Rome's elite hated Nero, but ordinary Romans liked him enough to expect his return
Ancient writers paint Nero as a debauched tyrant who may even have started the Great Fire of Rome. Yet he was popular with common citizens, who loved his games and performances. After his death, rumours spread in the eastern provinces that he was still alive, and at least three pretenders claimed to be Nero reborn.
Born Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus at Antium in AD 37, he had impressive and dangerous connections: his uncle was the emperor Caligula and his mother, Agrippina the Younger, descended from Augustus. His father died when he was about three, around the time Caligula exiled Agrippina over a plot and seized the boy's inheritance. When Nero was eleven, his mother married the emperor Claudius, who adopted him as heir. On Claudius's death in AD 54, Nero took the throne with the support of the Praetorian Guard and the Senate.
At first he was steered by Agrippina, his tutor Seneca the Younger and the prefect Burrus, but he increasingly sought to rule alone. Their struggle ended when he arranged his mother's killing, and Roman writers also blame him for the deaths of his wife Claudia Octavia and his stepbrother Britannicus. As a ruler he focused on diplomacy, trade and culture, building amphitheatres and promoting athletic contests.
What truly scandalised the aristocracy was his appearing in public as an actor, poet, musician and charioteer, roles associated with slaves and disreputable entertainers. Local elites paid for the spectacles and resented it. Abroad, the general Corbulo fought and then made peace with Parthia, Suetonius Paulinus put down Boudica's revolt in Britain, and the First Jewish-Roman War broke out.
Tacitus says Romans considered him compulsive and corrupt and that he blamed Christians for the fire; Suetonius reports a belief that he started it to clear space for his planned Golden House. Some modern historians doubt how reliable these hostile accounts are, given his popularity with ordinary people. When the senator Vindex rebelled, backed by Galba, Nero was proclaimed a public enemy. He fled and took his own life on 9 June AD 68, the last of the Julio-Claudians, and his death set off the Year of the Four Emperors.
Source: Nero
