Nero
A Sabine word meaning “brave,” cognate with
ἀνήρ.
1.
Tiberius, a son of Appius Claudius, from whom
all the Claudii Nerones were descended.
2.
A general in the Second Punic War, who defeated and slew the Carthaginian Hasdrubal at the
battle of the Metaurus, thus probably saving Rome from capture (B.C. 207).
3.
Tiberius, father of the emperor and a partisan
of Iulius Caesar and afterwards of Antony. He surrendered his beautiful wife
Livia (q.v.) to Octavianus (Augustus), who married her.
Nero died soon after (
Tac. Ann. i. 10; v. 1;
Dio Cass. xlviii. 44).
4.
Claudius Caesar. The sixth of the Roman emperors, born at Antium,
in Latium, A.D. 37, nine months after the death of Tiberius. He was the son of Domitius
Ahenobarbus and Agrippina, the daughter of Germanicus, and was originally named Lucius
Domitius. After the death of Ahenobarbus, and a second husband, Crispus Passienus, Agrippina
married her uncle, the emperor Claudius, who gave his daughter Octavia in marriage to her son
Lucius, and subsequently adopted him with the formal sanction of a
lex Curiata.
The education of Nero was carefully attended to in his youth. He was placed under the care
of the philosopher Seneca, and appears to have applied himself with considerable perseverance
to study. He is said to have made great progress in Greek, of which he gave a specimen in his
sixteenth year, by pleading in that tongue the rights of the Rhodians, and of the inhabitants
of Ilium (
Suet. Nero, 7;
Tac. Ann. xii. 58). At the death of Claudius (A.D.
54), while Agrippina, by flatteries and lamentations, detained Britannicus, the son of
Claudius and Messalina, within the palace, Nero, presenting himself before the gates, was
lifted by the guard-in-waiting into the covered chariot used for the purpose of carrying in
procession an elected emperor, and was followed by a multitude of the people, under the
illusion that it was Britannicus. He entered the camp, promised a donative to the cohorts,
was saluted emperor, and pronounced before the Senate, in honour of Claudius, a panegyric
composed by his preceptor Seneca.
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Coin of Nero.
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Agrippina soon endeavoured to obtain the chief management of public affairs; and her
vindictive and cruel temper would have hurried Nero, at the commencement of his reign, into
acts of violence and bloodshed, if her influence had not been counteracted by Seneca and
Burrus, to whom Nero had intrusted the government of the State. Through their counsels the
first five years of Nero's reign were distinguished by justice and clemency; and an anecdote
is related of him, that, having on one occasion to sign an order for the execution of a
malefactor, he exclaimed, “Would that I could not write!” (
Suet. Nero, 10). He discouraged public informers,
refused the statues of gold and silver which were offered him by the Senate and people, and
used every art to ingratiate himself with the latter. But his mother was enraged to find that
her power over him became weaker every day, and that he constantly disregarded her advice and
refused her requests. His neglect of his wife Octavia, and his criminal love of
Acté, a woman of low birth, still farther widened the breach between him and his
mother. She frequently addressed him in the most contemptuous language; reminded him that he
owed his elevation solely to her, and threatened that she would inform the soldiers of the
manner in which Claudius had met his end, and would call upon them to support the claims of
Britannicus, the son of the late emperor. The threats of his mother only served to hasten the
death of Britannicus, whose murder forms the commencement of that long catalogue of crimes
which afterwards disgraced the reign of Nero. But while the management of public
affairs appears, from the testimony of most historians, to have been wisely conducted by
Burrus and Seneca, Nero indulged in private in dissipation and profligacy. He was accustomed,
in company with other young men of his own age, to sally into the streets of Rome at night,
in order to rob and maltreat passengers, and even to break into private houses and carry off
the property of their owners. But these extravagances were comparatively harmless; his love
for Poppaea, whom he had seduced from Otho, led him into more serious crimes. Poppaea, who
was ambitious of sharing the imperial throne, perceived that she could not hope to attain her
object while Agrippina was alive, and, accordingly, induced Nero to consent to the murder of
his mother. The entreaties of Poppaea appear to have been supported by the advice of Burrus
and Seneca; and the philosopher did not hesitate to justify the murder of a mother by her son
(
Tac. Ann. xiv. 11;
Quint.viii. 5).
In the eighth year of his reign, Nero lost his best counsellor, Burrus; and Seneca had the
wisdom to withdraw from the court, where his presence had become disliked, and where his
enormous wealth was calculated to excite the envy even of the emperor. About the same time
Nero divorced Octavia and married Poppaea, and soon after put to death the former on a false
accusation of adultery and treason. In the tenth year of his reign (A.D. 64) Rome was almost
destroyed by fire. Of the fourteen districts into which the city was divided, four only
remained entire. The fire originated at that part of the Circus which was contiguous to the
Palatine and Coelian Hills, and raged with the greatest fury for six days and seven nights;
and, after it was thought to have been extinguished, it burst forth again, and continued for
two days longer. Nero appears to have acted on this occasion with the greatest liberality and
kindness; the city was supplied with provisions at a very moderate price; and the imperial
gardens were thrown open to the sufferers, and buildings erected for their accommodation. But
these acts of humanity and benevolence were insufficient to screen him from the popular
suspicion. It was generally believed that he had set fire to the city himself, and some even
reported that he had ascended the top of a high tower in order to witness the conflagration,
where he amused himself with singing the “Destruction of Troy.” From many
circumstances, however, it appears improbable that Nero was guilty of this crime. His guilt,
indeed, is asserted by Suetonius (
Nero, 38) and Dio Cassius (lxii. 17), but Tacitus admits that he was
not able to prove the truth of the accusation (
Ann. xv. 38). In order, however, to remove the suspicions of the
people, Nero spread a report that the Christians were the authors of the fire, and numbers of
them, accordingly, were seized and put to death. Their execution served as an amusement to
the people. Some were covered with skins of wild beasts, and were torn to pieces by dogs;
others were crucified; and several were smeared with pitch and other combustible materials,
and burned in the imperial gardens in the night: “Whence,” says the
historian, “pity arose
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Nero. (Bust in the Louvre.)
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for the guilty (though they deserved the severest punishments), since they were put
to death, not for the public good, but to gratify the cruelty of a single man”
(
Tac. Ann. xv. 44).
In the following year (A.D. 65) a powerful conspiracy was formed for the purpose of placing
Piso upon the throne, but it was discovered by Nero, and the principal conspirators were put
to death. Among others who suffered on this occasion were Lucan and Seneca; but the guilt of
the latter is doubtful. (See
Seneca.) In the same
year Poppaea died, in consequence of a kick which she received from her husband while she was
in an advanced state of pregnancy. A long list of victims is to be found in the pages of the
annalists. The distinguished general Domitius Corbulo, Thrasea Paetus, and Barea Soranus are
among these.
During the latter part of his reign, Nero was principally engaged in amateur theatricals,
and in contending for the prizes at the public games. He had previously appeared as an actor
on the Roman stage; and he now visited in succession the chief cities of Greece, and received
no less than 1800 crowns for his victories in the public Grecian games. He also began the
canal across the Isthmus of Corinth, but ordered the work to be stopped (Dio Cass. lxiii. 6
foll.), leaving its completion to our own times
(1893). On his return to Italy
he entered Naples and Rome as a conqueror, and was received with triumphal honours. But while
he was engaged in these extravagances, Vindex, who commanded the legions in Gaul, declared
against his authority; and his example was speedily followed by Galba, who commanded in
Spain. The praetorian cohorts espoused the cause of Galba, and the Senate pronounced
sentence of death against Nero, who had fled from Rome as soon as he heard of the revolt of
the Praetorian Guards. Nero, however, anticipated the execution of the sentence which had
been passed against him, by requesting one of his attendants to put him to death, after
making an ineffectual attempt to do so with his own hands. He died A.D. 68, in the
thirty-second year of his age, and the fourteenth of his reign. See the chapter in
Baring-Gould's
Tragedy of the Caesars, vol. ii.
(1892).
