Emperor Nero: ancient Rome’s most infamous ruler

28:00lives to ask how did they do it? Why did they do it? What drove them to it? Watch Lady Killers with Lucy Worsley on BBC.com. It all starts with a subscription to BBC.com. Find out more at BBC.com slash unlimited. Let's talk about what he does, right? Okay. He performs in plays. There really are some funny things coming up here. It's a great age of culture. It is a huge literary renaissance. Not quite clear what Nero's role in that is, but it certainly is. And that he himself, as he tried at his beard games, he himself... You should have beard games. Where's the marketing here, Mary? Your name is right on it.

28:45Boom, you own it. So he himself performs and it is said that it perhaps wasn't as brilliant as he liked to be told it was. And there are amazing stories. It's like Florence Foster Jenkins isn't it? It's sort of like hiring out the theatre and getting all your friends to come. But Nero does go a stage further so he locks the theatre doors so that once you've got in, so it is said, and that in order to get out people used to fake their deaths so they could be carried out. I do that at my shows people constantly pretend to think I lock the doors, come on. The performer doesn't do that. Captain audience say pardoned.

29:29Is that where the expression, wow, you killed him? Is that where that comes from? Like, man, how'd you do? I killed him. Women gave birth because they couldn't get out once they got in and the baby came. And they were forced to flatter him. They were forced to say, blimey, you're brilliant, Nero. Now, there is something pretty ludicrous and pretty unpleasant about flattery, but I think it's a place where we need perhaps to stop and say, well, would we say to Prince William or President Trump or someone like that, after seeing them perform, I think that was a really lousy show? We'd probably say.

30:11I can't imagine Donald Trump doing Hamlet, personally, but I don't know, maybe. He is an amazing dancer, though. The YMCA dance is fantastic. It's just brilliant. It's poetry. It's poetry. I'll say it. It's poetry. So we tend not to notice our own flattery and to notice the flattery when it's done by others. That's fair enough. In fairness to Nero, supposedly he plays starring roles in the play Orestes, in which the character murders his mother. He plays in Oedipus, in which the character has incestuous relationships. And he plays Hercules. And also, of course, he plays women roles. So he plays sort of drag roles.

30:48And also there's a play called Canassi, I think, in Childbirth, which again, again, incest. So if he's a guy who's trying to say, I didn't have incestuous relations with my mum, it's quite on the nose to then perform in numerous plays about it. Wow. Hiding in plain sight. Maybe. I dare you to call me out. Maybe. Or after dinner gossip, saying, do you know what, well, Nero's going to play next. Ha ha. Orestes. Yeah, yeah. Maybe. It's where the boundary is between the gossip and the hiding in plain sight that's very hard to fix. The important thing here, Patton, is that Nero took it on tour. He didn't just play Rome.

31:26There you go. He didn't just play Carnegie Hall. He took it on tour. Do you know where he toured? I mean, did he tour through every land that they conquered? Or where would he tour? He went to the most cultured place the Roman emperor could go to. The land of culture. The land of philosophy. Greece. He did. Oh. Yeah. He took it on tour to Greece. And what did they think? well he went around all the major games the olympic games the isthmian games and all the others he was like a side stage at a music festival no main stage no he was main stage main stage he changed all the events in the olympics the things that he liked and he won everything wow that so he was a really good athlete is what you're saying well he is reported even to have won when he kind of fell out of his chariot and didn't finish the Of course.

32:17Yeah. The story of his chariot race is that he has a ten-horse team chariot. So he's got a chariot pulled by ten horses, which is way too many chariots. That's way too many horses. You're going to crash with that many horses. But no one said to him, that's a bad idea, sire. You know, there's no health and safety officer saying, ah, four horses is fine. So he crashes in that, but they declare him the winner. He comes home with all his garland prizes. He has a big triumph back in Rome. Most emperors try to have a triumph for killing people. Right? The Julius Caesar thing, right? The Julius Caesar thing.

32:48Claudius has a big triumph for conquering Britain. Triumphs and this great procession through Rome, parading your captives and everything. That goes with masochists, you know? Yeah. That's Roman masochists. Now, what Nero does is come home and he has a slightly different sort of tribe, entering up at the temple of the god of music, Apollo, celebrating his sporting and cultural victories. He's the Simone Biles of the ancient world. Best lead in a comedic performance. I tend to think that I'm on Nero's side here, possibly. OK, all right. Maybe if the Romans had spent more time having triumphal processions and celebrating people who were good at arts and culture, the world might possibly have been a nicer place.

33:40You're saying shows like The Voice and British Idol are keeping us from worldwide war and conquest. You could take it. Yes. Yes. You could take it. And that's why I did the Great American Baking Show. Maybe he's trying to find another way of being an emperor and we just have not got on his wavelength. That's interesting that he's trying to create a new model of what power looks like. Yes, possibly. I mean, I think the jury's out, but we have to keep that as a possibility. But, and we're going to do this quickly because it's pretty horrible. And I'm actually going to give a trigger warning to listeners because the content warning, because this is horrible.

34:15The violence, we're going to talk about enforced suicide. We're going to talk about domestic violence. Patton, don't make any jokes, Patton. Hang on, Patton, don't make any jokes right now. Turn it off. You know what? Absolutely. Just like this bit's just grim, right? Yeah, let's do it. Feel free to just, you know, just go, ugh, what a horrible man. But like, he was brutal to his lovers. He had three wives and horrible man, right? Yeah. I mean, Nero's first wife is Claudius's natural, as it were in inverted commas, daughter, Britannicus's sister, a woman called Octavia. And it was a kind of brilliant move, in a way, for sewing up Nero's perfect right to rule.

34:56And the picture we're given of her is that she was very virtuous and that what then happens, according to the standard story, story is that Nero falls madly in love with somebody else, then in order to get rid of Octavia, accuses her of sterility because there was no children. Roman men didn't usually think that no children was their problem, it was the wife's problem. He divorced her, sent her into exile and then had her killed. And it is then said that her head was sent to Nero's new lover. Right. You know, this is about as horrible. I mean, the story is horrible, whatever the truth. I'm afraid what happens next to the new woman, a woman called Papaya, right, is not much better, honestly because she's supposed to be a beauty Nero nicked from her previous husband she does get pregnant he's wanting an heir and it's when she gets pregnant that he finally divorces Octavia Nero and Papaya have a daughter but she soon dies she's made a god very quickly but she dies Papaya gets pregnant again and then in what is kind of one of Rome's also horriblest bits of domestic violence, if it's true.

36:27He comes back after an evening out and he hits her in the stomach while she's pregnant and she dies. Yeah. Sorry about that. It's truly, you know, Roman history is full of stuff like this. History is full of stuff like this. And it's a cruel, cruel story. And, of course, he does the big sort of tears. and, you know... The classic kind of remorse-cum-hypocrisy line. And he says he's so upset he wants to keep her, so he has her embalmed, not cremated. And then he conveniently gets remarried. Yeah. To a third wife, Messalina? Yes, totally a Messalina. Yeah, I mean, it's not very nice. Did Messalina survive, or...?

37:12She survived him. Oh, OK. And she actually had more husbands than he'd had. Fair play, good, good. All right, thank you for hearing that. There you go. And he also had a lover who was called Sporus. In some ways, this is even worse, partly because it is probably not as untypical as we might imagine, because Nero has an enslaved boy who he thinks looks like papaya. Oh, no. Looks very like papaya. He has him castrated, and then he makes him his lover. I mean there's another person in his life who is sort of you know is another enemy of his have you ever heard of Queen Boudicca? I've heard Boudicca is that with her breast bear like fighting the she's topless at one point isn't she?

38:09It might depend on the movie you've been watching I'm not sure It depends on the statue or the movie Yeah exactly She's queen of the Iceni tribe or the Iceni tribe who are in Britain and she leads a rebellion against Rome. And it's a pretty interesting story. Have you ever heard of this story? Is this one new to you? Vaguely. Vaguely, okay. She's kind of iconic. I know she had her boobs out. Sometimes called Boudicire. You might know her by Boudicire, different name. Something like that, yeah. Vaguely. We have an episode on Boudicire. If you want to check it out, it's our first ever episode. You said that she was his lover?

38:40No, enemy. Enemy. Enemy. Oh, okay. So she was the queen of Iceni in what, Essex? Yes. In East England. East England. And she, I mean, she's an example of an appalling consequence of Roman cruelty, really. Her husband, the king, Prosutagus, is like many of the tribal kings in Britain and is a collaborator with Roman. He would have called himself an ally, we might say collaborator. when he dies he rather canonly makes his heir jointly Nero and his two daughters thinking that that would somehow kind of sew up the safety of his kingdom. What actually happens is the Romans in the province come in they ransack the place, they trash it and they rape the daughters.

39:31At that point Boudicca says according to the story no thanks and she leads a rebellion. and she's successful for a bit. She destroys London, she destroys St Albans. Culture star, yeah. Culture star, she's, you know, but the governor of the province, a guy called Suetonius Paulinus, who's no relation of the historian, brutally squashes this. I mean, in the end, most rebellions are put down because the rebels just can't withstand the Roman legions and he completely trashes them. He takes the most violent reprisals against the rebels. Yes. And the upshot is strange and slightly more optimistic because it shows you that not all Romans are as nasty as others.

40:17There's a whistleblower on the governor's staff. And the whistleblower writes to Nero and says, these replisals have got to stop. And Nero very soon replaces the governor, replaces Suetonius Paulinus, with a guy who has a wonderful name called Petronius Terpilianus, which means lazy sod basically. Means what? Lazy, well no. Lazy so-and-so. Lazy so-and-so. You know, kind of torpillianus. It means kind of slow, lazy. Oh, okay, torpid. Torpid, yeah, torpid. Mr Sluggish do nothing. Mr Sluggish. But it was a right move. There had been this absolute monster of a governor really wreaking havoc against, okay, the rebellious Britons, but horribly.

41:06and to the credit of Nero's administration whether Nero really had anything to do with it or not we don't know they took notice of the whistleblower and they replaced the governor so what are you making of Nero so far obviously pretty monstrous in terms of his personal life I'm torn because god I love the theatre have you ever heard of the great fire have you heard of Nero fiddling while Rome burns I mean I've heard that phrase in what context have you heard the phrase In the context of Rome is burning to the ground, then he is, I've always pictured it as him just alone, just amusing himself playing the fiddle, which did they have fiddles back then?

41:45No, they didn't. So was he playing a liar, a liar or a lute, or what was he doing? People say it must, it's a liar. Yeah. It's a liar. I like to imagine. The truth is it's a liar. He's a liar. It's a liar. Okay. And the Great Fire of Rome happened. Oh, it did? It did happen. What do they think started it? Oh, this is a good question. What do you... Okay. Who do you think? I... Again, because of the phrase, he fiddled while Rome burned, doesn't it... To me, it feels like he set the fire. Oh. Almost like a gangster burning down a nightclub that he wants to get the insurance on. You should have been an ancient Roman historian.

42:27Because you've just got the right mindset for this. I'm so close. Yeah, you're on the money. All the time. Because one thing we know about Rome is it was a tinderbox that fires happened in the city of Rome. It was always on fire. Always on fire. Rome was always, at any point, Rome was always on fire. Really? And they didn't have very good firefighting equipment. And the most that they could do, they did in this case, was actually just knock down buildings to have a firebreak. Oh. And nevertheless, the story arose that Nero had started it. So Etonius thinks he started it in order to clear the ground so he could build himself a fantastic new palace, because that's exactly what he did.

43:18Oh, OK. That's your mob boss argument, right? That's the mob boss thing, yeah. You know, the golden, it's called the Golden House. He built it. Fast palace, fantastic. What a shame this city just burned down. I guess I've got to buy a little new palace here. Hey, bus, did you just take out fire insurance? What are the odds? It's weird. All right, anyway. Another historian, Cassius Dio, he doesn't have that argument so much as saying, look, he just wanted to kind of go down in a blaze. He really wanted, as it were, to be like the King of Troy and see his city blaze around him and go down with his city, because it was such a great way to go.

44:05So he wants to sort of cosplay as King Priam in the Iliad. Yeah, the story is... King Priam fantasy camp. Yeah. The story really is that he... Nero was outside Rome when the fire started, but people said that they'd seen some of Nero's staff going round and setting fire to things, the kind of, we'd say, with a can of oil and some matches, but it was... Wearing the Nero merch, right? With the football jackets that says, I'm with the king, I'm with the emperor. And he does come back, and it is repeatedly reported that he does go and watch it from just a little bit, you know, from into safety. And while he does that, he plays his lion, And he sings a song about the destruction of Troy, the city of Troy.

44:52I mean, that's what, yeah, I mean, you know. I mean, look, if you've got to seize the moment, that's such a great moment for the gram. You've got the city burning behind you, you sing that song, man. Again, there are things to be said in favour of him and against. Well, OK, so in the against column, he blames Christians. He blamed the Christians. And he punished that there was already a relatively small sect of Christians in Rome. Roman pagan writers thought it was perfectly fine to trash the Christians. So they're fine with this. Suetonius, Tacitus, they're like, yeah, good. Blame the Christians.

45:28The punishments that he meted out were so awful that it was said that there was even pity for the Christians because of the horrible ways in which he put them to death. So basically Christians were partly fair game in this kind of PR campaign. But Nero is said to have gone too far. Is this like throwing Christians to the lions? That comes a bit later. But in the Christian tradition, Nero is said to be the first persecutor of the Christians. Nero is kind of the devil incarnate in Christian teaching. And it goes back to this. It goes back to him blaming them for the fire of Rome and punishing them horribly.

46:13There is a genuine conspiracy against him. There's a thing called the Pisonian conspiracy. There's this conspiracy of people hating me because I suck. That's terrible. Arguably justified, right, this conspiracy? Yeah, it comes after the fire. It's the year after the fire. In 65 CE, this one, yeah? And it's in 65 CE and tens, 50 odd people are charged with being in a conspiracy to overthrow Rome. overthrow Nero, not Rome. Well, he is Rome. He is Rome. What they want to do is they want to have a new emperor. They've got a guy called Piso as a potential candidate and replace Nero. Now, why it's important in the Neronian story is that Seneca, the tutor, was said to be implicated in it.

46:56So Nero's tutor, by this stage, has turned against him. And he is forced to suicide because that's a standard form of Roman execution. So Seneca is implicated. 19 people are executed. 13 are banished. 51 people are charged. Nero crushes the conspiracy. But three years later, another one comes along. Because he's alienated enough people now that people are like, well, look, the first... I mean, he tried five times to murder his mum. You know, if at first he does succeed. They learn from him. You've got to keep showing up and trying. Exactly. You can't give up. And they don't collapse the ceiling over his head and they don't send him an unsinkable boat.

47:32No, this was a military... This was a military conspiracy. It was a military revolt. This is a coup, right? It's a coup. It's basically a coup. And it's not trying to kind of... It's not a few of the kind of not terribly effective elite, like Seneca and his friends, doing it in Rome. This starts in the provinces and Nero sees the game is up. There's fighting, but in the end it's clear that people are turning away from Nero to the rebels. and what he does is he goes out to a suburban villa and he realises he has to kill himself. His Praetorian guard have deserted him, right? His bodyguard have switched sides to this guy Galva who's coming in.

48:19Everybody is doing, everybody is deserting him and he goes out and there's a pathetic, there are very really pathetic stories, again, believe it or not, I don't know, about how he was hopeless even in when he came to try to die. And he has some very odd last words. Yeah, what do you think his last words are, Pat? Tell me his last words, or what his supposed last words were. He's got more than one lot, I'm afraid. But the famous one is qualis artefacts perio. What an artist and artefacts. What an artist is dying when I die. some proper ego there Patton that's some confidence my friend isn't it?

49:01yeah with your last gesture to say the world is about to lose a great artist here that is ridiculous I've got to remember that for when I die hang on let me write that down I'm going to say that when I die alright go ahead so his famous last words are what an artist in me dies he is assisted in his death and dies aged how old do you think he is Patton? in his 40s he's 30 whoa what a life eh? Well, all the Beatles were 30 when they broke up, so he did the same thing and he got it all in quick. I feel like Paul McCartney was slightly less monstrous than Nero. Yeah, if only Nero had said, the love you take is equal to the love you make.

49:39I don't know. I mean, good Lord. Yeah. 30? He was 30 years old. He did all that in 30. He did. God, I'm so lazy. I've got to do more with my life. I wouldn't. I don't know. Personally, I wouldn't marry yourself against Nero. He's not one of the great emperors in terms of modelling. Yeah, yeah. But it's a hell of a life, right? So that's the end of Nero's life. He died in 68 CE. The Nuance Window!

50:09Time now for The Nuance Window. This is where Patton and I sit quietly for two minutes while Professor Mary takes to the stage and sings for us, perhaps, I don't know. Unlike Nero, she is not locking us into the theatre. Oh, you wait. You wait and see. We're here willingly. So my stopwatch is ready, Mary. Take it away, Professor Beard. OK, I've got two mini nuances. And the first one picks up a theme that we've been playing with, actually, quite often in our discussion, tried to pull that together. And it's what I suppose I call the T word. And it's T for truth, right? Are the kind of amazing, intriguing, memorable, brilliantly evocative stories that we read about Nero, are they actually true, with a capital T?

50:55Now, we can't actually, literally, know that. A long time ago, I used to really worry about that, but I've sort of become a post-truth person now, because what I think is really important about these stories, and they are important, is that the fact that the Romans told them about their emperors, and they sometimes told the same stories about different emperors and in a way it was their way, I think, telling these stories, thinking them up, constructing them, was their way of getting their head around what the power of autocrats was, what you might fear about them, what they might do to you. And so in a way I think they're our way of getting inside the heads of the Romans to think about how the Romans thought about emperors.

51:44My second nuance is that it's easier to complain about the gaps in our knowledge about emperors like this than to celebrate what we know about Nero. And I'm guilty of that. I'm complaining about what we don't know all the time. But really, we should be turning this on its head, I think. And we should say, what is amazing is that 2 ,000 years on, we know so much about Nero, not just in the amazing writing that we've been looking at but we can still hold the coins of Nero. We can still visit Nero's golden house or at least part of it. We can walk through Nero's corridors and we can see where he sat down or lay down to dinner.

52:26So my message to people is if you're in Rome go and see Nero's golden house because you still can. You still can. Are you going to go and see Nero's golden house? I'm leaving right now. I'm going. I'm going to go get a taxi. It's interesting, isn't it? The idea of if these are scurrilous rumors, if these are kind of monstrous lies, they still tell us about the Romans. No, I love that aspect of it. You can tell what their daily lives and also what their... It's almost like you can tell the psychological scars that are left on a population by almost the nursery rhymes and myths that they tell later on, if those things are...

53:02You know, like how Dracula is really just about how terrified they were of foreigners coming in. they just couldn't handle it. Victorian England was so wound up. So yeah, this is them. You know, the emperors were bad enough as they were, but it had such an emotional impact on them that all the stories got blown up even crazier. Yeah. And historians ought to be interested in things that aren't true as well as things that aren't. Yes. Yes. Because the things that aren't true were still made up by somebody for a reason. Yeah, exactly. So what do you know now?

53:39Time now for the So What Do You Know Now? This is our quickfire quiz for Patton. Hang on, let me look at my notes. To see how much he's learned. Okay, here we go. Patton, tell me about your notes. They are extensive. I can see... Oh, my gosh. I mean, it's just they... I've written them so... I took so many notes that they actually just look like lines on a blank page. Yeah. That's how small I had to write them. Yeah, your font is so beautifully accurate that it's actually imperceptible to the eye. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, okay. So no notes at all. Let's see if it's gone in. Okay. Ten questions for you.

54:08Question one. What was the name of Emperor Nero's mother? Oh, Agrippina? Yeah, very good. Agrippina the Younger. Question two. Through what method did Nero's uncle, Emperor Claudius, and stepbrother Britannicus both allegedly die? They were poisoned by different modes of poison. Very good. Mushroom or whatever. It would have been mushrooms every time. That would have been a little... Question three. Who was Nero's famously stoic tutor and advisor who he later turned against? That would be Seneca. It would be Seneca. Very good. Question four. Name one of Nero's three wives. Oh, dear God. Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.

54:46I can't remember the names. It begins with O. Olivia, I don't know. I'm so sorry. It's okay. I'm telling you right now, I'm drawing a blank. It's all right. Octavia, Poppea, and Missalina. Most people forget the names of Emperor's wives. Question five. What did Nero do after his first shave? Well, what didn't he do? He got an hour. He put all his shavings in a little gold box and dedicated it to Jupiter. And then he threw basically a raging kegger where there was singing and basically a pube party. And can I just say I'm so glad that I got Dame Mary Beard, historian emeritus, to say pube party.

55:30That is going to be on the top of some of my... The next time I'm on this show, I want to be Grammy and Emmy Award winning and maker of Mary Beard saying the term Pew Party, Pat Noswell. Done. Question six. Nero still won the Olympic chariot race despite falling out. How many horses were pulling him? He had ten. That was a ten horsepower chariot, baby. Way too many horses. Yeah. Yeah, he crashed out, but he still won. Question seven. Which queen led the British revolt of the Iceni against Nero in Britain? That would be Bordica. Yeah, Boudicca or Boudiccia or Boudiccia. Yeah, very good. Question eight.

56:07Name one cause given by classical authors for how the Great Fire of Rome allegedly started. Conspiracy theory, please. One of the alleged thing, and it's the third one, because it's the one I thought of, is it was started by Nero himself in order to, A, build his big new gold palace and also have someone be able to persecute Christians. Yeah, and that's two. Very good. Well done. Okay. Question nine. What were Nero's last words? Oh, his last words were, it's better to burn out than... No, his last words were, what a great artist dies in me. Very good. Well done. Very good. Question 10. How old was Nero when he died?

56:48Dude was 30. He was very much 30. 30. 30. Young at 30. Wow. Yeah, very good. And I'm going to give you a bonus question. See if you can get 10 out of 11. Yeah, yeah, okay, okay. Bonus question. All right. Which country did he tour in the 60s? He did a tour, much like Elton John in the 80s, he did a tour of Greece. I'm giving you 10 out of 11. There you go. Perfect score. You earned it. You deserved it. Fantastic. Thank you, Patton. And thank you, of course, Professor Mary Beard. If you want more from Patton, of course, we have our episode on the American War of Independence, which was an absolute hoot.

57:24And for more Nero context, if you want to put him in context, we have obviously the episode on Agrippina, his mum. We have the episode on Boudicca, his mortal enemy. And we have an episode on the rise of Julius Caesar. In some ways a model, in other ways not. They're all very interesting episodes. And remember, if you've enjoyed the podcast, please share the show with friends. Subscribe to You're Dead to Me on BBC Sounds to hear new episodes 28 days earlier than anywhere else. And if you're outside the UK, you can listen at BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. But I'd just like to say a huge thank you to our guests in History Corner.

57:56We have the magnificent Professor Mary Beard. Thank you, Mary. Total pleasure. Yay. And in Comedy Corner, we had the outstanding, what, pube games inventor, Patton Oswalt. No, pube party, sir. Sorry. Pube games. We're not animals here. Please. We had Patton Oswalt. Thank you, Patton. Thanks for having me on again. I really appreciate it. And to you lovely listener, join me next time as we reassess another historical figure and possibly decide they're just as bad as we thought. But for now, I'm off to go and launch my own podcast awards in Greece that only I can win. Bye.

58:30Your Dead to Me is a BBC Studios production for BBC Radio 4.

58:40Political language can seem archaic. It's like the light from one of those stars that actually died. Sometimes bamboozling. It's a theme park with a five-foot log flume from one thought to another. And very often beyond words. I don't know how to describe the language I use. I'm Amanda Iannucci, I'm all reset and turbocharged to stress, test to destruction used and abused buzzwords and phrases from the world of politics I come with a dazzling array of guest presenters and I'll be exploring the verbal tricks of the political trade the intentions behind them and the effect they have on all of us The new series of Strong Message here with me, Amanda Iannucci from BBC Radio 4 Listen now on BBC Sounds True crime meets history with a twist in a new series of Lady Killers.

59:27Join me as we travel back in time to investigate the most astonishing lady killers of the 19th and 20th centuries. We visit the scene of the crime and we delve deep into their lives to ask, how did they do it? Why did they do it? What drove them to it? Watch Lady Killers with Lucy Worsley on BBC.com. It all starts with a subscription to BBC.com. Find out more at BBC.com slash unlimited.