 65, Nero discovered a major conspiracy to depose and replace him, led by a prominent senator. At least forty-one people are known to have taken part, including nineteen senators. Few senators wanted to abolish the monarchy; they simply wanted to tame it. Not many imagined going back to the republic. They wanted the rule of law and freedom of speech, more power and dignity for the Senate, and more freedom of action for the magistrates, all under the rule of an enlightened prince.
The Senate had been happy to work with Nero at first, but eventually it became clear that cooperation with him was impossible. It was one thing for a senator, or any Roman, to surrender his independence in return for peace and security, as under Tiberius. It was another to surrender his honor and dignity in the service of something shameful. One of the conspirators, an officer of the Praetorian Guard, probably spoke for many when he said of Nero, “No soldier was more loyal to you while you deserved to be loved. I began to hate you when you became the murderer of your mother and your wife, a charioteer, an actor, and an arsonist.”
The most famous casualty of Nero’s counterattack on the conspirators was his former mentor, Seneca. Although he was probably not guilty, Seneca was ordered to commit suicide. He slit his wrists, choosing the common Roman manner of killing oneself, but the bleeding was slow and painful. Finally, after an extended audience with friends, Seneca suffocated himself in the steam of a hot bath. Like Agrippina, he was a victim of the monster that he had helped to create.
Romans had mixed feelings about suicide. They approved of it when it was deliberate, as in the case of a response to dishonor or an act of self-sacrifice. They condemned it when it was an impulsive act. They also judged suicide on the method by which it was carried out. They condemned hanging oneself or jumping from a height, for example, as cowardly, but they admired someone who took his or her life with a weapon, and so most people admired Seneca.
Seneca had one thing in common with the conspirators: like almost all of them, he was a follower of Stoic philosophy. A centuries-old Greek philosophical school, Stoicism became the favored philosophy of the Roman elite. It was pragmatic and public spirited while also consistent with old-fashioned Roman values. The Stoics emphasized the four cardinal virtues of justice, courage, temperance, and practical wisdom. Stoics taught austerity and self-control. Since Romans traditionally prided themselves on seriousness, simplicity, and strictness, since they valued public service and practical wisdom, and since they prized honor and pursued courage, they found Stoicism compatible.
Although some Stoics wanted to return to the old republic, most accepted monarchy. But they insisted that the ruler be moderate, wise, law-abiding, and gentle. They had no use for tyranny. Naturally they clashed with Nero.
The most influential Roman Stoic of the age, Musonius Rufus, managed to suffer nothing worse than exile in the year 65, while others lost their lives, but it was Musonius’s second exile under Nero, and he would later be exiled a third time by another emperor before finally returning to Rome. Although he wrote nothing that we know of, his lectures were famous, recorded by others, and quoted often. His wit and wisdom earned him the title of the “Roman Socrates.” For instance, he used to say that applause was for flute players, not philosophers; the most admirable philosopher, he said, was the one whose lectures elicited silence, not words. Musonius cast a giant shadow and influenced several generations of the empire’s most prominent politicians, philosophers, and military commanders.
Nero was not done with bloodletting. In the year 67 he ordered the death of his best general, Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo. He was talented and popular, so Nero distrusted him. Besides, Corbulo’s son-in-law had participated in a conspiracy against Nero. So, on the emperor’s command, Corbulo fell on his sword. His last word was the Greek Axios! “You deserved it!”—a term used in athletic games to hail a victor. It seems like bitter irony, and some think Corbulo meant that he was a fool for not killing Nero when he had the chance.
If Nero felt safer after Corbulo’s death, he was wrong. The killing sent a message to his other commanders that they might be next. Indeed, Nero also executed two brothers who had ably commanded on the German frontier. Sooner or later, one of Nero’s generals would decide to strike first.
PERSECUTOR
After the Great Fire, Nero put on a private show in his gardens. To deflect blame for starting the blaze, he accused an unpopular and relatively new religious sect: Christians.
Christianity was now about thirty-five years old. It began in Judea and Galilee with the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus’s mission in Galilee attracted large numbers of followers through his emphasis on the values of goodness, humility, charity, and prayer. He electrified them with the notion that the Kingdom of God, which many prayed for, was already beginning to arrive. Eventually Jesus went to the capital city of Jerusalem, where his enthusiastic crowds alarmed both the Jewish and Roman authorities. He was executed by crucifixion around the year 30 during the reign of Tiberius.
Galvanized by the conviction that Jesus had risen from the dead, his adherents spread the new faith, first in Palestine and then around the Mediterranean world. Early churches were communities of faith and charity, havens in an often-hostile world. As a result of missionary work, a small Christian community developed in Rome itself.
Authorities sneered at Christians and perhaps feared them. Romans distrusted innovation and suspected people who assembled for a purpose that the authorities neither knew of nor controlled. Elite writers active several generations later referred to early Christians as “a class of men of a new and pernicious superstition” and “a class hated for their disgraceful acts.” There might have been a Christian community near where Rome’s Great Fire started. It is possible that some Christians stated openly after the fire that Rome had been punished for its sins. Hence, Christians made good scapegoats for a crime of which they were surely innocent.
According to Tacitus, Nero punished those guilty not only of starting the fire—a crime to which they had supposedly confessed—but also guilty more simply of “hatred of the human race.” Ever the impresario, Nero turned their execution into a ghastly show. The scene was apparently his private estate across the Tiber River in the Vatican territory, which included a circus. Romans liked to enact scenes from myth, which may be why some of the victims wore animal skins and were torn apart by dogs, in a dramatization of the myth in which a hunter was turned into a stag a
nd killed by his enraged hounds. Others were crucified or burned to death at night like living torches. Nero himself was present and dressed like a charioteer. He went from the chariot to the crowd, where he mingled with the spectators. Tacitus sneers that his presence merely inspired sympathy for the victims. According to Christian tradition, two of the apostles or early missionaries of the church, Saints Peter and Paul, were among the victims of the persecution following the Great Fire. That, however, cannot be proven.
Why did Nero persecute Christians? They were a convenient target, available and unpopular. But perhaps on some level, Nero recognized them as a deeper threat. Like him, they represented a powerful response to a crisis in Roman culture. By Nero’s day, monarchy was dulling the edge of Roman manhood. In the republic, liberty and militarism loomed large in Roman culture, but free elections and freewheeling conquerors were now both things of the past. Largely deprived of prior outlets in the Forum or on the battlefield, Romans began to look inward. The writings of Seneca bear eloquent witness to the development. Nero’s Rome was rich, as no one knew better than he did. Yet beneath the opulence lay emptiness. Seneca and the Stoics understood inner peace as a solution.
Nero, of course, offered a different solution. He delivered ever more numerous, more spectacular, more shocking, and more outrageous entertainments. Yet neither food nor drink nor sex could speak to the soul’s needs as religion could. Perhaps Nero saw in Christians a challenge that he couldn’t defeat, and so he tried to destroy them.
CONCRETE
Familiar words sum up Nero: art, luxury, irresponsibility, and tyranny, but a less dramatic but equally revealing word must be added: concrete. It was a key legacy.
Roman concrete was a mixture of volcanic sand, high-grade lime, and various fist-sized pieces of rubble (stone or broken bricks). It was versatile, flexible, and cheap. Despite its inanimate, porous looks, concrete was the pixie dust of an architectural revolution. It allowed Rome to break free from the posts and lintels of Greek-inspired architecture and to create something all its own. Concrete made possible the vaults and domes that became emblems of Roman imperial architecture. What the marble pillar was to Greece, the concrete dome was to Rome.
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