by Baker, Simon
He first set up a training school for the Greek arts, then asked the sons of the aristocracy to attend it, and later encouraged its graduates to perform in public in a brand new festival of his very own creation. All of Rome was invited. For these games, aristocrats joined professional Greek performers on stage in ballet, athletics and musical contests. To the conservatives of the élite it was a national scandal. The sons of ancient, great, virtuous families, ‘the Furii, the Horatii, the Fabii, the Porcii, the Valerii’, were being forced to dishonour themselves!15 Nero’s view of his novelty games, however, was quite different. He was seeking to lay the foundations of a new age, beginning at year zero. He was civilizing Rome, re-educating the public, weaning them off barbaric gladiatorial games and reorientating the grand sweep of Roman history away from war, conquest and empire towards the more refined ideals of Art. He named the games the Neronia, and decreed that they were to be held every five years. This was how he wanted to lead his people! This was how he wanted to be a good emperor!
The public loved the games. If Seneca and Burrus despaired, they could at least console themselves that, despite the rapturous reception, the emperor had restrained himself from performing before the Roman people – at least for now. By AD 62 Nero showed no sign of outgrowing his Greek habits, his new vision for Rome. This was the year in which he opened his grand Hellenistic gymnasium complex and extravagantly handed out free oil to senators and knights so that they might set an example to ordinary people to take up the very un-Roman, unmanly activities of wrestling and athletics. Seneca and Burrus were fighting a losing battle. The previously harmonious relationship between Nero and his advisers was at breaking point. Two events made it snap.
When a senator by the name of Antistius Sosianus wrote some verses satirizing the emperor and read them out at a high-society dinner party, he was tried for treason and found guilty. Although he narrowly avoided execution, his case spelt the return of the treason law that had so discredited the regimes of Caligula and Claudius. Under its vague terms, an individual could be charged with any form of ‘conspiracy’ against the emperor. To Seneca the law was a clear indication that his life’s project – to make Nero behave and act like a good emperor – was failing. The real impasse, however, for Burrus and Seneca came soon afterwards. Nero told them that he had decided, at last, to divorce Octavia, the daughter of the divine Claudius, and marry Poppaea. Seneca and Burrus were against it: Nero might well be descended from Augustus, but to divorce Octavia was to sever his principal tie with the deified Claudius, a cornerstone in his claim to be emperor. When Nero argued, stamped his feet and insisted, Burrus retorted succinctly, referring to the throne: ‘Well, then, give her back her dowry!’16 With that, the rupture was final.
Events now moved quickly. Burrus soon fell ill with a tumour and died. The rumour went around that Nero had speeded his death by instructing someone to poison him. What is certain is that the emperor wasted no time in replacing the critically important head of the Praetorian Guard. Nero realized that to make the divorce a reality, he did not need nay-sayers, nuisances and pests with ‘right’ on their side, people spoiling his fun and burdening his life with responsibility. He needed new friends. To this end he held a nervous meeting of the council of leading senators and palace advisers. Who on earth, they asked themselves, would Nero choose for the recently vacated post? The emperor was quick to reassure them. His first appointment was a person of integrity and experience – a man named Faenius Rufus. He was popular with the Praetorian officers and had a good track record in efficiently managing Rome’s corn supply without profiteering from it. The council breathed a collective sigh of relief. However, they were soon to be disappointed by the next appointment. Also taking his place as joint commander of the Praetorian Guard, declared Nero, was the emperor’s good friend Ofonius Tigellinus.
Tigellinus’s track record was, to say the least, a little unorthodox. While it was true that he had been prefect of the watch (the head of the fire service in Rome), his reputation rested on totally different credentials. He and the emperor had met during Nero’s childhood on the estate in Calabria belonging to Nero’s aunt. They took to each other instantly, perhaps because they shared a common interest in racing and breeding horses. More than this, however, Nero was fascinated by Tigellinus’s character, by his capacity for evil. He was good-looking, some fifteen years older than Nero, and, although from a poor Sicilian background, had friends in high places. He had insinuated himself into the houses of two aristocrats, where he had earned a reputation for depravity. It was said that he seduced first the men, then their wives, and in this way he rose into the echelons of Roman high society. Now, in the imperial house-hold’s rounds of orgies, revelries and drinking parties, Tigellinus was Nero’s most debauched partner, his trusted playmate, his devilish, amoral master of ceremonies.
The appointment spelt trouble for another reason. With it, a key principle in Seneca’s vision of what made a good emperor was sacrificed. To help him successfully administer the Roman empire, the first emperor, Augustus, had at least given the impression that he relied on independent-minded people from the upper orders. The aristocratic Seneca had maintained that tradition under Nero. He was able to be honest towards the emperor because he had nothing to fear from speaking his mind. His wealth and position in Roman society were not dictated by his status in the eyes of the emperor. The appointment of Tigellinus, however, was the clearest indication that Nero was now surrounding himself with servile cronies. Tigellinus was from an ordinary family and owed his place entirely to the emperor. The fear grew in Seneca that far from standing up to Nero, Tigellinus would slavishly tell him whatever he wanted to hear. He would certainly not advise him on what was right. But Tigellinus was not Seneca’s only fear. His greatest worry was for his own life.
The ascendant Tigellinus set to work. He knew how to play to Nero’s insecurities. He tormented him by saying that Seneca’s wealth and property stood as an insult to the pre-eminence of the emperor of Rome because it rivalled the imperial estate. Nero was duly piqued by envy. Time was running out for Seneca, but he was paralysed – caught in a distinctly unpleasant dilemma: he could either continue advising the emperor but risk offending him, or else compromise and go along with Nero’s whims and fancies. Neither course of action made an appetizing prospect. Eventually, he struck on a solution: he would graciously ask the emperor leave to retire. Seneca found Nero in the imperial palace. In his polished, charming way, he began by citing the example of the divine Augustus. The first emperor, he said, had allowed even his closest advisers leave to retire. Perhaps the emperor might consider granting him the same reward?
Nero politely refused. ‘My reign is only just beginning,’ he said. ‘If youth’s slippery paths lead me astray, be at hand to call me back. You equipped my adulthood; devote even greater care to guiding it!’17 Seneca thanked the emperor and left. His charm offensive had failed. Nonetheless, he found ways to stay out of the line of fire. Under the pretence of ill health and philosophic study, Seneca spent more and more time on his estates in the countryside. He might well have lost his privileged position of adviser, but he was still in possession of his life – for the time being. Now Seneca’s distance from the palace gave Nero time to turn his mind to a third new appointment. This one would be a little trickier than replacing the head of the Praetorian Guard. Now he wanted to promote Poppaea from mistress to imperial wife.
Poppaea was six years older than Nero, a beauty from a wealthy, if not entirely aristocratic, background. While her mother was noble, her father was a knight who had suffered disgrace during the rule of Tiberius. Reflecting her ambitious nature, Poppaea ditched her father’s name in favour of her maternal grandfather’s, and set about taking Roman high society by storm. She married two aristocrats in succession and had a child from the first marriage. Her love of extravagance and luxury made her the talk of the town. Her lavishly appointed family house near Pompeii, the Villa Oplontis, has been discovered and testifies to tha
t reputation; she had the hoofs of the mules that pulled her litter shod in gold, and she bathed daily in the milk of 500 asses to preserve the beauty of her skin, so the rumours went.18 Nero was madly in love with her. Now, without the voice of his dear friend Seneca to advise him, without the conscience of loyal Burrus at his side, Nero took his next gamble alone.
The emperor knew full well that if he divorced Octavia he ran the risk of exposing himself to rivals. Other members of the Julio-Claudian clan among the aristocracy were, like Nero, descended from Augustus, and could therefore legitimately claim descent from the royal and divine bloodlines. As a result, Nero took no chances. There were two potential claimants whom Tigellinus, seeking to cement his position, warned him about. Rubellius Plautus was the great-great-grandson of Augustus via the emperor Tiberius; Faustus Cornelius Sulla Felix was the great-grandson of Augustus’s sister. If Nero was without the connection by marriage to Claudius, argued Tigellinus feeding his friend’s paranoia, it meant that either man could challenge him.
Nero was won over. Assassins were immediately dispatched to Asia and Gaul. When they returned to Rome, they carried with them the heads of their victims, Plautus and Sulla. Their crime, according to the emperor, was by now a familiar one: treason. But how on earth would the Senate react to the terrible news that two of the best, most virtuous men from their number were suddenly dead? Not with great integrity, was the short answer. With Seneca gone, the senators knew that any meaningful partnership between Senate and emperor was now as good as dead. So, driven by fear of offending the emperor, they toed the line. In honour of what was put about as Nero’s narrow escape from death, they decreed that thanks be offered to the gods. With his two most prominent rivals dead, Nero now focused on his divorce. All he needed was a pretext.
The imperial rumour machine went into overdrive. Its target? Octavia. A charge was concocted of adultery with a flute-player from Alexandria. To lend the accusation credence, Tigellinus tortured Octavia’s maids to produce testimony. One of them defied her torturer: ‘The mouth of Tigellinus,’ she shouted, ‘was filthier than every part of Octavia.’19 Soon Nero’s wife was banished to Campania under military surveillance. In Rome there was uproar. Nero had underestimated the affection in which the daughter of the deified Claudius was held. Protests quickly turned into riots. Nero panicked. More than the respect of the Senate, he craved the love of the people. He did not want to lose it, so he made a shocking announcement, cancelling his divorce from Octavia. The people’s response was equally wild. They gave thanks on the Capitol, smashed the statues of Poppaea, and, in their exuberance, even invaded the imperial palace. But their joy was to be short-lived. Nero changed his mind again: Poppaea would be his wife after all. One might imagine that Poppaea was relieved and delighted. Far from it. Even though Octavia had been divorced and exiled, she still presented a problem.
Now it was the turn of Poppaea to press Nero’s buttons, to feed his old fear. Octavia, she reminded him, was blue-blooded, popular and the daughter of an emperor. Even in exile, nagged Poppaea, she could become a figurehead for a rebellion and challenge Nero. The emperor agreed. He needed someone to fix the problem. There was one man he could rely on. He summoned Anicetus, the murderer of his mother, to the palace. The offer of a safe, comfortable retirement was on the table, said Nero, but on one condition: Anicetus must confess to adultery with Octavia. With the blood of Agrippina still on his hands, Anicetus had no choice but to agree. All the pieces of the murder plan were at last in place.
Nero called a meeting of senators and advisers at which he made an announcement: Octavia, he declared, had planned a coup, and to effect it had tried to seduce the fleet commander. As the words fell from Nero’s lips, a virtuous girl of twenty, exiled on an island thousands of kilometres from Rome, was restrained by Roman soldiers and her veins were cut open. She who had witnessed her father and brother murdered before her eyes, now faced her own death. But it was too slow in coming. When the Praetorian Guards ran out of patience, they suffocated her in a steam room. Her head was cut off and taken to Rome just so that Poppaea could see it.
Nero was drawing ever closer to a precipice. He was on the verge of exposing what lay beneath the carefully constructed veneer of the emperor’s supreme position. The appearance, devised by Augustus, that the emperor was subordinate to the institutions of the state was now wearing decidedly thin. Nero was, in reality, above the law; he was answerable to no one, and had always known that. What was changing was that he seemed to care less and less about hiding it. This was a highly precarious position – one liable to raise an army of enemies like ghosts from Hades. Nonetheless, fortune was smiling on Nero. Chance would soon throw the young ruler one final opportunity to prove he could yet be a good emperor – that he could live up to the name of Augustus.
CRISIS
With his two new key advisers, Tigellinus and Poppaea, secured in their positions of influence, the good times rolled. In the lake of Marcus Agrippa the height of Roman engineering was put to the uses of pleasure in the most spectacular way. First, the lake was drained so that Nero might put on an entertaining public exhibition of wild beast hunting. Then it was filled once more with water and a stunning sea battle was enacted. Drained again, it became an arena for gladiators to do combat, but even this was not the last piece of theatre to be stage-managed there.20 Nero now appointed Tigellinus to direct the most notorious banquet of the age.
The lake was once more filled with water and a vast platform floating on great wooden casks was created in its centre. Round about it taverns and secret places for trysts and assignations were constructed. In the middle Nero, Poppaea and Tigellinus played host to senators, knights and the general public in the most exquisite fashion. Birds and animals in myriad colours and from all corners of the empire populated the temporary island. For further amusement, role-playing was, appropriately, the tenor of the entertainment: high-born women behaved like prostitutes, and no man, be he an aristocrat or a lowly ex-convict gladiator, was to be refused his pleasure. At the party were all Nero’s aristocratic friends and senators, who were used to enjoying and indulging themselves on such occasions. However, Nero and his court were about to be given a sharp wake-up call from their decadent pleasures.
The fire began in a small shop on 19 July AD 64 in the area of the Circus Maximus. It would quickly swell to become the greatest conflagration that ancient Rome would ever know. As it gathered momentum, it rampaged through the narrow streets, tenement blocks, porticoes and alleyways in the heart of Rome between the Palatine and Capitoline hills. The fire continued for six days and then, just when it was believed to have died out, it reignited and continued for three more days. By the time it had finished, only four of Rome’s fourteen districts would still be intact; three were completely destroyed, and the others largely devastated but for the charred shells of a few buildings. Many people died and thousands of homes were destroyed, from the tenements of low-born plebs to the grand town houses of landed senators. Rome also lost some of her ancient history: the temples and ancient cult sites associated with the city’s forefathers – Romulus, Numa and Evander.
Nero was in Antium, 50 kilometres (30 miles) from Rome, where he could now see the fire due to the raging intensity of the flames. He may have paused to play the lyre while the city burnt, but he also responded effectively and with urgency. He ordered immediate relief to be provided for those fleeing the fire. To the homeless he opened up the Field of Mars, including Agrippa’s public buildings as well as the private gardens of his own palace. The Praetorian Guard, under the leadership of Rufus, was ordered to construct temporary accommodation to house those who had lost everything in the fire. Tigellinus too, who had been the head of Rome’s fire brigade, swung into action on Nero’s orders, responding effectively to the crisis. However, it was only once the Senate had had the opportunity of assessing the extent of the damage to Rome that Nero’s best leadership was revealed.
After surveying the ruins, taking advice from senators
and advisers, and agreeing to pay personally for the clearance of debris, Nero stated his desire to make sure that such a tragedy never happened in Rome again. He proposed building regulations that included restricting the height of houses and tenements, and specifying permissible types of timber construction. By law streets were to be a certain width and carefully laid out according to plan. New buildings would have to feature an internal courtyard to ensure that there were breathing spaces between them. They would be in sharp contrast to the rickety tenements that had so recently and tragically collapsed. Porticoes and colonnades along streets and at the front of houses were to be added. The emperor ensured that he paid for these personally. In the event of another fire, Romans must at all costs be protected from falling debris. But such steps were just the beginning. As he formulated all these measures, Nero realized that this terrible tragedy actually presented Rome with an opportunity. To the assembled senators the emperor proposed not simply to rebuild Rome, but to make it more impressive than it was before – even greater than the city built by the first emperor, Augustus. This was going to be a city fit for the new age of Nero.
The emperor’s visionary leadership in the face of Rome’s greatest challenge was met with jubilant, rapturous applause. Nero made good his promises too: there were generous incentives for private investors to complete their building projects, and, as coins of AD 64 describe, Nero ensured the swift restoration of the Temple of Vesta, the Market for Provisions and the popular Circus Maximus. But the applauding senators would soon discover that Nero’s new public plans for Rome included a more personal, private building project: a new palace for the emperor. This was an architectural project that would come to symbolize both the inspiration and tyranny of Nero’s reign.
