Ancient Rome: An Introductory History (50 page)

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from shops and assaulting passers-by. Soon people learned that the emperor was the gang leader, and gangs of pseudo-Neros formed, for only a fool would fight the emperor. Yet one senator, upon being attacked, fought until he recognized his attacker, and then he apologized. He was later forced to commit suicide.

Nero soon turned his violence against his mother. His most recent lover, Poppaea Sabina, whom he had stolen from her husband Otho (he was conveniently made governor of Lusitania, in Spain), also feared Agrippina's power over him. She therefore stirred up his fear of Agrippina and convinced him to kill his mother. Nero could find no acceptable way of murdering his mother until an old friend came forward with a plan. The plan was to build a boat that would collapse and drown its passengers; thus her death would appear an accident, and Nero could appear the dutiful son, by bestowing various honors upon her after her unfortunate death. Nero approved of the plan, and the ship was built. He appeared to be having a reconciliation with his mother and even had dinner with her before she embarked on the ship from Baiae, a fashionable Italian resort on the Bay of Naples.

When the ship had proceeded some distance from shore, the roof fell in, crushing Agrippina's attendant, but only wounding the intended target. Agrippina swam to shore. There she reflected upon the fact that the ship had fallen apart without provocation from wind or waves, and she concluded that her son had tried to murder her. She pretended ignorance; she wrote a letter to Nero, informing him that by divine mercy she had been saved, that she was only slightly wounded, and that he should not trouble himself by visiting her.

Nero, crazed with fear that she might incite the army to revolt against him, sent men to her with orders to kill. When she saw the armed men and understood the purpose of their mission, she ordered them to stab her in the womb. Thus Agrippina died. Nero wrote the Senate a letter, informing its members that a slave of Agrippina had been caught with a sword, about to murder him, and that she had intended to become empress with the slave. Some senators voted to hold thanksgivings in every shrine and to include Agrippina's birthday among the days of ill omen (
dies ater
, like the day of the Allia). Because of the Senate's sycophancy, Nero

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started thinking that he could do no wrong, even though some Romans secretly draped leather bags around his statues, to remind him of the old punishment for parricides: to be tied in a leather bag with a dog, a monkey, a snake, a scorpion, and a rooster, with the leather bag and its contents then being thrown into the Tiber.

Depressed by the murder of his mother, Nero found ways to lighten his spirits. He started the "Iuvenalia," games to celebrate the first shaving of his beard. In those games he made his musical debut, playing the lyre and singing a song. In the crowd were Nero's five thousand professional clappers, who had been assigned ways of expressing their approval of his genius: the Bees made a loud buzzing noise; the Roof-tiles clapped with hollowed hands; and the Bricks clapped with flat hands. Later, confident after his successful debut, Nero made a tour of Greece, the home of the Muses, where, of course, he always won first place with his poetry and songs. During his performances, however, no spectators were allowed to leave the theater; it is recorded that women gave birth during performances and that some people pretended to be dead so they could be carried out of the theater. After his successful tour of Greece, Nero returned to Rome and enjoyed a triumph, in which he proudly showed off all the trophies and prizes he had won.

Meanwhile, death claimed one of Nero's stabilizing influences, Burrus; Seneca then retired, since his partner's death caused him to have less and less control over Nero, whose new commander of the Praetorian Guard, the evil Tigellinus, was of the same stamp as Nero. Nothing now could restrain Nero: He divorced Octavia, his innocent wife, and when her slaves, despite being interrogated under torture, would not lie and accuse their mistress of infidelity with a slave (one of her slaves, in fact, told Tigellinus that Octavia's private parts were purer than his mouth), he had her banished. Later she too was killed. (A tragedy titled
Octavia
was written after her death; its authorship is attributed by some to Seneca.) Nero then married Poppaea. She gave birth to a baby girl, whom he named Augusta, and in gratitude he dedicated temples to Fertility. The baby died four months later; Nero then declared the dead baby a goddess and dedicated a shrine to it, with a priest.

Perhaps the most famous event of Nero's reign was the great fire of 64 that destroyed half of Rome. It occurred on July 18, the same

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date the Gauls had sacked Rome. Despite popular myth, Nero probably did not start the fire. Given the people's hatred of him, the story soon spread that while watching the fire he sang a song about the burning of Troythat is, "Nero fiddled while Rome burned." One source says that goons prevented people from putting out the fires and actually threw torches onto buildings. What increased people's suspicion of Nero was that soon after the fire, Nero started construction of a new palace (the Domus Aurea, or Golden House) in the area cleared by the fire; the complex included huge parks and fields, and was graced by an enormous statue of Nero himself, who may have intended to rename Rome Neropolis. After seeing the palace, Nero said that he could finally start living like a human being. Wanting to avert suspicion of guilt for the fire, Nero found a scapegoat in a recently founded sect called Christians; he had them arrested and killed by being torn apart by dogs, being crucified, or being set afire as human torches. Nero's ruthlessnesswhich marks the first official persecution of the Christiansfurther angered the Roman people, who quickly came to pity the Christians, after originally despising them for belonging to what was then seen as a depraved cult (in the words of Tacitus, it was
exitiabilis superstitio
, "a destructive cult"). The apostle Paul, and perhaps Peter as well, was killed during this persecution.

Besides the Christians, Nero had been killing nobles and knights accused of
maiestas
; consequently, he was hated by both groups. In 65 some conspired to assassinate him; one conspiracy, called the Pisonian conspiracy after G. Calpurnius Piso, its instigator, involved senators, knights, officers, women, and poets. The plan was kept a secret until one of the conspirators, at home, complained that his dagger was dull and ordered a slave to sharpen it. Then the senator signed his will, gave a banquet more sumptuous than usual, rewarded his slaves with freedom and presents of money, and ordered bandages to be prepared for wounds. One slave took the dagger and this information to Nero. Nero's action was quick and brutal: Hundreds of nobles were killed, whether innocent or guilty of conspiring against the emperor's life. Among those ordered to commit suicide were the poet Lucan, author of the epic poem
Pharsalia
(much to his discredit, Lucan implicated his own mother in the conspiracy);

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Seneca, Nero's former tutor, and author of letters and treatises on the philosophy Stoicism; and later, Petronius, author of the
Satyricon, the
first surviving novel in Latin. Petronius was called
arbiter elegantiae
and apparently served in Nero's court to lend some class and style to Nero's vulgar extravagances. Petronius even died in style: While most of those committing suicide sang abject praise of Nero, Petronius composed erotic poetry while he died, and also recorded and divulged the sordid details of Nero's sexual escapades. Henceforth many Romans knew what type of creature Nero was, and Nero was mystified over how they had learned.

Nero's madness affected only the nobility of Rome. The city and the empire actually prospered during this time. Hostilities in the provinces were infrequent. One rebellion in Britain should be mentioned: Boudicca, wife of the king of the Iceni, a tribe in Britain, was flogged and her daughters raped by Romans and Roman slaves. She then led the Iceni in a revolt, and other British tribes joined them; together they destroyed a small Roman army and are said to have killed seventy thousand Romans and provincials allied to them. The general G. Suetonius Paulinus (no relation to the biographer) then conquered Boudicca. A far more serious matter was a war in Armenia, which actually started at the end of Claudius' reign. When the Roman puppet king of Armenia was deposed, the Parthians took advantage of the turmoil there and invaded. The Romans sent Cn. Domitius Corbulo to drive the Parthians out of Armenia, and he succeeded in doing so. He then concluded a peace with the Parthians that lasted for decades. The Jews in Palestine had also revolted during the reign of Claudius, and General Vespasian was besieging Jerusalem. Otherwise, the empire was at peace.

Nero's lifestyle had caused financial problems and had long before drained the treasury. He never wore the same clothes twice, and he fished with a golden net, strong with purple and scarlet thread. His wife Poppaea had gilded horseshoes put on the mules that drew her carriage and had five hundred mules milked daily so she could bathe in the milk. To earn more money, Nero encouraged convictions of innocent people for
maiestas
, which was very profitable to the emperor.

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Running out of money, Nero fell victim to a delusion so absurd it cannot be believed. A Carthaginian man had a dream that on his land were buried the riches of Queen Dido, who had hidden her wealth from her envious neighbors. The man told Nero that these riches were just waiting to be dug up. Nero found warships and manned them with rowers especially selected to convey the gold to Rome quickly. He even started spending his newfound wealth. Not surprisingly, the soldiers hired to dig up the riches found nothing. Nero found consolation in his musical performances and even insisted that he be judged on equal terms with the other musicians; he had a voice coach present at all times, to warn him to refrain from shouting (and hurting his voice) during fits of anger.

Nero's party could not last forever. A bad omen for him occurred when the
ficus Ruminalis
, the fig tree that had sheltered Romulus and Remus, almost died. In addition to his other crimes, Nero had angered the gods by bathing in the source of the Marcian Aqueduct; the gods got their revenge by making him seriously ill. A comet was seen, which seemed to predict a new emperor. After Nero ordered the murder of the excellent general Corbulo, who had regained Armenia for Rome, the governor of Gaul, C. Iulius Vindex, revolted and urged the governor of Spain, Servius Sulpicius Galba, to do the same. The Senate, hearing the news of the revolt, withdrew Nero's bodyguard, prompting Nero to think that if deposed, he could always make a living by singing and playing the lyre. He later committed suicide; among his last words were, ''Qualis artifex pereo!" ("What an artist dies in me!"; Suetonius,
Nero
XLIX). He was not deified.

The Year of the Four Emperors

In the year following Nero's suicide, Rome saw as many emperors as it had seen in the preceding eighty-five years. Galba marched to Rome and became emperor. Otho, whom Nero had appointed governor of Lusitania (modem Portugal) so he could take Poppaea Sabina, succeeded in bribing the Praetorian Guard to murder Galba, and Otho became emperor. The armies along the Rhine, however, did not like Otho, and they proclaimed their commander, Vitellius,

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emperor; the Rhine armies marched on Italy and put Vitellius in the place of Otho, who committed suicide. The armies in the East and along the Danube did not like Vitellius and urged their commander, Vespasian, who was besieging Jerusalem in the Jewish War, to march on Rome. Vespasian's armies marched west and, after a battle near the town of Cremona, conquered the forces of Vitellius, who was quickly murdered. On December 21,
A.D
. 69, Vespasian entered Rome as emperor.

Latin Literature of the Julio-Claudian Era

Latin writers during and after the reign of Tiberius produced what many scholars call the Silver Age of Latin literature. Since the previous age is called the Golden Age, one can infer that scholars traditionally have thought less of Silver Latin. There are two reasons for this. One is that the Italians and Romans were naturally conservative, preferring to use the tried and proven instead of experimenting with the new and uncertain. What the writers produced seems stale when compared with what their predecessors had created. Another reason is the influence of
rhetoric
: the writers of this period seem to have striven to make every sentence quotable.

The foremost intellectual of the age was Seneca, the Stoic philosopher. He is most famous for his
Epistulae morales
, letters that are really little philosophical essays. He wrote various other essays, such as
De ira, De brevitate vitae
, and
De clementia
. The last of these, addressed to Nero, urged him to be merciful in his dealings with his subjects, which incidentally shows how powerless the individual Roman was against the legal authority of the emperor. He also wrote a satire of sorts,
ApocoIocyntosis
, generally translated as "The Pumpkinification of Claudius," about the bumbling, drooling emperor's deification. Seneca also wrote tragedies, which were probably never intended to be producedjust read. Seneca the philosopher is not to be confused with his father, called the Elder Seneca, who wrote a history of his times, which has not survived, and some books on rhetoric, parts of which have survived.

The sole surviving work of Pliny the Elder is his enormous
Natural History
, considered a major work in the history of Western

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