when I set out to make a video about Nero I thought it would be a crazy biography of an absolute lunatic but in researching that's not exactly what I found Nero is probably Rome's most notorious Emperor history tells us that he murdered his mother and his first wife kicked his pregnant second wife to death illuminated parties with human torches and played the fiddle while Rome burned to the ground but these same history books also say that he was absolutely beloved by the people of Rome Nero was vehemently anti-corruption he cut taxes expanded slaves rights and
outlawed capital punishment so which is it well I was surprised to learn like I think you'll be that the story of Nero is a little more complex than just lunatic does horrific things I mean sure I'll talk about all of those horrific things in detail but I think by the end of this video you'll find yourself questioning not just what you believe about Nero but maybe what you believe about history and who gets to write it and what that means for the rest of us first things first though let's talk about Nero [Music] so the
Royal lineage of Rome is a huge complicated spider web we could really spend an hour or two talking about Nero's place in it all so I'm just gonna speed through this part Nero was born as the great great grandson to the Emperor Augustus so certainly not first in line to any throne but always in the conversation from day one Nero's mother was agrapina and his father was janaeus but janeus died pretty young in agropina being involved with the Roman Elite circles married the emperor Claudius who then adopted Nero Claudius also had another son but it
seemed like the emperor favored Nero in most ways claudius's advisors cautioned him though they said that Nero was spoiled aloof and kind of showed a cruel side now Claudius had just succeeded the emperor Caligula who was famously demented and insane so of course with that in mind Claudia says advisor's word that Nero would be another Caligula should he ever take the throne but Nero never expressed much interest in power or taking over any Thrones on the other hand his mother agrippina was quite the opposite her life was marked by cunning Cutthroat power grams her marriage
to Claudius was probably just that agrippina's son becoming emperor of Rome after all would be the ultimate power grab so agropina killed Claudius she poisoned him with deadly mushrooms probably not all academic sources agree on this but it's very much in line with her character in any case Claudius was dead and his birth son was too young to take the throne so at just 16 years old Nero became the emperor of Rome [Music] after taking the throne Nero basically said I don't want this job anyway so I don't really care he kind of just did
his own thing at the time artists were the lowest class in society but Nero loved them Nero was an artistic type he was creative so he started hanging out with artists in theaters and in Brussels we'd even get drunk and make Cameo appearances in Theatrical Productions during this time Nero held public orgies once even getting married to another man who had participated I don't know if Nero truly identified with the lower class but he certainly won their affection with his sociable creative personality indeed he walked the walk performing a series of diplomatic actions that were
great for the lower classes of Roman society Nero inherited an Empire that was enormously in debt so he overhauled the tax system to encourage economic growth and make it easier for people to earn a living He lowered taxes on individuals and businesses Nero also implemented a series of Public Works projects creating jobs and boosting the Roman economy here made it legal for slaves to file complaints about their masters this gave slaves a higher standing in Roman society and possibly planted the seeds for future reforms Nero also ended a war negotiating a peace treaty with a
nearby parthian Empire all of this stuff made Nero's Reign pretty successful at least as far as the common people were concerned but the Roman Elites the Senate they weren't impressed at all they believed Nero was making a mockery of the throne engaging in arts elevating slaves this was all Despicable to those in the upper echelon of Roman society so Nero developed a sort of inner circle of power trusted allies among those his mother was not included it's possible likely even that agropina just wanted to rule by proxy of Nero her own son was probably just
a piece in her little game so when Nero froze her out of power she was Furious she began to side with Nero's Stepbrother britannicus this is basically where Nero's downfall begins [Music] De Niro got word that his mother was plotting with britannicus to take the throne so Nero poisoned britannicus securing his own position as ruler not long after Nero began to wonder if he really needed agrippina around he concluded that in fact he didn't Nero had his mother board a boat that was designed to sink the boat indeed sank but agropina managed to swim to
shore when she arrived at Shore Nero's men stabbed her to death it said that as the soldiers approached she told them to stab her in the stomach where quote she had nurtured the monster if this sounds too poetic to be true stay tuned because it might be Nero tried to tell the Roman people that agropina's death was a suicide but word quickly spread that he had murdered his mother and the public began to turn on Nero Nero was married to a woman named Octavia the Roman people loved Octavia she was Charming active in public life
and just all around adored by the Romans but after Octavia failed to Bear him children Nero tried to strangle her this happened a few times actually eventually seeing that she was entirely unable to Bear children Nero divorced Octavia this infuriated the Roman people and they even protested the separation the whole city was really up in arms over it but Nero saw this as a chance to display power to his subjects he wanted to show his people that he could do things with or without their consent so he had Octavia killed around this time the walls
begin closing in on Nero people of Rome had turned on him and his advisors well they had hated him for a long time so a group of Roman politicians made a plot to assassinate Nero there's no central idea as to what to do after Nero was dead but the Roman Elite new Nero was just not good for the Empire and had to be eliminated before they were able to kill Nero though the emperor found out about the conspiracy Nero immediately executed 20 people for involvement in the plan and exiled another dozen up to this point
Nero had been a pretty bad guy but in the years that followed this conspiracy the emperor truly went off the rails now this is where the Nero you've heard about becomes real [Music] shortly after the executions Rome experienced the great fire it burned for a total of six days destroying two-thirds of the city the Fable goes that Nero was playing a fiddle while the fire burned but this is entirely untrue for one fiddles hadn't even been invented yet secondly Nero wasn't in the city when the fire was burning instead he was at a Countryside estate
he got word of the fire Nero returned home immediately there he opened his doors to those affected anyone who was made homeless by the fire was allowed to stay in the Royal Palace the myth of Nero playing music while Rome burned is probably just a metaphor that got taken too literally see on one hand Nero loved the Arts and joyfully engaged in theater and music but he was not above causing massive death and destruction after Rome burned Nero began the construction of a new Palace this Palace was much larger than the previous one and right
on top of it Nero included a 120-foot statue of himself to this day no one knows how the fire started but the people of Rome began to think that Nero caused the fire so he could have an excuse to build this new Palace combat these rumors Nero decided to find a scapegoat for the fire at the time the Christians in Rome were basically a smallish cult Nero blamed them rounded up all the Christians in the city and tortured them some were ripped apart by wild animals others nailed to crosses and decapitated at night Nero burned
Christians alive using the fire to illuminate his outdoor parties around this time Nero began having marital problems with his new wife popea eventually he flew into a fit of rage when Pompeo was heavily pregnant Nero kicked her to death aiming his blows intentionally for Papaya's stomach in a gruesome double murder it's quite clear that Nero had lost whatever sanity he'd been holding on to the emperor had his wife's body embalmed and preserved in a glass case so that he could visit her each night and talk to his dead wife shortly thereafter Nero saw a 13
year old boy named sporis walking through town Nero claimed that spores bore a striking resemblance to the now dead papaya the emperor had sporus kidnapped and castrated he forced spores to wear pompeo's clothing basically live as Nero's wife Nero headspores appear in public as his wife wearing the attire of a Roman empress in a probably related decision Nero began appearing in Theatrical Productions wearing a mask of and playing the role of papaya [Music] Nero's New Palace and statue were bankrupting Rome so he asked one of his advisors vindex to raise taxes that was the last
straw for vindex he joined forces with the governor of Spain and the royal guard to assassinate Nero Nero lived his life in paranoia and Madness and probably knew this assassination was coming one morning he woke up to an entirely empty Palace he ran screaming through the halls for help asking the empty Palace if he had not friend nor foe the Mad Emperor just wanted someone realizing that his death was near Nero retreated with a small group of slaves to his estate in the countryside vindex sent soldiers to kill Nero when Nero heard that soldiers were
on Route he begged his slaves to kill him but they refused Nero stabbed himself with a knife committing suicide as he spoke his final words what an artist dies in me [Music] Nero was adored by the common people of Rome for a long time didn't a lot of great things for the Roman every man but these people didn't write history books in the case of Nero that shows all of the information about Nero comes from three writers tacitus Cassius Dio and suetonius all three of these men were political Elites who hated Nero and would be
considered political opponents of his they also wrote about Nero decades after he died and when he died he was the last of his family's Dynasty it was in these men's best interest to denigrate Nero's character as much as possible the worse they made his Dynasty look the better the new regime seemed by contrast their depictions of Nero fall right in line with a Roman political strategy called vitu paretillo this was the idea that you could say anything about a political opponent there were no boundaries nothing was off limits you could literally just make things up
and that was an accepted part of political discourse in fact many of the heinous acts attributed to Nero also seem to be lifted from Roman mythology or other works of fiction for example Nero's mother requested that she be stabbed in the stomach where quote the monster was nurtured but this exact thing happened in fictional play with fictional characters that was written just years prior many depictions of the Great Fire also seem to be entirely plagiarized from earlier counts of attacks on other Roman cities Nero was madly in love with his second wife what's more he
was desperate for a child their first child had just recently died doesn't really make sense that he would kill his pregnant wife and indeed there's no evidence that says he did other than the account of his political enemy even that is suspect the murder of a pregnant wife was also a common storytelling Trope in Roman literature today Nero is seen as the embodiment of evil some scholars believe that the Antichrist was literally based on Nero himself but more and more evidence seems to indicate that Nero may have been kind of okay not that bad the
very least pretty far from the Antichrist the story of Nero is one of the all-time great examples of controlling the narrative the people who write history basically shape reality you see we'll never know how bad Nero was or wasn't but it may not even matter at this point because a couple thousand years later what's written kind of counts more than what happened [Music] laughs
