The artist formerly known as Nero

Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus — better known as Nero — is one of the most fascinating and perverse figures of the ancient world. His fourteen spasmodic years as Emperor encapsulate all the reasons why Romans had spent 500 years defending the Republic from rule by one man. And when all came crashing down in AD 68, Nero brought about not only his own death but the end of more than a century of Julio-Claudian rule.

Nero was born in AD 37, but not born to rule: his parents were Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus (“Bronzebeard”) — a profligate aristocrat who died when he was three — and Agrippina the Younger, granddaughter of Augustus. However, she successfully contrived to become the fourth wife of Emperor Claudius in 49. A year later Claudius appointed twin successors: his own son by his third wife, Britannicus — named after the recently conquered province of Britannia — and his new stepson Domitius. Rebranded as Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, the latter bolstered his succession claim by marrying his stepsister, Claudia Octavia.

Of the many ways to handle a difficult teenager one of them isn’t to make him the most powerful man in the world at the age of sixteen. Yet imperial Rome had its modus operandi, and, as pushy mothers go, Agrippina was in a league of her own. It didn’t take long after Claudius’ death in 54 for the co-emperor Britannicus to be unmysteriously poisoned to death. 

It seemed a nice idea to appoint as Nero’s tutor Seneca, the Stoic philosopher, tragedian and awkward billionaire, but one man can only do so much. Perhaps thanks largely to Agrippina, Nero’s first quinquennium in power (54 to 59) was relatively unremarkable. It was when he decided to dispatch his overbearing mother that the wheels started to come off. After failed poisonings, ceiling collapses and prearranged shipwrecks, Nero simply sent a band of sailors to club her to death.

Fair-haired, blue-eyed, fat-necked, pot-bellied, and foul-smelling, Nero liked to wear a dressing gown without a belt, a scarf around his neck and no shoes — a sort of prototype of The Big Lebowksi’s Dude. His character was a strange mix of paradoxes; artistic, sporting, brutal, weak, sensual, erratic, extravagant, sadistic, bisexual — and, come his later twenties, manifestly deranged. He is said to have toured the city at night in disguise, sometimes for his ever-weirder sexual purposes, sometimes simply to beat up strangers, with Beethoven’s Ninth ringing in his ears.

Nero’s decline intensified in 62, when his chief advisers Sextus Afranius Burrus and Seneca respectively died and respectfully retired. Promptly divorcing and banishing the popular empress Octavia, he then married his mistress — wife of the future emperor Otho — Poppaea Sabina. Although public outcry restored Octavia to Rome, it couldn’t stop her execution. Nor would poor Poppaea escape her husband’s wrath: after three years of marriage he kicked her — and her unborn child — to death. Whether through remorse or madness, Nero had his Greek slave Sporus castrated and named him/her his wife “Poppaea”.

In 64 Rome burned. We’re told by some historians (almost) that Nero fiddled while Rome burned — that he put on some stage costume and sang the lost Greek epic Iliupersis (“Sack of Troy”). Although he was actually at Antium 35 miles away, a good story sticks. But was the fire deliberate arson, to create some much-needed urban space for his massive Domus Aurea (Golden Palace) complex? Whatever the truth, a new and suspect crowd who called themselves “Christians” was blamed; some were put in animal skins and thrown to the dogs, some crucified, and some burned at the stake. This widescale butchery of Christians later earned Nero the name of “the First Antichrist”.

Nero’s true passions were for the arts and sport: unlimited money poured into theatres, gymnasia and games. Suddenly the public could watch four-camel-chariot races, sea-battles on artificial lakes filled with exotic fish, and gladiatorial bouts between senators. He even invented his own festival, the five-yearly Neronia. Attendees at Nerostock 65 found not just poetry, music, drama and the traditional fare of imperial games; they saw the most outlandish spectacle of all, Emperor Nero himself performing his execrable songs on stage. Most of his artistic circle killed themselves.

Although Nero was a patron of the arts, not of arms, the world did not stand still: during his rule peace was made in the Parthian War (58–63), and the revolt in 60 of Boudicca, Queen of the Iceni, was quelled by complete destruction at Watling Street; as for the emergence of the First Jewish War (66–73), that played out beyond his death. For it was not grand campaigns but grand designs that inspired Nero. These included the failed attempt to drive a canal through the Isthmus of Corinth, the futile venture to determine the source of the Nile (1,800 years before John Hanning Speke) and the successful erection of a 120-foot bronze colossus — of himself.

In so unstable a world as Rome, taking gap years is unadvisable. But in 66 Nero headed to Greece to perform at the major literary festivals and the Olympic Games, where he rode a ten-horse chariot, was thrown off in a near-fatal accident and still — with Kim Jong-il brilliance — won the gold. After liberating Greece as a reward for its honours, he was at last summoned back to Rome. Rising rebellions across the empire made it clear his own anarchic days were numbered.

Abandoned in the spring of 68 by the Praetorian Guard and condemned by the Senate, Nero took flight from Rome. When he failed to escape to an eastern province (Egypt or Parthia, perhaps), he held up at a villa four miles from the city and had his grave dug. Repeatedly intoning qualis artifex pereo (what an artist dies in me!) he ordered his one remaining bodyguard Epaphroditus to stab him to death. That request, to the delight of many Romans and the grief of a fanatical few, he promptly dispatched. And so the curtain fell on a man not built for this world.