Days gone by – The suicide of Nero

Lucius Domituis Ahenobarbus, better known as the Emperor Claudius Nero, committed suicide on this day, 9 June 68 AD after reigning for 14 years. He is probably best but incorrectly remembered today as being the Emperor who “fiddled while Rome burned” in the great fire of 64 AD. (Nero played the lyre not a fiddle.) Christians remember that he used them as scapegoats immediately after the fire to shift the blame. The historian Tacitus wrote that Nero had an “immense multitude” of Christians arrested. Following forced confessions they were crucified, torn apart by wild dogs and some were even used as torches at night to provide illumination. Another historian Suetonius claimed that Nero himself was the arsonist and had a large area of Rome torched to make way for the building of an extravagant new palace. Modern historians don’t completely trust the ancient historians who were part of the Senatorial class that was largely opposed to Nero and note that fires happened with some frequency in ancient Rome and so it could well have started by accident.

Nero also had his overbearing mother Agrippinna killed which in most any age and regardless of provocation is considered to be bad form. Like any emperor he was correctly paranoid (someone was often plotting to kill him) and had a number of aristocrats and military plotters put to death. The problem with such killings is that they make everyone around you nervous and tend to increase not decrease the plots against you. The most famous such plot was the Pisonian revolt named after the the Roman nobleman Gaius Calpurnius Piso. A number of conspirators planned to assassinate the Emperor in the Circus Maximus during an actual game. Nero was known to personally drive chariots during some of the games so perhaps they planned to take advantage of the decreased security that might have resulted from his unusual hobby. At any rate there was at least one too many conspirators for the secret to be kept and someone leaked the plan. Fifty one conspirators were arrested, thirteen were banished and nineteen were executed including the famous philosopher and advisor to the Emperor, Seneca.

Nero has perhaps suffered in history as he was survived by many literate enemies and no defenders. During his early reign he attempted to reform the notoriously corrupt tax farming system, an effort which certainly led to the animosity of a number of powerful Romans. He also brought a number of successful legal actions to remove and punish corrupt officials. He also attempted to reduce taxes, particularly on food imports, in the hopes of bettering the lot of the common man. Perhaps his most lasting legacy was a negotiated peace with the Parthian Empire, the Romans only near peer competitor at the time. The peace set up Armenia as a Roman client state and provided for fifty years of peace in the region.

He is also remembered by his detractors for his unusual passion for the arts and what they saw as an unseemly desire to be loved by the people. He participated in public performances of plays, raced chariots in the games and played the lyre and sang. Suetonius claimed that these command performances were so boring that aristocrats trapped in the theater would sneak out by dropping over the wall at the back or by pretending to be dead so that they could be carried out. Reminds me a bit of President Clinton playing the saxophone on television and chatting about his underwear.

Interestingly economists and historians still debate the issue of his public works projects. Most of the contemporary historians claim that Nero’s building projects were extravagant and that the cost of the increased taxation required by all the government spending exhausted Italy’s financial resources and ruined the provinces. Some modern economists claim that the main problem at the time was endemic deflation and that the big public works projects (canals, palace complexes etc) were needed to stimulate the economy. Since we are still having the same damned argument 1,940 years later, I would say the issue is still under debate.

Discontent with Nero’s rule continued to grow and he made matters worse by spending less and less time with the tiresome necessities of running the state in favor of attempting to advance his career as an aspiring artist while pursuing a rather notorious and time consuming sex life. He found more and more reasons to stay out of Rome and was on an extended cultural and artistic trip to Greece when things really started to fall apart. Already he had spent more time away from Rome than any Emperor except Tiberius. The atmosphere in Rome had become increasingly anti-Nero, brought on by a number of years where plots or at least fears of plots had led to many executions and demands that prominent citizens suspected of treason commit suicide. These citizens who were killed were all members of the governing class of Rome: senators, provincial governors and army commanders. Soon none of the ruling class felt safe with Nero’s growing tyranny. His tax policies in particular had caused great discontent in the provinces. Responding to the repeated calls from agents of his administration that things were reaching a breaking point, he gave up on his extended Grecian vacation and returned to Rome.

Gaius Julius Vindex, the governer of Gaul, was the first to declare open rebellion against the Emperor. He was soon joined by Servius Sulpicius Galba, the governer of nearer Spain. (Makes you think of Texas and Montana doesn’t it?) Part of the empire was now in open revolt and characteristically Nero was again out of Rome and fiddling around down in the resort town of Neapolis. Once again Nero rushed back to Rome but dithered around when he got there not knowing what to do. (No teleprompters back then I guess.) Some good news came in, that Vindex had been defeated and killed by the Governer of Upper Germany but it was too late. The prefect of the Emperor’s Praetorian Guard had already sold out to a group of plotters in the Senate. In exchange for a large sum of cash, the Praetorians agreed to abandon Nero and proclaim Galba as the new emperor. The Senate declared Nero to be an outlaw and decreed a death sentence against him.

Nero fled to Ostia with hopes of escaping to Egypt but had to abandon his plan when he found that military officers at the port were refusing to carry out his commands. He returned to his palace in Rome for the night. He woke later that night to find the palace deserted of “friend or foe” as both the Praetorian Guards and his household staff had abandoned their posts. He tried one more time to escape, making his way on foot and in disguise to the home of one of his trusted freedmen in the suburbs just outside of town. There when he heard the sound of approaching horsemen searching for him, Lucius Domituis Ahenobarbus, the last emperor of the Julio-Claudian line drove a dagger into his throat. Some claim that among his last words was “What an artist the world is losing.” Which just goes to show when your day job is to govern it is best to govern and not get distracted trying to get the mob to love you.

The Roman emperors of the period were considered to be gods of the state. Many of them found out the hard way that it is pretty hard for a man to be a god.

Originally posted at Light in the Forest

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