Throughout the life of Nero, the 5th Roman
emperor, several conspiracies have been generated. The great fire of Rome that
destroyed ten of fourteen districts, was thought to have been ignited by Nero
himself. Poppaea, Nero’s second wife, was thought to have died by a kick from
Nero. Even the very death of Nero was thought to have been staged in a plot to
return and rule again.
1.
Nero
started the fire and fiddled on his lyre during the great fire.
2.
Nero
killed his wife with a kick.
3.
Nero
faked his death and planned a righteous return.
Let’s reach back into history and see if we can find any
proof of the truth to find out what really happened during reign of Nero.
Nero, was a narcissistic emperor
that once ruled Rome, “Nero is said to have ordered citizens (and senators)
remain in the theater to witness his performances …” (Gardner 30). He had such a need for admiration that he
manipulated the rule of social proof to have crowds applaud his performance:
“He selected some young men of the order of knights... to be divided into
groups and learn the Alexandrian styles of applause...and to ply them
vigorously whenever he sang. The leaders were paid four hundred thousand
sesterces each” (Tranquillus 117). The
rule of social proof states that in certain situations an individual will look
to their peers for guidance and imitate what they’re doing. The rule of social
proof works better when the proof is presented by the actions and behavior of
numerous individuals. In Nero’s case he had several younger men allotted into
the crowd and ordered to applaud his performance, subconsciously forcing
unbeknownst victims of this rule (the rest of the crowd) to applaud him.
Nero was also very histrionic and
neurotic. Nero would act on the slightest thought of someone coming after him;
he would act on it to the fullest! He became paranoid with thoughts of his
mother having him denounced as emperor. Without hesitation, he decided to have
her killed. After a few failed assassination attempts, he finally succeeded at
having the women who birthed him killed. “Terrified by her...he determined to
have her life, and after thrice attempting it by poison...on the charge of
being hired to kill the emperor; that his mother be put to death, and the
pretence made that she had escaped the consequences of her detected guilt by
suicide” (Tranquillus 147).
Once Nero had his mind made up, he
was very perseverant and dedicated to the cause. After becoming infatuated with
the art of singing and deciding to indulge into the craft himself, he
persistently did everything in his power to have the most ear warming voice he
possibly could; and he did so with great dedication:
After hearing him sing after dinner for
many nights in succession till a very late hour, Nero began to practise
himself, gradually undertaking all the usual exercises that singers follow to
strengthen and develop the voice. He would lie on his back clasping a lead
plate to his chest, purge himself by vomiting and enemas, and deny himself
fruit and other foods injurious to the voice... though his singing was feeble
and hoarse, he soon longed to appear on the stage (Tranquillus 117).
Though Nero’s image has been painted in a negative manner by
ancient historians, he wasn’t always the antagonist monster they portray him to
be. Nero showed some telltale signs of being somewhat altruistic, “he let slip
no opportunity for acts of generosity and mercy...He distributed four hundred
sesterces to each man of the people, and granted to the most distinguished of
the senators who were without means an annual salary...and to the praetorian
cohorts he gave a monthly allowance of grain free of cost” (Suetonius 103).
Instead of keeping the currency for himself to host his lavish and extravagant
parties (which he was later known for), he dispensed some of his commodity to
others. Also, before his environment nurtured him into a monstrous killer, Nero
showed some regards for life “When he was asked according to custom to sign the
warrant for the execution of a man who had been condemned to death, he said:
"How I wish I had never learned to write!”” (Tranquillus 102).
With all that has been said; Did Nero start
the Great Fire of Rome? Did he kill his second wife? Did Nero fake his death?
Let's dive back into time and see if we can undermine any truth of what
actually took place approximately 1,954 years ago.
Nero had his own vision of Rome,
differing from the way his royal ancestors constructed the cities. By the time
Nero was ruler, the Roman cities were poorly erected; most of Rome was
considered the slums. Majority of the Romanian people lived in buildings called
insulae, which were buildings that were mostly made of cheap materials and were
built within close proximity. Built using low quality material and structured
right next to each other, these buildings created fire hazards and provided
easy means for a fire to be quickly augmented “High-rise firetraps prone to
sudden collapse due to shoddy construction, they teemed with people all crowded
together in the slums of Rome. The ground floors of these apartment buildings
were often lined with shops and taverns and the top floors frequently overhung
the labyrinthine streets, which were just as crowded and dangerous as the
insulae themselves” (Beard 3).
In the month of July, 64 CE, a fire
broke out in the shops near the Circus Maximus stadium. The fire was quickly
spread with the help of high winds and blazed for six days straight. After a
couple days went by the fire was thought to have been extinguished, but the
flames broke out again and raged for another few days and nights. When the fire
was finally over with, ten of the fourteen districts of Rome were destroyed;
killing many and leaving hundreds of Rome’s inhabitants homeless
July 18, 64 AD, fire broke out in the merchant area of the
city of Rome. Fanned by summer winds, the flames quickly spread through the
dry, wooden structures of the Imperial City. Soon the fire took on a life of
its own consuming all in its path for six days and seven nights. When the
conflagration finally ran its course it left seventy percent of the city in
smoldering ruins (EyeWitness 4).
Nero capitalized on
this unfortunate disaster by rebuilding the cities with new building codes “He
devised a new style of building in the city, ordering piazzas to be erected
before all houses, both in the streets and detached, to give facilities from
their terraces, in case of fire, for preventing it from spreading; and these he
built at his own expense. Many severe regulations and new orders were made in
his time”(Tranquillus 575). He also used this opportunity to commence the
project of building himself the most extravagant palace of his time “After the Great Fire of Rome in 64 AD, Nero took advantage of the space where
many buildings had burned down to build himself a new palace right in the
middle of downtown Rome, which he called the Golden House. In front, Nero put
an enormous statue of himself, covered with gold“(Karr 3).
The fact that Nero took advantage of
this disaster was enough to cause people to believe that Nero himself started
the fire. Nero was even said to have been playing his lyre while watching Rome
engulfed by the flames. For Nero, those
theories weren’t so far-fetched. After all, he had a negative reputation of
doing whatever it took to get his way. After conducting a survey searching for
a yes or no answer to the question “Did Nero start the Great Fire of Rome?”,
eighty-three percent of twenty-five people said that Nero did start the fire;
which corresponds to what most of the ancient historians documented such as
Suetonious Tranquillus “He spared, moreover, neither the people of Rome, nor
the capital of his country. Somebody in conversation saying— “For, pretending
to be disgusted with the old buildings, and the narrow and winding streets, he
set the city on fire” he sung a poem on the ruin of Troy, in the tragic”
(Tranquillus 613). Others claim that Nero couldn’t have started the fire
because of claims that he was in another city at the time the fire was ignited
“Nero at this time was at Antium, and did not return to Rome until the fire
approached his house” (Tacitus 15).
Said to have been truly in love,
Nero married his favorite mistress Poppaea Sabina whom bore his first child.
Their child died a few months after birth; Nero took this tragedy hard. While
Poppaea was pregnant with their second child she fell ill and for one reason or
another, didn’t overcome her illness. Ancient historians put the blame on Nero,
inferring that he delivered a fatal kick to Poppaea’s abdomen “He married
Poppaea twelve days after the divorce of Octavia, and entertained a great
affection for her; but, nevertheless, killed her with a kick which he gave her
when she was big with child, and in bad health, only because she found fault
with him for returning late from driving his chariot” (Tranquillus 609). Modern historians believe it is possible that
Poppaea died due to complications involving a miscarriage “In AD 65, Poppaea
became pregnant again, but miscarried the pregnancy and died of complications”
(Wood 8).
In the year of 68 CE, Nero’s run as
emperor came to an end. Nero was declared a public enemy by the state senate,
who ordered Nero be put to death in ancient fashion “Meanwhile, letters being brought in by a
servant, he snatched them out of his hand, and there read, That he had been
declared an enemy by the senate, and that search was making for him, that he might
be punished according to the ancient custom of the Romans” (Tranquillus 376). Most ancient historians document
Nero's death as assisted suicide; saying that he was so terrified of what
awaited him, he took his own life with the help of an acquaintance “When he
learned that the criminal was stripped, fastened by the neck in a fork and
then beaten to death with rods, in mortal terror he seized two daggers which he
had brought with him and drove a dagger into his throat, aided by Epaphroditus,
his private secretary” (Tranquillus 152). Some historians acknowledge that some
citizens of Rome believed Nero faked his death and planned to return and rule
again “The historian Tacitus wrote about a rumor that Nero faked his death and
was hiding, to emerge in the future” (Stone 167).
Throughout the short-lived reign of
Nero, the fifth Roman Emperor, several conspiracy theories have been generated.
1. Nero ignited the Great Fire of Rome.
2. Nero killed his second wife Poppaea
Sabina.
3. Nero faked his death and plotted to
return and rule again.
Although the rule of consistency
would have us believe that Nero is in fact guilty of the theories that are
casted upon him, we might never truly know what took place approximately 1,954
years ago. Part of the reason is because there are only a few surviving texts
that document the life of Nero, and those authors are deemed to be anti-Nero
biased “Dr. Pollini, emphasizing that influential ancient writers had a strong
anti-Nero bias” (Pace 1)
Works Cited
Pace, Eric (About The Archive) The
New York Times, June 18 1985
Gardner, Amanda, "Nero
Tyrannus: The Physiological and Psychosomatic Causes of his Tyrannical Legacy”
(2015). Undergraduate Honor Theses. 1006. Address scholar.colorado.edu
Tranquillus, Suetonius. “The Lives
of the Twelve Caesars.” Universy of Chicago , 2017, address penelope.uchicago.edu
Beard, Mary. “The dangerous streets
of ancient Rome” published in the April 2015 issue of BBC History Magazine
"The Burning of Rome, 64
AD," EyeWitness to History, www.eyewitnesstohistory.com (1999)
Carr, K.E. Nero’s Golden House – Domus Aurea –
Rome. Quatr.us Study Guides, August 26, 2017. Web. November 4, 2018.
Wood, Susan. (2000). The Incredible,
Vanishing Wives of Nero. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263851331_The_Incredible_Vanishing_Wives_of_Nero
Perry Stone, (Unleashing the Beast)
Frontline 2011 Print
