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Nero Sets Rome Ablaze

Sam Vaknin, Ph.D. - 9/21/2005

According to the historian Suetonius, Emperor Nero (37-68), fifth Emperor of Rome from AD 54 to 68, was a fan of murder. Clad in disguise, he assaulted passing pedestrians in back alleys, stabbed them repeatedly, and dumped the bodies into the sewer. When he was almost killed by one of his would-be victims, he surrounded himself with armed bodyguards who overcame any unexpected resistance.

Nero's original name was Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus. When Agrippina the Younger married her uncle, Emperor Claudius I, she convinced him to adopt the child and he acquired his new name, Nero Claudius Caesar Drusus Germanicus. Nero married his stepfather's daughter, Octavia. He was declared Emperor at the tender age of 17. Nero promptly had his mother poison Claudius' son, Britannicus - but his first five years were marked by the moderating influence of Burrus, the prefect of the Praetorian Guards, and the philosopher Seneca, his tutor.

Nero abolished the pernicious habit of secret trials, put the affairs of the state at the hands of a nascent bureaucracy, and made the Senate more independent. He forbade bloodshed in public circus contests, abolished capital punishment, reduced taxes and allowed slaves to sue their unjust masters. He initiated competitions in poetry, drama, and athletics. He pardoned plotters and authors of scathing epigrams against him. Claudius, by comparison, has executed 40 Senators for treason. Nero even helped the Jews - a scourge of the Roman empire - and rehabilitated disaster-stricken cities.

But then there was a marked - and mysterious - change for the worse. Nero murdered his mother, who criticized his mistress, whom he later married, having executed Octavia. Burrus died, probably poisoned. Seneca retired to his estate.

Two thirds of Rome burnt to the ground in July 64. Nero was in Antium at the time - 60 kilometers away. He did not burn the city, he did not play the violin, or the lyre while it burnt. It is dubious whether - as Tacitus and Suetonius claim - he blamed the few Christians in Rome for the conflagration, let alone persecuted them.

On the contrary, he sheltered the homeless and rebuilt Rome with strict fire precautions. His contemporaneous notoriety had to do with the fact that he appeared as an actor, lyre player and charioteer in religious dramas all over the empire, sometimes absent from Rome for as long as 15 months at a time.

Following a coup and assassination attempt, he executed 18 of the 41 conspirators - including his beloved Seneca. He kicked his wife to death, murdered Statilia Messalina's husband and wed her and finally - faced with a rebellion of his legions - he fled Rome and committed suicide.