People - Ancient Rome
Nero lavished himself in his own power, he used golden thread for his fishing nets, he never wore the same robe twice, he had his mules shod with silver. He was heavily into parties and practiced orgies and gluttony, and his dinners sometimes lasted twelve hours, from noon to midnight. He also murdered his 19-year-old wife so that he could marry hi...
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Lucius Annaeus Seneca (5 A.D.-65 A.D.) was a poet and a writer, and one of the major literary figures and foremost Stoic philosophers of the first century A.D. He was the son of Seneca the Elder, born in Spain and taken to Rome as a youth. Caligula and the Senate saw Seneca the younger as an incredibly gifted orator and writer. When Claudius became...
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Nero became betrothed to Octavia (Claudius' daughter) and he was officially adopted in 50 A.D., and became the most probable heir to the throne, even over Claudius' own son Britannicus. Britannicus was four years younger than Nero and suffered greatly because of his disgraced mother Messalina. Nero’s mother Agrippina moved very shrewdly by appointi...
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In 65 A.D. some senators concocted the Pisonian Conspiracy to murder Nero in the Circus Maximus, while the games were going on, and then place Caius Calpurnius Piso in Nero’s position. They were found out and Nero went on a rampage to root out any opposition and there were daily executions. In fact all together there were nineteen executions and su...
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Brief overview of Claudius and the Emperor Nero
Tiberias Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus (10 B.C.-54 A.D.) was emperor of Rome from 41 A.D. to 54 A.D. He was born at Lyons and his parents were Drusus the Elder and Antonia. From his infancy he suffered from some sort of illness, many think that it was some form of cerebral palsy. His own family tho...
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- The Great Fire of Rome 64 A.D.
- The First Imperial 'Persecution' of Christians 64 A.D.
- The first Jewish Revolt Against Rome 66 A.D....
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By 62 A.D. Nero was the established authority in Rome. His mother Agrippina was dead, Burrus, the praetorian commander, was also dead. Seneca had retired, Octavia was divorced and murdered. Poppaea was now married to Nero and she bore him a daughter in 63 A.D.
Poppaea had been Otho's wife and she had her eyes on Nero and plotted successfully to el...
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Agrippina Runs Things – For Awhile.
Nero was a confident leader who was very interested in Roman arts and education. When he was young the control of the empire was in the hands of his mother, Agrippina. In fact on the first day that he began to rule he gave the tribune of the guard the watchword "The best of mothers" and she was authorized to han...
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Why the Christians? Christianity was a new religion and did not appear to be very threatening. The Christians refused to participate in pagan rituals and therefore those who practiced them found it very offensive, according to Tacitus. He describes the Christians as "depraved" and says that this religion is "deadly superstition", "mischief", and "s...
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Brief overview of the birth and childhood of the Emperor Nero.
On December 15, 37 A.D. Nero was born, his original name was Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus. He was the only child of Julia Agrippina (the great-granddaughter of Augustus), and Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus, whose family descended from the ancient nobility and whose father had married a ni...
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