¶¶
-History has portrayed Roman Emperor Nero
as one of the great villains,
a cruel insane despot responsible
for the Great Fire of Rome.
Nero's name is synonymous with evil,
killer of his own mother and wife,
poisoner of his stepbrother, and persecutor of Christians.
He lived a debauched and decadent life.
This is the judgment passed by history.
-There was no form of historical record
similar to our modern understanding of history.
The writings were politically motivated,
captivating literature.
-And yet, new discoveries suggest history
may have gotten it wrong.
Now, a forensic profiler considers new evidence
to discover the truth about the controversial emperor.
-As the writers would appear to be unreliable,
they would not be considered
objective witnesses by modern standards.
¶¶
-"The Nero Files."
¶¶
-Rome, 64 AD, the night of July 18th.
The city is in flames.
The fire will burn for 9 days,
large areas of Rome completely destroyed.
The rumor that the narcissistic tyrant Nero
started the blaze has persisted for 2,000 years.
His alleged motivation?
Artistic inspiration.
The emperor is said to have watched the disaster
from the roof of his palace while making music,
or as legend has it,
he fiddled while Rome burned and his subjects died.
But are these tales of the mad tyrant true?
There are significant doubts.
¶¶
Forensic psychologist Thomas Mueller
has studied numerous criminals over the course of his career.
Now, he turns his attention to Nero's legacy
using a cold-case approach, establishing the facts
and examining the veracity of the sources.
Can the accusations leveled at Nero withstand
modern investigative methods?
-Is it possible that Nero was also a victim
or even the victim?
-Rome, 54 AD.
16-year-old Nero and his mother, Agrippina,
rush to the emperor's bedside.
¶¶
Emperor Claudius, Agrippina's husband, is dying.
He is attended to by his biological children
from a previous marriage --
his daughter, Octavia, and his son, Britannicus.
Britannicus is the legitimate heir to the throne,
but he is only 13 years old.
Nero is merely the emperor's stepson,
but he is 3 years older.
If the emperor dies now, Nero will become his successor.
Accounts suggest Claudius was murdered,
possibly with poisoned food.
Doctors rush to save him...
but it is too late.
Agrippina has achieved her goal.
Nero's ambitious mother only married Claudius
to ensure Nero, her son from her first marriage,
would become emperor.
Does she kill Claudius before Britannicus can come of age
so Nero can take the throne?
¶¶
-Murder and violent removal of political opponents
were an everyday occurrence in imperial Rome.
Assuming power was not done by democratic means.
Power was achieved by violence, aggression, and assassinations.
-Historians suspect Agrippina is responsible
for the emperor's murder.
With Claudius' death, Nero now becomes emperor at just 16,
even though he is not the legitimate heir.
-One could say that Agrippina was a woman
fully aware of her power
and that she knew how to take advantage
of any opportunity that presented itself.
We cannot say with any certainty whether she did kill Claudius,
but people at the time immediately accused
her of doing so.
-This suspicion casts a shadow over Nero's reign
from its outset.
-The question is, "How is it possible that an emperor of Rome
became the bastard of history?"
Who told us that he was such a monster?
Where does our information actually come from,
and can the witnesses stand up to examination?
-Three Roman writers are primarily responsible
for having recorded the details of Nero's life,
even though they never met him.
Tacitus was 10 years old when Nero died.
Suetonius was born 2 years later,
and Cassius Dio wasn't born
until a century after Nero's reign.
They created the image of the mad tyrant,
and yet each writer's story is different.
One questions whether Nero had anything to do
with the Great Fire of Rome,
while another is convinced he started the blaze,
and the third writer suggests Nero fiddled
while his city burned.
Who can one trust?
-As a criminal psychologist,
I've experienced this over and over again.
People see what they want to see,
and sometimes they will write or say
whatever it is they want to convey.
The fact is, all three writers lived after Nero's time.
They did not know him personally,
and their knowledge was based on stories.
Did they, perhaps, add elements that were important to them?
-Just 13 when his father dies, Britannicus,
the emperor's biological son, is frail and possibly epileptic,
and yet he might pose a threat to young Emperor Nero
should he lay claim to the throne
when he reaches maturity.
¶¶
-[Speaks Latin] -It is 55 AD,
and Nero has been emperor for several months,
a feast in the palace.
The imperial family has invited guests.
As is customary, Britannicus selects his favorite dishes.
It is business as usual in the palace.
¶¶
And yet, according to accounts, before the meal is over,
Britannicus will be assassinated.
The killer?
Nero. The weapon?
A powerful poison.
Using poison to commit murder is difficult in ancient Rome,
as the meals of the rich and powerful are tasted in advance.
¶¶
In Tacitus' account, Nero manages to avoid the taster
by slyly placing the poison in Britannicus' drink
rather than his food.
¶¶
Drinks are also sampled by the taster, but Nero is clever.
He has a harmless, but very hot, drink served.
¶¶
Britannicus is unable to drink it.
Cold, clear water is added to cool the drink.
The water is poisoned
and is poured without being sampled by the taster.
According to Tacitus, the poison races through Britannicus' body,
making it impossible for him to breathe or speak.
¶¶
And all three writers agree he dies almost immediately.
A potential adversary has been removed,
but there are doubts about the poison plot
as the writers present it.
Mueller explains.
-In terms of criminal psychology, using poison means
committing murder without leaving scars.
However, murder by poison is easier to describe
than to commit, even in ancient Rome.
The descriptions of Britannicus' death
suggests a rapidly acting poison
that was both colorless and odorless.
Did such a poison even exist in the age of Nero?
-In antiquity, the most effective poisons
were plant toxins from yew trees,
lily of the valley, hemlock, and wolfsbane.
Today, scientists in a modern forensic lab
are testing whether any of these poisons
could have killed Britannicus in the manner described.
The poison had to have been both colorless and odorless.
Otherwise, it would have been immediately
detectable in the water,
and it had to take effect within seconds.
In order to put the poison in the water,
the toxin would have had to be extracted from the plant first.
One way to do this was by boiling the plants.
¶¶
The more the water is reduced during the boil,
the more concentrated the poison will be,
but the color and aroma also become more intense.
Even when strained to remove impurities, the color remains.
Tacitus writes that the poison is placed in a jug of water
that was used to cool Britannicus' hot drink.
If that was the case,
the poison had to have been very concentrated
in order to remain effective after being watered down twice.
¶¶
-If one considers all the steps that are required to create
an odorless and colorless poison that is sufficiently
toxic enough to be effective, then one must accept
that it was practically impossible at the time,
considering the methods that were available.
-Nor does the time line, as described,
withstand close scrutiny.
-If a plant toxin is ingested orally,
it takes time for the poison to cross
from the digestive system into the bloodstream.
Then, it must still be transported to the part
of the body where it takes effect.
It is, therefore, fundamentally inconceivable
that death could occur within seconds.
-The writers' claims of a sudden death caused by poison
already appear somewhat unreliable.
-According to the toxicologist's conclusions,
there was no poison that would have had
the effects described by the writers.
So given the circumstances, is it not possible
that an epileptic fit was seen as attempted murder?
After all, people believed Nero was capable of anything.
-Agrippina has not made Nero emperor
out of a mother's love for her son.
She sees herself as the true ruler of the empire
and Nero as a mere puppet.
She is the power behind the throne,
and she makes no effort to conceal it,
as coins from the era reveal.
-When Nero ascends to the throne in 54 AD,
something very unusual happens to the Roman currency.
The first coins that are minted show both the reigning emperor
and, at eye level and the same size, his mother.
This hadn't happened before, and it would not happen again.
Agrippina publicly lays claim to power,
and the first conflicts between mother and son soon follow.
The coins show this very clearly.
Just a few months after the first coins
find their way into circulation, a second coin is released.
The new coin still includes Agrippina,
but she has now moved into the background.
She no longer holds the same significance
she did at the beginning of Nero's reign.
A few months later,
she has vanished from the currency altogether.
Her declining influence and the looming conflict
with her son are clearly visible on the faces of Rome's coins.
¶¶
-Nero grows up, maturing into an adult.
¶¶
He is now 21 years old.
He has reigned successfully for 5 years,
something even the writers are prepared to admit.
Nero is an ambitious emperor with progressive ideas,
building public baths and markets for his subjects.
They, in turn, revere their ruler.
He is interested in the arts, sports, and science.
He has grand architectural plans for Rome,
but his relationship with his mother has suffered.
Nero is at the Baiae resort on the Gulf of Pozzuoli,
north of Naples, where ancient Rome's rich
and famous go to escape the city.
He has supposedly invited his mother to Baiae
so they can share a meal and resolve their differences.
¶¶
But according to the writers, the invitation is merely a ruse
to lure her to her death.
¶¶
Tacitus writes that Nero accompanies Agrippina
as she leaves his palace in Baiae.
His last glimpse of his condemned
mother touches his cold heart.
¶¶
He has ordered her death for that very night.
¶¶
Nero returns to his villa
while the murder plot unfolds on the high seas.
Both Tacitus and Cassius Dio
provide detailed accounts of the fateful night.
According to their descriptions, Nero has a trusted assistant
prepare Agrippina's yacht with a trapdoor
that will open and sweep her out to sea.
Cassius Dio writes the mechanism would then close,
and the boat would continue sailing
as though nothing had happened.
Nero could easily have disguised a crime on the ship.
As Tacitus wrote, "Nothing allowed of accidents
so much as the sea."
-When investigating disasters at sea or at higher elevations,
specialists and experts for the relevant structures,
wind and weather conditions, and water currents
play an important role.
Let us follow the evidence
to determine whether the story told
by the writers would stand up in court.
-An experiment in a ship model basin
will hopefully reveal the truth.
According to Tacitus, Agrippina's yacht was a trireme,
a galley with three banks of oars on either side.
The mother of the Emperor would have had a luxurious cabin
at the stern of the ship.
Agrippina's yacht is reconstructed
at a scale of 1 to 9 in the ship model basin.
The aim of the experiment is to determine
what kind of modifications would have been necessary
to create an opening in the ship that someone could fall through.
The experts are certain that trapdoors would have been
the only possibility,
and they install two flaps at the stern of the model.
One opens inward, while the other opens out into the water.
¶¶
On dry land, both trapdoors work perfectly.
In the water, though, things are very different.
Now it's time to test the trapdoor theory.
The depth of the hull is reconstructed exactly.
The flaps are now underwater.
The door opening into the ship would have let the water flow
in immediately, stopping anyone from falling out
and also quickly sinking the ship.
Given these results,
the trapdoor must have opened outwards, and yet it can't.
The water pressure keeps the flap closed,
and the ship sails on as normal.
Perhaps more force is required.
Weights are placed on the trapdoor.
So much weight is needed to force the flap open,
the ship begins to sink.
Approximately 2 tons would have been required
to force the door open,
but that would have sunk the ship
before it ever left the harbor.
Additionally, once the door opened out,
there wouldn't have been a way to close it.
Water would have flooded in and sunk the ship.
The writers' descriptions just aren't reliable as evidence.
-Telling the truth didn't mean providing descriptions
or reconstructions of events that were 100 percent accurate.
Rather, the story had to be told well
and had to be built around a sweet center
that increased the appetite and the attention of the readers.
-Efforts to tell a good story have made it difficult
for modern-day experts to determine the truth.
-There was no form of historical record
similar to our modern understanding of history.
The writings were politically motivated,
captivating literature, and that is an important point.
It is literature rather than a scientific approach to history.
Its primary purpose was to be exciting.
At the time, this was the pinnacle of writing,
stylistically sophisticated,
excitingly told, and attractively presented.
-According to the writers, the attempted murder fails,
and Agrippina manages to reach land.
Nero panics and, fearing his mother's revenge,
sends armed men to her villa to kill her.
Cassius Dio claims that Nero has his mother's dead body uncovered
so he can examine it himself,
while Tacitus questions whether this is really true.
-There were no witnesses.
We know that Agrippina was killed,
but it is impossible to recreate the details of her death,
which is why, in antiquity, this story was invented
and passed on to create a particularly dramatic tale
of how a son killed his mother.
¶¶
-But the fact remains.
Whether Nero gave the order to kill his mother
or she died by other means, her death
and the rumors surrounding it were a burden Nero carried
for the rest of his life and beyond.
The writers' horrifying stories about Agrippina's death
continue to shape perceptions of Nero to this day.
What really happened that night, however, will remain a mystery.
-As the writers would appear to be unreliable,
they would not be considered objective witnesses
by modern standards.
In summary, there are reports
that Nero had his mother murdered,
but there's no material evidence,
and there are no convincing leads.
-Rome, the summer of 64 AD.
The city is in flames, again.
Fire was a constant danger, but this time, it's different.
The blaze spreads faster and farther than any before it.
Suetonius and Cassius Dio accuse Nero
of starting the fire and suggest two possible motives.
Either he wanted to create space for the Domus Aurea,
his new golden palace, or alternatively,
he wanted Rome to burn to serve as inspiration
for his artistic endeavors, so he could serenade the flames.
Tacitus, the third writer, doesn't offer a theory.
-So did Nero have a motive to set fire to Rome?
We have been forced to accept that the writers were prepared
to write down their own versions of the truth,
for whatever reasons.
But what really happened in the days and nights
while Rome burned?
-At this moment in history, Rome is a bustling metropolis.
Its streets are filled with people.
In fact, the capital is bursting at the seams.
People elbow their way through the hot, narrow alleys
that make up most of the city.
Land is extremely valuable,
and urban planning and fire safety are of little concern.
Buildings are made of substandard quality,
and many are made of wood and built close together.
On this fateful day, this construction method
seals the fate of much of the eternal city.
The fire starts late in the evening near the Circus Maximus,
a popular nighttime haunt in ancient Rome.
The inferno rages for 9 days.
Excavations have confirmed
the blaze affected two-thirds of the city.
The rapid spread of the fire and the scale of destruction
immediately give rise to rumors of arson.
-How did the fire spread so rapidly?
Was it the work of arsonists who set fires in various locations,
or was a spark enough to cause the blaze?
-On this July day, the city is in the grip of a heat wave.
There has been no rain for days, even weeks.
The summer sun has left Rome's wooden buildings
as dry as kindling.
As evening falls,
Romans light thousands of torches and oil lamps.
An experiment demonstrates how the fire might have started
and then spread so quickly.
A small mishap, like an overturned oil lamp,
would have been enough to start a fire that moved quickly,
the flames igniting the wooden walls and furnishings.
A hot, dry wind is blowing on this particular evening,
helping the fire spread.
Once the fire burns the length of the Circus,
it moves into an area of densely built apartment blocks.
In this lower part of the city,
there aren't any large structures like temples
or open spaces that could have slowed the fire's pace.
Once it starts in earnest,
the fire is essentially unstoppable.
¶¶
-If one objectively evaluates all the individual elements,
then a single spark in challenging conditions
would have been enough
to reduce the metropolis to ash and cinders,
whether the spark was caused intentionally or by accident.
The center of the city is soon in ashes,
as are the imperial palaces
located close to where the fire starts.
Nero's palace is among those destroyed,
making it impossible for him to have stood on the roof,
serenading the blaze.
¶¶
-I think that the story of Nero rushing back to Rome to serenade
the burning city from the roof of his palace
can safely be classified as nothing more than myth.
His palace had been consumed by the flames.
So Nero couldn't have performed music on its roof.
-The claim that Nero had the fire started to make room
for his new palace doesn't stand up to examination either.
-If Nero really had wanted to find space
to build his new palace,
he would have had any number of other possibilities.
He could have simply confiscated properties
and had buildings torn down.
-And Nero's beloved art collection
is destroyed by the flames.
-If one takes all the circumstances into account,
the historical records,
the architecture, and the resulting scenarios,
there would have been no clear motive for Nero
to set fire to Rome.
It is more likely that the fire started by accident.
-This is a very different portrait of Nero
than we are familiar with.
-He oversees the firefighting efforts.
He proves himself a ruler concerned for his people.
He has the parks opened for the homeless.
He ensures there is sufficient grain.
Essentially, he fulfills all the expectations
the Roman populace has in this situation,
which absolutely does not conform to the image
of an insane, power-hungry tyrant.
Indeed, he sounds more like a reasonable, responsible ruler.
¶¶
-Even Tacitus, the only one of the three writers alive
during the disaster,
credits Nero with effective crisis management.
The emperor remains in Rome while the city burns
and helps coordinate the rescue efforts,
visiting those affected.
In order to save sections of the Roman capital,
Nero has firebreaks cut through the streets.
Unfortunately, this only leads to accusations
he's responsible for further destruction of the city,
and still the fire continues to tear through
the wooden labyrinth of narrow alleys.
Of Rome's 14 districts, only four are unaffected.
As the rebuilding begins, Nero insists on new procedures
to prevent future fires.
-After the fire,
Nero proves himself to be a forward-thinking statesman.
He orders the implementation of construction regulations
designed to prevent a repeat of the catastrophe Rome
has just experienced.
For example, he mandates that fire-resistant materials
be used during reconstruction and that there must
be sufficient space between the buildings.
¶¶
-The Rome that rises from the ruins has far wider streets,
and Nero's fire safety regulations
remain in place into late antiquity.
But immediately after the blaze, rumors surface
that the fire was caused by arson
and that the emperor may be responsible.
-In order to quell the accusations leveled at him,
Nero had to find someone to hold responsible
for the Great Fire of Rome.
Some in his inner circle suggested
that the Christians would make ideal scapegoats.
-Nero is often portrayed as the Antichrist.
He is said to have had hundreds of innocent Christians
brutally put to death,
the first persecution of Christians in history.
This is the beginning of a legend, Nero the Insane,
the sadist, the personification of evil.
The roots of this myth lie in the ashes
of the Great Fire of Rome.
Given the extent of the destruction,
Romans refuse to believe the fire started accidentally.
Nero is under increasing public pressure
to find someone to blame.
Eventually, the emperor settles on a new religious sect
that is widely disliked and seems to have a motive.
-There has never been a disaster which didn't immediately cause
a psychological quest to find a guilty party.
The same applies to the Great Fire of Rome.
But why were the Christians targeted?
What was their significance in ancient Rome?
What were their goals?
-The Romans view this new Christian religion
with suspicion.
They have strange rituals, burying their dead in catacombs,
belief in a single god,
refusing to believe in the divine nature of the emperor,
all of which are counter to Roman custom.
Christian religious history has often censored,
exaggerated, or falsified facts.
The same applies to Nero's alleged persecution
of Christians.
In addition to their unfamiliar practices,
early Christians might have hoped
for a disaster like the Great Fire.
¶¶
-In this early period, the Christians yearned
for the end of the world, and yet it refused to arrive.
The first Christians died,
and there was still no indication
of an approaching Armageddon.
It is, therefore, easy to imagine
that the early Christians celebrated an event
such as the Great Fire of Rome
as a signal that the end of the world was finally near.
¶¶
-This new religion holds that the world will end in flames.
Is the fire the long-awaited moment?
Tacitus even states,
"The Christians admit to starting the fire."
¶¶
-[Speaking German]
-Jesus told his apostles to follow him,
and it was widely understood that he also meant in death
and in the manner of death.
Jesus Christ was executed by the Romans.
Accordingly, the early Christians would have considered
their execution at the hands of the Romans an honorable death.
In this context, it made sense to claim responsibility
for the fire,
accept blame, and be executed in order to get into Heaven.
-Whether or not the Christians set the fire,
their claims of responsibility bring them sudden notoriety.
The previously unknown sect
is now infamous throughout the city.
¶¶
The people want a scapegoat, and Nero offers one up.
He punishes the Christians in accordance
with the law at the time.
Arsonists are publicly burned at the stake.
It is a cruel method of execution,
a spectacle, theater for the people of Rome,
and it serves to strengthen Nero's authority.
For Nero, the matter is finished.
And there's no evidence he ever targeted Christians again.
-People get the culture and the laws they deserve,
and this also applied during the time of Nero.
As emperor, he had to deal with a major catastrophe --
the Great Fire of Rome.
According to the historians, he found the guilty parties
and had them publicly punished in accordance
with the laws of the time
so that his people's sense of pain and loss
could be drowned in the thrill of revenge.
One could almost say that he acted in the only way
he could to preserve his reign.
¶¶
-Remnants of the Roman Forum today.
Nero's greatest treasure, the Domus Aurea,
or golden house,
lies buried below these ruins surrounding the Colosseum.
His great palace would ultimately earn the emperor
a reputation as a megalomaniac.
Nero's grand estate was eventually
submerged below other structures.
No trace remains, at least at ground level.
The building were only discovered by accident in 1480,
when someone fell through a hole
in the remains of the Baths of Trajan.
Below the baths were the high rooms of the Domus Aurea.
Many frescoes and wall decorations were still intact.
Nothing like it had been seen before.
Only now, after many years of extensive research,
is it possible to reconstruct the palace compound
at its full scale and artistic beauty.
¶¶
-With the Domus Aurea, Nero fulfills his dream
of creating a life shaped by the arts.
The emperor has artists brought in from all
over the Roman Empire to decorate his golden house.
Nero wants to make a statement with the palace.
Here is what art and technology can achieve.
The frescoes on the walls
and domes cover an area of 300,000 square feet.
But Nero's dream is enormously expensive,
and he demands tribute from Rome's nobility
in order to pay for it.
The Domus Aurea marks the start of his conflict
with the aristocracy and the beginning of Nero's end.
-One of the main reasons Nero became so unpopular
with the governing political class
was that he started this massive construction project in Rome
to build his golden house,
the likes of which had never been seen in the city before.
-The palace complex, located in the heart of Rome,
consists of several buildings surrounded by extensive gardens,
lakes, and pools to cool the air.
Nero even has some of the roofs covered in gold,
which gives rise to the name the Golden House.
Many rulers engage in ostentatious behavior,
but Nero seemingly eclipses them all.
This massive palace, built over the remains of parts of the city
decimated by fire, soon causes controversy.
It is enormously expensive to maintain.
Behind the scenes, an army of servants
is at the emperor's beck and call day and night.
Rose petals fall from the ceiling of some rooms
when Nero is present.
In fact, the great halls of the palace
may represent the zenith of Nero's power.
He successfully waged war against Armenia and Britain,
finally ending conflicts that simmered for years,
but Domus Aurea earns him political enemies.
Nero is accused of being a megalomaniac and wasteful.
According to Suetonius,
Nero claims he's finally inhabiting
a home fit for a human being.
¶¶
-Mmm.
After considering all the psychological details
of Nero's behavior, one question is unavoidable.
What was Nero's mental state?
Was he insane, a megalomaniac?
Was he, in fact, not responsible for his actions due to insanity?
-Nero has a statue of himself
built at the heart of the Domus Aurea.
The statue is nearly 100 feet high and visible across Rome.
Many, including Rome's elites, as well as later historians,
feel that he has lost touch with reality.
¶¶
-[Speaks German]
-Nero was not an insane ruler.
The writers subsequently painted this picture of the emperor,
but he was certainly not psychologically ill.
He simply behaved in a manner
that did not suit the politics of the day.
-Increasingly, Nero concentrates on his own interests
and longs for a family to inhabit his majestic home.
¶¶
Intent on settling down,
he falls in love with a woman named Poppaea Sabina,
stunningly beautiful, educated, intelligent and flirtatious.
They marry, and in 65 AD, she becomes pregnant.
According to Tacitus, Poppaea is the victim of Nero's
most brutal crime, one he carries out himself.
-Once again, in the case of Poppaea's death,
there are alleged witness statements,
but there's no material evidence.
-Recent research might shed some light
on this dark episode in Nero's history.
In the late 19th century,
British archaeologists discovered hundreds of papyri
during excavations in the Egyptian town of Oxyrhynchus.
During the Roman Empire,
Oxyrhynchus had a population of approximately 10,000 people.
¶¶
The archaeologists put the pieces of papyrus back together
as though completing a puzzle and revealed a piece of writing.
Unfortunately, they were unable to read it,
and the content of the papyrus remained a mystery
for more than a century.
A few years ago, a team of experts devoted itself
to figuring out what the text said.
-I didn't have the slightest idea
what this papyrus was going to be.
I started working on the text, deciphering the text
from a very badly preserved piece of papyrus.
-The document was written in classical Greek
nearly 200 years after Nero's death.
Translating the ancient language wasn't the problem.
Rather, only a few fragments survived the millennia.
-All of a sudden, I stumbled upon the name of Nero,
and I couldn't believe my eyes.
What was he doing there?
And I kept reading, and there came another occurrence of Nero
somewhere else in the text,
and then another time, and a fourth time.
There was Nero in four places in what was actually a poem.
-The experts found references to a woman who was dying,
Nero's wife, Poppaea.
But there was no mention of her murder,
let alone at the hand of Nero.
-This is quite a surprise in our papyrus.
This woman doesn't die from a violent death.
On the contrary, the story as you find it on this papyrus
tells you about the love between Poppaea and her husband, Nero.
And this is really not the story that we find in other sources,
where, allegedly, Nero kicked his wife in her belly
while she was pregnant and killed her.
This story of the kick in the belly is simply not credible.
-Profiler Mueller cautions against taking any reports
about Nero at face value.
-We should not give into the temptation
to condemn the writers' works as untrustworthy
and then be willing to unconditionally believe
reports that provide a more positive impression of Nero.
The same applies to both.
They are stories that mainly reflect
the intentions of the writers.
-But the Oxyrhynchus text does confirm
that there are sources besides the three main writers.
¶¶
Nobody knows what really happened.
Historians suspect Poppaea died
as a result of complications during pregnancy.
Was the story of the kick to the stomach ever believable?
It seems the writers recycled an often-used literary device.
-What is particularly interesting about this story
is that it reappears again and again
with different protagonists in different eras.
This shows that the writers knew
they would never discover the truth about Poppaea's death,
but that they intended to represent Nero as evil.
The easiest way to do this was to repeat the story
that had been around for centuries
that tyrants kill pregnant women.
¶¶
-[Speaks German]
-The most interesting aspect
is that an important writer like Tacitus
was willing to adopt this story and then present it as fact.
This shows just what the writers considered historical truth --
not the facts as they occurred,
but their own personal version of the truth.
And their version of the truth was to find a story
that plausibly painted Nero as a tyrant.
-The Roman city of Pompeii was buried beneath lava and ash
after Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD,
buried, but not destroyed.
Today, its excavation is an important source of information
about ancient Roman life.
In Pompeii, there are, in fact,
indications that Nero was beloved by his subjects...
inscriptions on the walls,
graffiti that reveals the attitudes of the populace.
-What really surprised me when I started doing my field work
was how small these inscriptions are.
So we, modern 21st century people, think of graffiti,
and we think of spray paint,
or we think of big, big statements.
But in the ancient world, you get very small writing.
-Most of the graffiti was found in the ruins of the houses
in the Via dell'Abbondanza,
which suffered further damage during World War II,
although photos still remain.
-So we have 80 graffiti written by the man on the street,
the general population in Pompeii,
and we find them throughout the town.
We find them in people's houses.
We find them in people's kitchens.
These are inscriptions that are writing the emperor's name.
They weren't removing them.
Not a single one has a negative aspect or characteristic to it.
So these graffiti are really showing us how popular Nero was.
-This bit of graffiti
was found in the house of Paquius Proculus.
It was written by the slave Cucuta,
who proudly left his name next to that of Nero's.
Another example, gladiators
who went through the imperial training school
called themselves Neroiani, after their emperor,
and their graffiti suggests why he was so popular.
-In Pompeii, we think that Nero probably canceled a ban
on gladiatorial games that had been put into play.
The city of Pompeii wasn't allowed to hold
gladiatorial spectacles for a period of 10 years.
The people were pretty unhappy.
Nero comes in and says, "All right. You can go ahead
and go back to holding games," and the people loved him.
-Bread and circuses, a strategy used by many Roman emperors
to ensure their own popularity.
But in ancient Rome,
popularity is not the same thing is political power.
The aristocracy, and therefore the Senate,
feel Nero is no longer serving its interests.
As Mueller explains,
Nero's popularity with the citizens of Rome
angers the empire's political class.
-Nero was popular because he obviously knew how to satisfy
the demands of his subjects in order to distract
from his own occasionally excessive needs.
However, Rome's elites wanted to establish their own popularity
with the people with a set of values
that were very different from Nero's.
This had to lead to an escalation.
-The political elite also disapprove of what they see
as Nero's extravagant lifestyle.
Suetonius describes a wanton lazy existence.
The emperor is considered decadent and depraved.
But perhaps the real problem
is that Nero never wanted to be emperor.
At heart, he is an artist.
His ambitious mother, Agrippina,
may have trained him in the ways of a statesman,
but he has no passion for it.
Nero is particularly attracted to acting,
frequently engaging in challenging voice exercises.
-[ Vocalizes ]
-He is, quite simply, a free spirit,
but emperors, statesmen, and politicians
are expected to follow a moral code
and meet their political responsibilities.
Any artistic pursuit goes against the Roman values
of aggression, bravery and a defiance of death.
But Nero is unable to let go of his artistic dreams.
He continues to study acting,
using lead weights to strengthen his respiratory muscles
and learning how to control his breath.
His goal is to one day perform on stage.
¶¶
In 66 AD, the emperor takes a large entourage
on an extended journey around Greece
that lasts more than a year.
Above all, Nero hopes to visit the games in Olympia
and attend the large theater performances.
His intention is to participate as an athlete and an actor.
¶¶
[ Applause ]
Nero neglects his duties as a political leader
and ignores his role
as a representative of Roman values.
Primarily interested in other pursuits,
Nero pays less and less attention to affairs of state
or to what is going on behind the scenes.
Nero becomes a huge admirer of Greece.
During his journey, he give the inhabitants of the Achea
province in the Peloponnese region their freedom,
which means that they no longer have to pay taxes to Rome,
a generous and expensive gesture that angers the Roman Senate.
But it's his passion for the arts
that ultimately does Nero in.
-Actors, singers, musicians,
these were jobs with terrible status in Roman antiquity.
Performers were at the very bottom of the social hierarchy,
and had an extremely questionable reputation.
It was simply unthinkable that an emperor
could move in these circles, let alone perform himself.
-From today's point of view,
the idea of a ruler simultaneously being an artist
doesn't sound so terrible.
However, Nero crossed a line.
Over the years, he allowed his artistic endeavors
to assume so much significance that he was essentially
no longer able to fulfill his responsibilities as an emperor.
He became more an artist than a ruler
in the public consciousness,
and this unquestionably went too far for many of Rome's elites.
-The Senate has had enough of Nero,
as have parts of the military.
Revolts break out in the provinces,
and the empire is in danger of collapse.
The Senate declares the emperor an enemy of the state,
stripping him of his imperial role
and sentencing him to death.
-When we look back now,
Rome's emperors always appear omnipotent.
However, they were only all-powerful
when they had the support of the Praetorian Guard,
the army, and most of the Senate.
In fact, much of the time,
they were exceedingly vulnerable.
If they lost the support of just one of these groups,
they quickly became powerless.
¶¶
-Abandoned by his followers,
Nero flees to a small estate near Rome.
He knows what fate awaits him.
Roman law dictates he be stripped naked
and his neck painfully pinned to a forked stick
before being led out of jail.
After severe corporal punishment,
he will be thrown off a cliff.
¶¶
The only way Nero can escape punishment is to commit suicide.
Suetonius is the only writer to describe Nero's final hours.
He paints a particularly humiliating picture
of the emperor's death.
According to Suetonius,
Nero finally decides to take his own life
as Roman guards come to arrest him.
He hesitates, and a loyal servant steps
in to offer encouragement.
But how could Suetonius know these intimate details?
He wasn't in the room.
Another reason to question his dark biography of Nero.
¶¶
Almost before Nero
is even buried,
the defamation and character assassination begin,
and while his infamy grows
as a result of the three writers' accounts,
there's little historical evidence
to support the crimes he's accused of.
-If each of these events is investigated
using modern criminalistic methods,
and if experts in different fields are called in to assist,
it soon becomes clear that objectivity
rapidly took a backseat to speculations,
conjecture, and subjective representations.
It is questionable whether Nero could even be put on trial
in a modern legal system.
Without a doubt, he would never be convicted
of all the crimes he's accused of.
-The images we have of Nero
are the ones placed in our consciousness
by those who emerged from history victorious.
Forced to take his own life, Nero was a victim of history,
perhaps in more ways than one.
¶¶
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