Rome, Unravelled 3: Nero
📅 April 5, 2026
Agrippina was gone. Sextus was soon handled. Already weakened by illness, he was visited by Nero, who showed just the right amount of concern. A remedy followed. He didn’t survive it. But then again, that was rather the point.
With Sextus’ death, Seneca’s influence quickly faded into irrelevance. Requesting retirement twice (and denied), he nevertheless withdrew to the countryside, devoting himself to his writing and gardening.
It is worthy to note here that, despite Agrippina’s megalomania and interference, the empire had been so efficiently run that there had been no uprisings, no unnecessary bloodshed, no lack. Sextus and Seneca in their capacity had also helped check Nero’s excesses, providing a more balanced rule. Now, with all three gone and the emergence of brutal characters like the new prefect of the Praetorian Guards, Tigellinus, Nero’s last shreds of self-control snapped.
He had still not married Poppaea whom he still had feelings for. Sextus had advised against this for the simple fact that his union with Claudia, being Claudius’ daughter, symbolized some sort of legitimacy, at least to the political faction who did not believe Nero’s ascent had been legitimate. But now she was pregnant with (his) child. This meant that Claudia Octavia, whom he hated, had to go.
The problem was that Claudia was loved.
So loved was she that as fearful as Nero’s advisers were of him, they had summoned the courage to express concern of his treatment of her. But he had shut them down immediately.
She ought to be content with the insignia of wifehood, he said.
As there was no justifiable reason for wanting to divorce her, he fabricated one, accusing her of being incapable of bearing children.
Twelve days after the divorce, he married Poppaea, then embarked on a smear campaign against Claudia, accusing her of having an affair with a flute player. Tigellinus took it upon himself to give this lie substance by torturing one of her slaves to corroborate. He was successful, in fact very successful, because all the evidence he got for all the time and trouble was the slave telling him to his face that Claudia’s genitals were cleaner than his mouth.
Despite this lack of evidence, Nero banished her anyway, greatly provoking the public who rose up in hot protest. Poppaea who was not to be fazed by ordinary commoners dismissed the mob as nothing more than a disgruntled group of people maliciously stirred up by Octavia’s people to question and overthrow his government. To put the matter to rest, she pushed for her execution.
Anicetus, the same man who had helped engineer Agrippina’s death, agreed to falsely confess to an affair with her. For this lie, he was handsomely rewarded and sent off to Sardinia to enjoy a quiet, comfortable retirement.
Days after Claudia’s arrival to Pandataria, the place of exile, she was visited by a band of Nero’s executioners who slit her veins. When death came too slow, they bound and threw her in a steam bath to suffocate and die, then chopped her head off and sent it to Nero and Poppaea for confirmation.
Of all sad stories, Claudia’s is the saddest. Her father executed her mother. Her stepmother executed her father. Her step-brother became her husband and executed her brother and step-mother, and finally, she was executed by her husband.
She was twenty-two.
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The marriage between Poppaea and Nero lasted three years and produced one and the half children. Their first, a daughter, died at four months, and the second perished during childbirth, along with its mother. Nero was said to be so distraught that he burned a year’s worth of incense at her funeral and opted to have her embalmed instead of buried.
Not everyone was convinced of this grief. Some said it was all a performance, that he had kicked her so hard in the stomach it had induced a fatal labor. Whichever way, years later, he became so infatuated with a young man by the name of Sporus who shared such a close semblance to her that he had him castrated, took him as bride and forced him to become empress.
After Poppaea’s death, Nero sent her son (from her previous marriage to Rufrius Crispinus) on a fishing trip. The boy, it was reported, loved to play general and emperor. This was a potential threat to Nero, so he had the boy’s slaves drown him. His attention turned to the elder Rufrius Crispinus whom he banished, then executed shortly after.
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One morning in 65 AD, a certain character by the name of Volusius Proculus woke in the same foul mood that he’d woken up in every day for nine years. His major grievance was the lack of appreciation or recognition by the emperor for his services. After all, he’d been part of those, alongside Anicetus, in the plot to kill Agrippina by shipwreck.
He went on to complain as usual, expecting nothing more than indifference from his listener, who, in this case, happened to be a woman. This woman, Epicharis by name, sympathized with him, then asked if he would be willing to be part of a plot to overthrow the emperor.
Proculus said nothing, kept his composure but wasted no time. As fast as his thin, bony legs could carry him, he hurried straight to the emperor and sang like a canary. In no time, Epicharis was under arrest. After verbal persuasion which didn’t work, they proceeded to torture her with whips and flames, but she mentioned no names. While being transported to a second location for even harsher torture, she formed a noose from her girdle and hanged herself, dying with the secret intact.
This conspiracy, however, had been shaken. News of her arrest forced the hand of the conspirators, and they accelerated the pace of their earlier plans which was to murder the emperor there in Rome, instead of a later location.
At this same time, a freedman by the name of Milichus had grown suspicious after witnessing a long, secret meeting between his former master, Flavius, and a man named Antonius Natalis. This suspicion grew even more when Flavius instructed him to sharpen a dagger, prepare bandages, and even a will. Urged on by his wife about the danger of the complicity of staying silent, Milichus reported everything to the emperor’s secretary, and soon after, Flavius was arrested.
Flavius was a frail wimp. The man needed little persuasion to speak, especially when faced with the prospect of long and brutal torture. Ironically, the man overseeing his interrogation, Rufus, was himself one of the conspirators. Oh, how Flavius sang! In fact, this Rufus was co-prefect of the Praetorian Guard and had been meant to escort the ringleader of this conspiracy, a nobleman called Gaius Piso, to the Praetorian camp, secure the army’s support and proclaim him emperor.
Immediately, arrests were made. The more people got arrested and tortured, the more they realized their only hope of survival was in divulging the names of others. Forty-one people, both innocent and guilty, were implicated. Of these forty-one, nineteen were executed or forced to take their own lives. Seneca the Younger, who had long fallen out of favor with the emperor, was among them, condemned for nothing but his association with those involved. Thirteen were exiled and five were acquitted.
The emperor who had grown distrustful of the Senate saw this as a perfect excuse to dispose of them all. His purging of the body was swift as it was brutal, and to add a cruel touch to it, he forced one of them to commit suicide so he could snatch his wife and make her his.
The conspiracy had failed, true, but the same brutality he used in crushing it would become the very same thing that would set the stage for his downfall.
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The Great Fire of Rome had happened, and the city had been impoverished by the taxes they had had to pay to rebuild it. Though Nero had organized relief efforts, arranged for a reduction in the price of grain and accommodation for those affected, his immediate act after these was to build himself a palace on the ruins.
No one knew what or who exactly had started it, but the erection of this palace was enough reason to attribute the mishap to his greed and his appetite for image-enhancing projects.
To deflect blame, he began to target a certain group of people: Christians.
You see, Christianity had just begun to spread. As a group who believed in something different, declining to take part in pagan worship whilst meeting in private to read the scriptures and pray, they had naturally been viewed with suspicion. Their leader, a certain man whom they called Jesus, hadn’t had the best reputation whilst he was alive some thirty years ago.
This made them scapegoats, a godless and disliked minority, and Nero wasn’t slow to seize the opportunity. The persecution began, whoever identified as such, often paraded in public, tied to the stakes, soaked in pitch and set alight. Some were thrown to wild beasts to be devoured, and others became real life characters in tragic plays, actually speared, stabbed and hanged. One of Jesus’ disciples, Peter, regarded as an influential Christian figure would end up being caught and crucified upside-down during Nero’s reign and Paul would end up being beheaded.
With an escalation on the persecutions, it slowly became clear to citizens that this wave of repression was more the sick fantasy of one man rather than the punishment of a perceived group of troublemakers.
Beyond these acts of cruelty and his constant embarrassment of the elite through his taking part in things meant for commoners such as his obsession with being seen as a great actor, singer and performer, his end had truly begun to come.
Four years later, a revolt started.
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On the ninth anniversary of Agrippina’s death, Julius Vindex, governor of one of the Roman provinces, rebelled against Nero. He was driven in part by the widespread resentment over tax. He sought the support of another governor, Galba (whom we need not expatiate on, as he was the man Agrippina had tried to get with on her return from exile). Vindex’s aim was not to become emperor. It was simply to replace Nero with someone more capable, Galba in this case.
Vindex was defeated and committed suicide, but the general who crushed him, Verginius, made no move to claim power, despite being in a strong position to do so. Galba, meanwhile, who had already been declared a public enemy, found his support swelling. Even Nero’s staunch allies had begun to switch sides. Tigillinus, the brutal character responsible for all of Nero’s bidding as well as Sabinus, prefect of the Praetorian Guard.
At first, Nero considered marching out to confront Galba, but his soldiers openly refused, knowing it was a lost cause supporting a man whose end was near and sure. One even sneered, quoting a line from a poem, “Is it so dreadful a thing, then, to die?”
He then toyed with the idea of appealing to Galba for mercy, but knowing the intention and reputation of Galba, quicky abandoned that thought. In desperation, he contemplated addressing the people, to ask for forgiveness, to promise a reform, both public and personal, but the few people who were with him warned him that if he dared step out, he’d be torn to pieces.
That night he went to bed troubled. When he woke up later , everyone with the exception of his secretary, Sporus and two others, had deserted him. His one thought at this point was to kill himself, but lacking the courage to do so, he went looking for a gladiator but, those too, had fled. With these four people, he fled the palace like a rat fleeing a flood.
Galba, meanwhile, having successfully marched on the capital, had been proclaimed emperor by the Senate. Nero, in turn, was declared an enemy of the state and condemned to be punished in “an ancient manner”. An ancient manner was basically a form of punishment in which the condemned was stripped naked with their head fixed in a pillory and whipped to death where they stood.
It was at this point he knew he had to take his own life because the suffering before him was too great. Still hesitating, he asked one of the four who followed to show him an example by killing himself. No, they did not. No one was so dedicated to him to offer this kind of service. And to be honest, they were getting irritated at a man who had taken so many lives and seen so much blood yet now acted like a wet little girl.
It was only when Nero heard the sound of horsemen, most probably Galba’s, that he summoned the courage to take his own life by slitting his wrists, with the help of his secretary. As one of the riders rushed forward, perhaps to preserve him long enough to suffer his crimes, Nero’s final words were said to be, “Too late. This is fidelity.” Ironically, he died on the anniversary of his first wife, Claudia Octavia.
From Augustus to Tiberius, through Caligula and Claudius, and finally Nero, the Julio-Claudian dynasty had come to an official close.
Galba would remain on the throne for just seven months before being murdered. He would be succeeded by Otho (whom, as you might remember, was once the husband of Nero’s second wife, Poppaea Sabina) who himself would rule for just ninety-two days before meeting the same fate. Otho would be succeeded by Vitellius who would rule for just eight months before being murdered, and would be succeeded by Vespasian who would finally bring peace and progress to an empire besetted by a decade of civil wars.
But that is a story for another time.
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After Note.
What began as a simple, sudden want to write about Rome’s most infamous emperors quickly spiraled into a full-blown descent down a rabbit hole of plots, intrigue, and the most unexpected connections.
Wikipedia got me started, but only as a springboard. From there, it was a blur of deeper dives; Encyclopaedia Britannica, Lexundria, Ancestorium, and countless tabs opened, closed, and forgotten, each one the work of some devoted student of ancient Rome somewhere in the world.
Muchas gracias.
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