Emperor Nero: ancient Rome’s most infamous ruler

Greg Jenner is joined in ancient Rome by Professor Mary Beard and comedian and actor Patton Oswalt to learn all about Emperor Nero. Nero has gone down in history as one of Rome’s most infamous rulers – the villain in any number of films and television programmes, and the man who fiddled while the eternal city burned. He was also emperor during a number of momentous moments in the history of ancient Rome, including the revolt in Britain led by Iceni warrior queen Boudica. But does he deserve his notorious posthumous reputation? This episode explores the man and the myth, examining Nero’s complicated path to the imperial throne, his relationship with famous philosopher Seneca the Younger, his murderous behaviour towards the women in his life, and the numerous plots that swirled around him. Along the way, we take a look at the more ridiculous moments in Nero’s life, including the athletic games he founded, the festival to himself that he instituted, and his numerous dramatic appearances on the stage. If you’re a fan of evil emperors, political plots and the bloody history of Ancient Rome, you’ll love our episode on Nero. If you want more from Patton Oswalt, listen to our episode on the American War of Independence. And for more Roman history, check out our episodes on Agrippina the Younger, Boudica, and the Rise of Julius Caesar. You’re Dead To Me is the comedy podcast that takes history seriously. Every episode, Greg Jenner brings together the best names in history and comedy to learn and laugh about the past. Hosted by: Greg Jenner Research by: Aimee Hinds Scott Written by: Dr Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Dr Emma Nagouse, and Greg Jenner Produced by: Dr Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner Audio Producer: Steve Hankey Production Coordinator: Gill Huggett Senior Producer: Dr Emma Nagouse Executive Editor: Philip Sellars

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:47Greg Jenner?

  Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster. And today, we are flouncing back to the first century and fiddling while Rome burns as we learn all about Emperor Nero. And to help us tell apart our Julio Claudians from our Flavians, we have two very special guests. In history corner, she is a renowned classicist, author and broadcaster. Maybe you've read one of her bestselling books, including SBQR, Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town, Twelve Caesars, Women in Power, or her most recent, Emperor of Rome. You'll know her from all kinds of BBC TV programmes, including Pompeii: New Secrets Revealed, and she's the co-host of the acclaimed Instant Classics podcast. It's only Professor Mary Beard. Welcome, Mary.

• 2:29Speaker 03

  Well, it's great to be here and be with both of you and even in the company of Emperor Nero. We'll see about that.

• 2:36Greg Jenner?

  We'll see how we feel about him later. And in comedy corner, he's an Emmy and Grammy Award-winning comedian and actor. He has appeared in many of my absolute favourite sitcoms, including AP Bio, BoJack Horseman, Veep. He starred in films including Ratatouille, Ghostbusters Frozen Empire and Secret Life of Pets 2. Oh, you've caught him on the Celebrity Edition of the American Great British Baking Show, I think it's called. I have not quite sure of the title, but he's a culinary master and you'll definitely remember him from our episode on the American War of Independence. Making a triumphant return, it's Patton Oswalt. Welcome back, Patton.

• 3:07Speaker 04

  Thank you so much for having me back. I can't wait to talk about Nero. I've seen all the Matrix films. He's one of my favourite movie characters.

• 3:14Greg Jenner?

  Ah, okay, right. Nero.

• 3:17Speaker 04

  Hang on. I don't have spell check on my phone. That might explain a lot. Okay, sorry.

• 3:24Greg Jenner?

  That's all right. Last time out, we did the American War of Independence and you knew quite a lot.

• 3:27Speaker 04

  I actually did.

• 3:28Greg Jenner?

  I mean, you know.

• 3:29Speaker 04

  I was surprised. I didn't know I knew so much.

• 3:30Greg Jenner?

  I wasn't surprised because you're a learned man, but we're now into ancient history, ancient Roman history. How comfortable are you in the ancient Roman world?

• 3:40Speaker 04

  Uh, not at all. Literally and figuratively, I'm not comfortable in that world.

• 3:46Greg Jenner?

  Okay. Do you know the name Emperor Nero?

• 3:49Speaker 04

  I know the name Emperor Nero and for some reason, I just picture him looking like Dom DeLuise, but that's just because of the Mel Brooks film.

• 3:56Greg Jenner?

  That's fine. I don't mind that. Yeah, okay. So, what do you know?

• 4:06Greg Jenner?

  Well, that brings us to the first segment of the podcast. This is the So What Do You Know? It's where I have a go at guessing what you, our lovely listener, will know about today's subject. And you might know Emperor Nero as a bit of a naughty emperor. In pop culture, he's in books, he's been plays, he's been played by a lot of famous actors on screen, from Peter Oostendav in Quo Vardis, Christopher Biggins in I, Claudius, to Craig Roberts as the big baddie in the Horrible Histories Kids movie that I worked on. Eric Banner has even played a version of him, the evil Romulan, Romulan Nero, in the Star Trek film 2009.

• 4:36Speaker 04

  What's... Wait a minute. Was that character supposed to be, like, based on Nero?

• 4:40Greg Jenner?

  He's a Romulan.

• 4:41Speaker 04

  Oh, a Romu... Okay. I'm gonna go. Is my car waiting downstairs?

• 4:46Greg Jenner?

  Yes, we've lost Patton already. But do Hollywood depictions get it right? What does Nero's roguish reputation tell us about Rome? And why were Romans faking their deaths at the theatre? Were the plays really that bad? Let's find out. Right, Professor Mary, Nero was born nearly 2,000 years ago. So this is a properly old story. And the first thing I have to ask is, what are our sources here? Do we have trustworthy sources?

• 5:11Speaker 03

  Well, there's quite a lot of sources around Nero. So there's loads of poetry we have, which is dedicated to him. There's even a kind of little essay on how to be a good emperor. It was written by his tutor and it was called On Mercy. So perhaps he didn't take the lesson quite hard enough, right? Where the thinner pickings are found is if you're looking for a standard ancient account of Nero, A to Z, right? The life, the reign. We've got some. They agree on one thing, that he wasn't a good thing, right? They are quite, we call euphemism, they're a bit hostile.

• 5:54Greg Jenner?

  The reviews are in.

• 5:55Speaker 03

  The reviews are in, and they are not good ones.

• 5:58Greg Jenner?

  Okay, Patton, how do you imagine the city of Rome? Ancient Rome in the time that Nero was born? What, in your head, what are you imagining in terms of the architecture and the scale?

• 6:07Speaker 04

  Well, okay, I do know enough to know that the Roman city of all white columns and white buildings is actually false because it was actually very brightly painted and it was that paint that of course chipped off over the centuries. And that's where we have the white ruins. But it was actually a very colourful metropolis with kind of their version of Times Square signage everywhere and graffiti and all of that. Am I right in thinking that?

• 6:34Speaker 03

  Not far wrong.

• 6:36Greg Jenner?

  It's not the Rome of the holiday trip to Italy, is it? It's kind of like, there's no Colosseum yet?

• 6:41Speaker 03

  No, I mean, it's the centre of this vast empire. It's a million inhabitants, probably. It's the biggest city in the West until Victorian London. Right?

• 6:52Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 6:52Speaker 03

  So, early 19th century London. But there are some bits that we might expect to see that, that we don't see. And the Colosseum is one obvious case. You go to Rome now and, you know, okay, it's in the middle of a roundabout, but it's, it's really, really impressive. Now, the Colosseum was built after Nero's reign by the next dynasty. But interestingly, its name preserves a little memory of Nero because it was erected very close to the site of a Colossus, a colossal statue of Nero.

• 7:28Greg Jenner?

  Oh.

• 7:29Speaker 03

  Thirty-something metres tall, it is said. And that's what gave this amphitheatre its name. It was Nero's Colossus. What we tend to forget, I mean, you were partly right, Patton, you know, that it's, this is actually bright and there's graffiti everywhere and it probably stinks, absolutely stinks, right? But it is not always great monuments, no matter what colour they were. So it's a mixture of vast display buildings, put up, often bankrolled by emperors, and terrible slums. And-

• 8:05Greg Jenner?

  In the middle, like, abutting each other almost?

• 8:07Speaker 03

  What's interesting is, I think, in modern cities, certainly in British modern cities, we're used to a kind of zoning in city architecture. We think, there's the rich part, you know, and there's the poor part. And, and, you know, there's almost unseen boundaries between these two different levels of the city. What's really striking in Rome is there's a bit of that, but the slums are right there next to the grand.

• 8:35Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 8:35Speaker 03

  It's off, you know, you can walk past the great Capitoline Hill, and at the bottom, there's a slum tenement that you can still look at.

• 8:44Greg Jenner?

  Okay, so- Nero's childhood. Let's let's get to the let's get to the actual guy we're talking about. He's not called Nero at birth. That's not his name. What was he called? When was he born? What's his childhood like?

• 8:55Speaker 03

  Well, he's in a dysfunctional family, I think would be the hard way of putting it. He's born in thirty seven C E and his name is actually then Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, which means bronze beard, right?

• 9:11Speaker 03

  And his-

• 9:11Speaker 04

  He had a bronze beard when he was a baby?

• 9:14Speaker 03

  That was what we would call his surname. I've got a bit, look, I'm called Beard and I don't have one, right? Well Nero's surname was Bronzebeard. And his dad was a pretty despicable character called Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus. And there's loads of stories, horrible stories told about him, like how he once ran over a child deliberately in the street in his chariot. Or even worse, no, not worse, but about as bad. He killed one of his staff when they refused to drink as much as he told them they should. Right? I mean, and these are recounted as, you know-

• 9:52Speaker 04

  In his defence, Friday night is party night, man. You knew that when you took this job.

• 9:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, anyway, happily for Nero, he died when Nero was about three.

• 10:03Speaker 04

  Was his dad in politics? What did his dad do?

• 10:06Speaker 03

  All Roman men are in politics.

• 10:07Speaker 04

  Oh, okay, okay. Never mind, sorry, sorry.

• 10:11Speaker 03

  The key to Nero's success, or one of the keys to Nero's success, though, was that his mum was about as well-connected within the imperial family as you could possibly be. She was a direct descendant of the first emperor Augustus. And her dad had been the most glamorous prince of the ruling house. So that gave Nero a good start in life.

• 10:35Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 10:35Speaker 03

  Even though, as I said, dad died when he was three. That was the same year as his uncle happened to be assassinated. That was the Emperor Caligula. I mean, and new Emperor Claudius comes to the throne. And before too long, we find that mum-

• 10:56Greg Jenner?

  Agrippina.

• 10:57Speaker 03

  Agrippina, oh yes, sorry. And you've done a programme on Agrippina.

• 11:00Greg Jenner?

  We have, we've got an episode on her, so listeners can check back in.

• 11:02Speaker 03

  You should go back and listen to the Agrippina programme. Because mum Agrippina married the Emperor Claudius.

• 11:10Greg Jenner?

  Who was her uncle?

• 11:11Speaker 03

  Oh, oh, oh, yes, yes. And then Claudius adopted Nero, right? And he got a new name, which is why we call him Nero, because he's called Nero Claudius Caesar Drusus Germanicus, right?

• 11:30Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 11:31Speaker 04

  For short.

• 11:32Greg Jenner?

  For short. In the show before, we've done husbands who are brothers, that's in ancient Egypt, we call those brusbans. But now we have uncle husbands, we're thinking maybe uncle?

• 11:44Speaker 04

  How do you feel about uncle? Yeah? Or usbans?

• 11:48Speaker 04

  Unbans? Un, un, oh boy. Monkbans?

• 11:53Speaker 04

  Did, wait, I'm sorry, Claudius was the one with the stutter?

• 11:57Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 11:58Speaker 03

  You've been reading Robert Graves?

• 11:59Speaker 04

  No, I watched the Derek Jacobi series, but I know that Claudius the King is a great read, I will read it someday, but I've never read it.

• 12:06Speaker 03

  I have to say that my early education in Roman history came from that television programme.

• 12:13Greg Jenner?

  It's a classic, isn't it? So Claudius, you know him as the sort of the TV character.

• 12:19Speaker 04

  The nice Derek Jacobi guy.

• 12:20Greg Jenner?

  You think maybe slightly...

• 12:21Speaker 04

  He was a little more sinister?

• 12:23Speaker 03

  There are very nasty statistics about how many senators he had put to death, let me just say that.

• 12:29Speaker 04

  Wow!

• 12:30Greg Jenner?

  But again, a historian, so we can't, I'm not going to judge a historian, you know. Okay, so he's the sort of father-in-law, stepdad to Nero. He's named Nero, he's given Nero his name, he already has a son, but...

• 12:42Speaker 03

  That's going to be a problem.

• 12:43Greg Jenner?

  That's going to be a problem.

• 12:44Speaker 03

  And in due course, there is a problem there.

• 12:47Greg Jenner?

  Okay. And Nero is getting a royal education, because he's now suddenly sort of in line for the throne maybe. So he's getting a fancy royal education, he's got the fanciest of tutors. Have you ever heard of Seneca?

• 12:58Speaker 04

  I have heard of Seneca, he's a big Stoic, yes?

• 13:01Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 13:01Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 13:02Speaker 03

  Yeah. Stoicism has quite a good rep in the modern world.

• 13:09Speaker 04

  Especially right now, there's all this rediscovering Stoicism.

• 13:13Speaker 03

  Exactly, and we kind of think of it as a sort of stiff upper lip, rather kind of, rather positively admirable way of conducting yourself to be a Stoic. Stoic.

• 13:24Greg Jenner?

  I mean, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius are still bestselling authors 2000 years on, right?

• 13:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, I sometimes look at the bestselling charts on, on the online bookstore that we all use, and you can guarantee that Marcus Aurelius is still selling quite a lot more than I am. So, which I think is a tribute to him. But Seneca was quite a famous Stoic and tutor to Nero. One of the things that Stoicism suggests you should do is entirely keep your passions in, right? And passions widely defined, so greed, lust, human wants should be kept in. And, you know, it's fine so far as it goes. The other thing we know about Seneca is he was absolutely loaded.

• 14:08Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, he's the richest man in Rome. Really?

• 14:11Speaker 03

  He's got some Ponzi deals, I think, and scam things on the, you know, the Roman stock exchange. Now somehow, Seneca manages to make that align with his Stoic philosophy. But quite a lot of people have thought he might have been a bit of a hypocrite.

• 14:28Greg Jenner?

  Yeah. So Seneca is teaching Nero. So we have a little, we've got a teenage boy who's learning from one of the great philosophers, but also one of the great political men of the Roman Empire. So it's a good, it's a good upbringing, it's good education. Important question for you here, Patton, how did you celebrate your first shave?

• 14:43Speaker 04

  How did I celebrate my first shave? Oh my gosh, I don't know, I probably went and played some Galaga or something, I don't know. Are we leading up to a really creepy story right now?

• 14:54Greg Jenner?

  Well, not creepy, but kind of interesting.

• 14:55Speaker 04

  Here we go.

• 14:56Greg Jenner?

  But you didn't necessarily celebrate by, I don't know, inviting everyone you know and then having like a games night?

• 15:01Speaker 04

  No, weirdly, no.

• 15:04Speaker 03

  And what, what did you do with what you shaved off?

• 15:06Speaker 04

  I'm sure it went right down the sink.

• 15:08Greg Jenner?

  Okay, I think you've been missing out here, because, actually, Patton, what you should have done, Mary, is throw an enormous games?

• 15:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, first of all, you should have, you should have been a bit older than 13.

• 15:18Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 15:19Speaker 03

  Because Nero, and I think most Roman elite men, usually didn't do their first shave till they were into their twenties.

• 15:29Speaker 04

  But so they grew big beards or they?

• 15:32Speaker 03

  I think if you don't shave, I mean, I'm not an expert. I'm not an expert in male facial hair.

• 15:37Greg Jenner?

  Sure, okay, I'm sporting my own, but you know.

• 15:41Speaker 03

  But I think if you never shave, it's a lot kind of softer and downier than you would imagine. So Nero did what a lot of young posh Romans did. Early twenties, he shaved it off. He then put it all together in a nice little gold box. And he dedicated the clippings to Jupiter. So that was the first thing, but he didn't stop there. Most Roman men, I think, did stop with something like that. Nero didn't. He had a fantastic, or it was claimed to be fantastically lavish, set of so-called youth games, juvenilia, full-on public games, in which lots of things happened that some people felt or reported to feel a bit uncomfortable about.

• 16:24Speaker 03

  He apparently pretty much forced people to act and sing and do performances. And there was, there's the story of one eighty-year-old lady. As I, as I approach my age or ninth decade, I feel more sympathetic to this, was kind of made to do a dance. And of course Nero also performed. And you can see the biases creeping in here, can't you? It was said that he didn't really have a very strong voice. It was all a bit weedy.

• 17:00Speaker 03

  All were stories about how he forced people to do this. That's what, the old lady was made to dance. And it's one of the cases where I often think, well, maybe you could reverse this story. You know, you could tell it in a way that was a lot more favorable. And you could say, look, there was one eighty-year-old lady. She was so excited and so enjoying herself that she got up and she did a dance too. Different impression.

• 17:25Speaker 04

  Sure. Just so depressed I never had a pub party. I did not realize that was a, that was a void in my life.

• 17:33Greg Jenner?

  You could have dedicated it to the gods.

• 17:34Speaker 04

  I could have dedicated so many people.

• 17:36Greg Jenner?

  You could have had a granny come and dance for you.

• 17:42Greg Jenner?

  Okay, so meanwhile, we should talk about Britannicus. This is the, this is the son of Claudius.

• 17:47Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 17:47Greg Jenner?

  Who is the rightful heir to the throne, in theory.

• 17:49Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 17:50Greg Jenner?

  But Agrippina and Nero are starting to just make some moves and...

• 17:54Speaker 03

  You know, it all looks great for Nero, in a way, because he's the descendant of Augustus through his mum. He's the adopted son of the reigning emperor, looks super. The problem is that the reigning emperor's already got his own son.

• 18:09Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, Britannicus.

• 18:10Speaker 03

  And he's called Britannicus, called that to celebrate Claudius's conquest of Britain.

• 18:15Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 18:15Speaker 03

  Names his son specially.

• 18:17Speaker 04

  Oh, it's all making sense now.

• 18:21Speaker 03

  And...

• 18:21Speaker 04

  How big was his pub party? What did he do?

• 18:24Speaker 03

  Well, I think that's one of the sort of problems, because what Agrippi... The story is that Agrippina started to engineer Britannicus being marginalised, right? So I bet he didn't have a great pub party. And he was made to wear sort of childish clothes, rather than posh grown-up clothes. And there's one story about how she sacks his tutor and replaces the tutor. So he's got this nice tutor that he's attached to, and she gets rid of him.

• 18:56Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 18:57Speaker 03

  He's also said to have met a nasty end shortly after this, the tutor, not Britannicus.

• 19:03Greg Jenner?

  Well, Britannicus...

• 19:04Speaker 03

  Well, Britannicus comes to meet a nasty end.

• 19:07Speaker 04

  She booted his tutor?

• 19:08Greg Jenner?

  She bood...

• 19:09Speaker 03

  Yes, that's right.

• 19:10Greg Jenner?

  Tutor booder is, it's a...

• 19:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 19:12Greg Jenner?

  It's a great...

• 19:12Speaker 04

  Tutor his tutor, then shoot him?

• 19:14Speaker 03

  But it all works...

• 19:15Speaker 04

  Can't shoot a booted tutor?

• 19:16Speaker 03

  It all works fine, because Claudius does die.

• 19:21Greg Jenner?

  Die in the past... It's very passive phrasing there, does die.

• 19:24Speaker 03

  I was using it slightly, slightly euphemistically. Claudius dies, and the allegations are that he was poisoned by mush... Poison mushrooms?

• 19:34Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 19:35Speaker 03

  He's at dinner and he's eating his favourite mushroom omelette, or whatever it is. The idea is that the mushrooms actually poisoned mushrooms, although Agrippina had put poison on the mushrooms.

• 19:46Greg Jenner?

  And the doctor's in on it, supposedly.

• 19:48Speaker 03

  In the story, everybody's in on it. And when they try, because you'd think that if somebody's looking a bit ill after eating something, you might make them sick. What the doctor does is put a feather down his throat, so he can puke it up.

• 20:04Speaker 04

  It can do vomiting, yeah.

• 20:05Speaker 03

  But it's a poisoned feather. That is the story.

• 20:08Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 20:09Speaker 03

  The trouble is, as an old teacher of mine always used to say, it's very hard in the Roman world to tell a nasty case of poisoning from a nasty case of peritonitis.

• 20:20Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, people die of stuff, right? People can die of ordinary things.

• 20:24Speaker 03

  They could die of ordinary things, but everybody always wants them to be die of poison.

• 20:30Speaker 04

  But so, but when Claudius died, was this at a moment that was opportune to move Nero into position?

• 20:36Speaker 03

  Of course.

• 20:37Greg Jenner?

  And also Britannicus, very soon after, also dies of poison.

• 20:41Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 20:42Greg Jenner?

  Or, of course, might have been epilepsy.

• 20:44Speaker 03

  An epileptic fit.

• 20:45Greg Jenner?

  Might have been epilepsy.

• 20:46Speaker 03

  But people on that occasion had clear grounds for suspicion because it was said, again, it was said, that after he'd keeled over at dinner, they had a quick burial, but the funeral pyre had already been prepared.

• 21:03Speaker 04

  There are too many clues in this room.

• 21:07Greg Jenner?

  Once Britannicus is out the way, of course, Nero is now the emperor. He's the emperor of Rome, which is an incredible amount of power.

• 21:14Speaker 04

  How old is he when he becomes emperor?

• 21:15Speaker 03

  Sixteen.

• 21:16Speaker 04

  There you, oh, perfect. Great age to run an empire.

• 21:20Greg Jenner?

  I mean, your daughter's, what, sixteen?

• 21:22Speaker 04

  I would not want my daughter having the remote control at this point, let alone an empire.

• 21:28Greg Jenner?

  Fair enough. Teenage emperors, they don't tend to do too well, which is why mum tends to run the show from backstage.

• 21:37Speaker 03

  Well, one story is, and it's not without some evidence, that the power behind the throne was Agrippina.

• 21:44Speaker 04

  Stage mum.

• 21:45Greg Jenner?

  Stage mum.

• 21:46Speaker 03

  And she indeed does appear on the coins.

• 21:50Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 21:51Speaker 03

  With Nero. Now, I have to underline that this was not something entirely new. Roman women connected with the imperial family had appeared on the coins before.

• 22:04Speaker 03

  But there were also rumours of incest with Nero, that she was trying to control him. Again, how do we know? We don't know what happened between Agrippina and Nero, really. And incest is not impossible. But it absolutely fits the kind of, the stereotype stories of Roman women who, when their sons are in position of power, or their husbands, they are trying to control things using rather kind of classic quotes, female wiles. That is what is said. That's not a story which is restricted to the Romans.

• 22:46Speaker 04

  Right.

• 22:47Greg Jenner?

  We should say Nero soon gets tired of mum running the show from behind, you know, backstage mum as he said, and starts to plot her death.

• 22:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:56Greg Jenner?

  He starts to plot the, so Thordius has been murdered perhaps, Brutianus has been murdered perhaps. Mum is now going to be murdered. How do you think, how do you think he goes about that? Now, bear in mind, this is someone who threw a pub party involving, you know, thousands of people singing choral songs. Talk us through how you think he's gonna.

• 23:12Speaker 04

  He throws a poison party where he invites everyone to sing and dance and then there's donkeys. And does he do it, does he throw like a party or a big gala and then try to kill her then?

• 23:27Speaker 03

  Well, you're not so far.

• 23:30Speaker 04

  Does he do a murderpalooza?

• 23:32Speaker 03

  What it shows is how easier it is to invent these stories.

• 23:36Speaker 04

  Oh, okay, oh.

• 23:38Speaker 03

  All our three main historical sources are pretty clear that Nero tries to and eventually does kill her. Suetonius has the most possible attempts. Suetonius records that there were three attempts to poison her, but like many Romans, she, she took a daily dose of antidote in order to kind of, to protect her body against poison.

• 24:08Speaker 04

  This is like, this is like a fish called Wanda, he just keeps trying to kill her.

• 24:12Speaker 03

  No, but it is.

• 24:14Greg Jenner?

  It's like a farce, isn't it?

• 24:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, it is.

• 24:15Greg Jenner?

  It's like a proper silly.

• 24:18Speaker 03

  The next attempt is even more farcical. The idea is that um he arranged for tiles to crash from the roof where she was sleeping, but.

• 24:29Speaker 04

  This is like a Roadrunner cartoon.

• 24:31Speaker 03

  She had been tipped off. Now, you look at both those stories.

• 24:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 24:36Speaker 03

  And you say they are both absolutely untestable, right?

• 24:41Greg Jenner?

  And they're ludicrous, they're so over the top, they're theatrical, collapsing ceiling, poison.

• 24:47Speaker 03

  And she wasn't killed by them, and they say, oh, yeah, he tried to do it, but she'd been tipped off. She was taking antidotes. So what in the end happens?

• 24:58Speaker 04

  What's the one that works?

• 24:59Speaker 03

  Well, the one that works.

• 25:00Greg Jenner?

  Well, the one that fails is obviously most notable is the boat, right?

• 25:03Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, yes, sorry, that's. But that half works, the boat half works.

• 25:10Speaker 04

  He got her to go on a cruise with Leonardo DiCaprio. And the boat hit an iceberg.

• 25:14Speaker 03

  You're very close, that he has a nice dinner with her down the coast of Italy, of Biagio. And he has rigged up a collapsible boat. And when she's out, he sends her home by boat and the boat collapses. But I'm going to tell you off in a minute, Patton, because I've got a sad end to this.

• 25:38Speaker 04

  Oh, sorry.

• 25:39Speaker 03

  That's all right.

• 25:39Speaker 04

  Hang on. Oh, that's horrible.

• 25:41Speaker 03

  She's thrown into the water, but he's forgotten she could swim.

• 25:45Greg Jenner?

  She's a champion swimmer, right?

• 25:47Speaker 03

  Nero didn't remember that mum could swim. Now, what I think is very, well, puts us all in the spot here, is that these are ludicrous stories and they're, and they are hammed up.

• 25:59Greg Jenner?

  They feel like tropes.

• 26:00Speaker 03

  They're hammed up in the sources, you know, so that, you know, they're over the top and unbelievable. You know, I sometimes try to read these and to say, look, there is a temptation to think that this is all very funny. But this is Nero, this is a woman being killed by her son.

• 26:19Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 26:19Speaker 03

  This is, this is matricide.

• 26:21Greg Jenner?

  Mm-hmm.

• 26:21Speaker 03

  And it's entered the Nero tradition as a kind of, oh, do you know how Nero tried to kill his mum? Story.

• 26:29Greg Jenner?

  Yes.

• 26:30Speaker 03

  And there is a terrible little bit of tragedy in the collapsible boat. Because one of Agrippina's servants is with her. And she goes into the water too.

• 26:41Greg Jenner?

  Mm-hmm.

• 26:42Speaker 03

  And she thinks the best way to save herself, because she doesn't realise it's a trick, is to say, I'm Agrippina, save me.

• 26:49Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, save me, I'm the emperor's mum, save me, save me.

• 26:51Speaker 03

  Save me. And of course, that gets her murdered. The crew come over and they kill her.

• 26:56Speaker 04

  I hear, I hear everything you're saying, but I'm sorry, a collapsible boat and mistaken identity is just inherently funny. And I'm sorry to be laughing at this. No, I'm not sorry, it's funny.

• 27:09Speaker 03

  But it's.

• 27:09Speaker 04

  It's insane.

• 27:10Speaker 03

  The story is a game that he, he invents the idea that she was trying to kill him.

• 27:16Greg Jenner?

  Mm-hmm.

• 27:17Speaker 03

  Um, and gets rid of her.

• 27:18Speaker 04

  So he can go, oh, it's self-defence, I'm just trying to protect myself.

• 27:21Speaker 03

  It's self-defence, yeah, self-defence.

• 27:23Greg Jenner?

  And so she, yeah, she is stamped by, you know, and.

• 27:26Speaker 03

  And it is said that he then goes and looks at her body while drinking a glass of wine.

• 27:34Greg Jenner?

  Which is a psychopathic thing to do. That's not funny, that's dark, isn't it?

• 27:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, just occasionally, I think we ought to, I, I like to remember mum and think that she was.

• 27:43Greg Jenner?

  Hundred per cent.

• 27:44Speaker 03

  Not, she was murdered.

• 27:45Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, she had murdered perhaps Claudius and perhaps Britannicus, so you know.

• 27:49Speaker 03

  Maybe she wasn't innocent.

• 27:50Greg Jenner?

  There's no innocence here.

• 27:51Speaker 03

  No, this is a dysfunctional family.

• 27:53Greg Jenner?

  Yes.

• 27:53Speaker 04

  Very.

• 27:54Speaker 03

  Nobody in it is innocent.

• 27:56Greg Jenner?

  All right, let's move on then. So the interesting thing about Nero is he's not the great warrior. Julius Caesar was the great warrior. He was the man on horseback, riding around.

• 28:03Speaker 04

  The conqueror.

• 28:04Greg Jenner?

  The conqueror. Claudius had invaded Britain and defeated Britain, you know, so, so we have conqueror models.

• 28:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:10Greg Jenner?

  But Nero is the theatre kid. He's, he's, he's the show tunes guy.

• 28:14Speaker 04

  Gotta dance.

• 28:18Speaker 03

  This is another place, I think, where we're kind of modern readers and critics are a bit inconsistent because on the one hand, we say, oh, Romans, they went and they massacred everybody. Look at Julius Caesar, he's genocidal maniac. And then we find a Roman emperor who actually likes culture, and we start to laugh at them a bit.

• 28:39Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 28:40Speaker 03

  And to say, well, he was a bit weedy, really, and he was just a theatre kid. So we can't have it both ways.

• 28:47Greg Jenner?

  Oh, I think we can.

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• 31:52Greg Jenner?

  Let's talk about what he does, right?

• 31:54Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 31:55Greg Jenner?

  He performs in plays.

• 31:57Speaker 03

  There really are some funny things coming up here. It's a great age of culture. It is a huge literary renaissance. Not quite clear what Nero's role in that is, but it certainly is. And that he himself, as he tried at his beard games.

• 32:14Greg Jenner?

  You should have beard games. We should bring them on. Where's the marketing here, Mary?

• 32:19Speaker 04

  Your name is right on it. Boom, you own it.

• 32:22Speaker 03

  So he himself performs and it is said that it perhaps wasn't as brilliant as he liked to be told it was. And they're amazing stories.

• 32:33Greg Jenner?

  It's like Florence Foster Jenkins, isn't it? It's sort of like hiring out the theatre and getting all your friends to come.

• 32:41Speaker 03

  But Nero does go, you know, a stage further. So he locks the theatre doors so that once you've got in, so it is said. Um, and that in order to get out, people used to fake their deaths so they could be carried out.

• 32:55Speaker 04

  I do that at my shows, people constantly pretend to fake. I lock the doors, come on. Performer doesn't do that.

• 33:01Greg Jenner?

  Captain audience, I pardon.

• 33:03Speaker 03

  And women gave.

• 33:04Speaker 04

  Is that where the expression, wow, you killed them?

• 33:06Speaker 03

  You killed them.

• 33:07Speaker 04

  Is that where that comes from? Like, man, how'd you do? Killed them.

• 33:10Greg Jenner?

  I killed them.

• 33:10Speaker 03

  Women gave birth, because they couldn't get out. Once they got in and the baby came.

• 33:17Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 33:17Speaker 03

  And they were forced to flatter him. It's said they were forced to say, blimey, you're brilliant, Nero. Now, there is something pretty ludicrous and pretty unpleasant about flattery, but I, again, I think it's a place where we need perhaps to stop and say, well, would we say to Prince William or President Trump or someone like that? After seeing them perform, I think that was a really lousy show. We'd probably say.

• 33:46Greg Jenner?

  I can't imagine Donald Trump doing Hamlet personally, but I don't know, maybe.

• 33:51Speaker 04

  He is an amazing dancer, though. That one, he adds, fantastic.

• 33:55Speaker 03

  Just brilliant. I think.

• 33:57Speaker 04

  It's poetry, it's poetry. I'll say it, it's poetry.

• 34:00Speaker 03

  So we tend not to notice our own flattery and to notice flattery when it's done by others.

• 34:05Greg Jenner?

  That's fair enough. In fairness to Nero, supposedly he stars, he plays starring roles in the play Orestes, in which the character murders his mother.

• 34:12Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 34:13Greg Jenner?

  He plays in Oedipus, in which the character has incestuous relationships, and he plays Hercules. And also, of course, in, he plays women roles, so he plays sort of drag roles. Um, and also there's a play called Can I See, I think, in childbirth, which again.

• 34:27Speaker 03

  Can I see, yes.

• 34:28Greg Jenner?

  Again, incest. So if he's a guy who's like trying to sort of say, I didn't have incestuous relations with my mom. It's quite on the nose to then perform in numerous plays about incest.

• 34:36Speaker 04

  Wow, hiding in plain sight.

• 34:38Greg Jenner?

  Maybe.

• 34:38Speaker 04

  I dare you to call me out.

• 34:40Greg Jenner?

  Maybe.

• 34:41Speaker 03

  Or after dinner gossip, saying, do you know what role Nero's going to play next? Ha ha, Orestes.

• 34:48Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 34:49Speaker 03

  Maybe, maybe. And it's where the boundary is between the gossip and the hiding in plain sight.

• 34:56Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 34:56Speaker 03

  That's very hard to take.

• 34:57Greg Jenner?

  The important thing here, Patton, is that Nero took it on tour. He didn't just play Rome.

• 35:01Speaker 04

  There you go.

• 35:01Greg Jenner?

  He didn't just play Carnegie Hall. He took it on tour. Do you know where he toured?

• 35:06Speaker 04

  I mean, did he tour through every land that they conquered? Or where would he tour?

• 35:11Greg Jenner?

  He went to the most cultured place the Roman emperor could go to. The land of culture, the land of philosophy.

• 35:17Speaker 04

  Greece.

• 35:17Greg Jenner?

  He did.

• 35:18Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 35:19Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, he took it on tour to Greece.

• 35:20Speaker 03

  And he went round.

• 35:21Speaker 04

  And what did they think?

• 35:23Speaker 03

  Well, he went round all the major games, the Olympic Games, the Ismian Games, all the others.

• 35:28Speaker 04

  He was like a side stage at a music festival.

• 35:31Speaker 03

  No.

• 35:32Greg Jenner?

  Main stage.

• 35:32Speaker 04

  No, he was main stage.

• 35:33Speaker 03

  Main stage.

• 35:34Greg Jenner?

  He changed all the events in the Olympics, the things that he liked.

• 35:38Speaker 03

  And he won everything.

• 35:41Speaker 04

  Wow, but so he was a really good athlete, is what you're saying.

• 35:43Greg Jenner?

  Well.

• 35:44Speaker 03

  He is reported even to have won when he kind of fell out of his chariot and didn't finish the course.

• 35:52Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, the story of his chariot race is that he has a 10-horse team chariot. So he's got a chariot pulled by 10 horses, which is way too many chariot. That's way too many horses. You're going to crash with that many horses. But no one said to him, that's a bad idea, sire. You know, there's no, there's no health and safety officer saying, ah, four, four horses is fine. So he crashes in that, but they declare him the winner. He comes home with all his, his garland prizes. He has a big triumph back in Rome.

• 36:15Speaker 03

  Most emperors try to have a triumph for killing people. Do you know what?

• 36:21Greg Jenner?

  The Julius Caesar thing, right?

• 36:22Speaker 03

  The Julius Caesar thing. Claudius has a big triumph for conquering Britain. Triumphs and great procession through Rome, parading your captives and everything. That goes with massacres, you know?

• 36:36Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 36:37Speaker 03

  That's Roman massacres. Now, what Nero does is come home and he has a slightly different sort of triumph. They're going up at the temple of the god of music, Apollo, celebrating his sporting and cultural victories.

• 36:52Greg Jenner?

  He's the Simone Biles of the ancient world.

• 36:55Speaker 03

  And I, you know.

• 36:56Speaker 04

  Best lead in a comedic performance.

• 36:58Speaker 03

  I tend to think that I'm on Nero's side here, possibly.

• 37:03Greg Jenner?

  Okay, alright.

• 37:03Speaker 03

  Maybe if the Romans had spent more time having triumphal processions and celebrating people who were good at arts and culture, the world might possibly have been a nicer

• 37:14Speaker 04

  So you're saying shows like The Voice and British Idol are keeping us from worldwide war and conquest?

• 37:21Speaker 03

  You could take it as so.

• 37:23Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 37:24Speaker 03

  You could take it as so.

• 37:24Speaker 04

  And that's why I did the Great American Baking Show.

• 37:29Speaker 03

  Maybe he's trying to find another way of being an emperor and we just have not got on that his wavelength.

• 37:34Greg Jenner?

  That's interesting that he's trying to create a new model of what power looks like.

• 37:37Speaker 03

  Yes, possi- I mean, I think the jury's out, but that we have to keep that as a possibility.

• 37:42Greg Jenner?

  But, and we're going to do this quickly because it's pretty horrible, and I'm actually going to give a trigger warning to listeners because of the content warning, because this is horrible, the violence, the, we're going to talk about enforced suicide, we're going to talk about domestic violence.

• 37:54Speaker 04

  Patton, don't make any jokes, Patton.

• 37:56Greg Jenner?

  I mean.

• 37:56Speaker 04

  Hang on, Patton, don't make any jokes right now, turn it off.

• 37:58Greg Jenner?

  You know what, absolutely, just like, this bit's just grim, right?

• 38:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, let's do it.

• 38:02Greg Jenner?

  Feel free to just, you know, just go, ugh, what a horrible man. But like, he was brutal to his lovers. He had three wives and horrible man, right?

• 38:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean Nero's first wife is Claudius's natural, the word in inverted commas, daughter, Britannicus's sister.

• 38:20Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 38:21Speaker 03

  A woman called Octavia, and it was a kind of a brilliant move in a way for sewing up Nero's, you know, perfect right to rule.

• 38:30Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 38:31Speaker 03

  And the picture we're given of her is that she was very virtuous, and that what then happens, according to the standard story, is that Nero falls madly in love with somebody else, then in order to get rid of Octavia, accuses her of sterility, because there was no children. Roman men didn't usually think that no children was their problem, it was the whites' problem.

• 38:57Greg Jenner?

  Sure.

• 38:57Speaker 03

  He divorced her, sent her into exile, and then had her killed, and it is then said that her head was sent to Nero's new lover, right? You know, this is about as horrible, I mean, the story is horrible, whatever the truth.

• 39:21Speaker 03

  I'm afraid what happens next to the new woman, a woman called Papaya, right? Is not much better, honestly, because she's supposed to be a beauty. Nero nicked from her previous husband. She does get pregnant, he's wanting an heir. And it's when she gets pregnant that he finally divorces Octavia. Nero and Papaya have a daughter, but she soon dies. She's made a god very quickly, but she dies. Papaya gets pregnant again. And then in what is kind of one of Rome's also horriblest bits of domestic violence, if it's true.

• 40:02Speaker 03

  He comes back after an evening out and he hits her in the stomach while she's pregnant and she dies.

• 40:08Greg Jenner?

  Yeah. Sorry, Patton.

• 40:11Speaker 03

  It is, it's truly, you know, Roman history is, is full of stuff like this and you have to...

• 40:17Speaker 04

  Um, history is full of stuff like this.

• 40:19Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, and people, that's what it is. I mean, it's a cruel, cruel story and, and of course, he does the big, uh, sort of tears and, you know.

• 40:27Speaker 03

  The classic kind of remorse come hypocrisy line. And he says he's so upset, he wants to keep her, so he has her embalmed, not cremated. And then he conveniently gets remarried.

• 40:38Greg Jenner?

  Yeah. To a third wife, Messalina?

• 40:41Speaker 03

  Yes, Stataleia Messalina.

• 40:43Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, I mean, it's not, not very nice.

• 40:45Speaker 04

  Did Messalina survive or?

• 40:47Speaker 03

  She survived him.

• 40:49Speaker 04

  Oh, okay.

• 40:50Speaker 03

  And she actually had more husbands than he'd had.

• 40:52Greg Jenner?

  Fair play, good, good. All right, no, thank you for that. And he also had a lover who was, um, called Sporus.

• 40:59Speaker 03

  In some ways, this is even, it's even worse partly because it is probably not as untypical as we might imagine. Because Nero has an enslaved boy who he thinks looks like Papaya.

• 41:16Greg Jenner?

  Oh, no.

• 41:17Speaker 03

  Looks very like Papaya. Um, he has him castrated and then he makes him his lover.

• 41:25Greg Jenner?

  I mean, there's another person in his life who he, who he's sort of, you know, is another enemy of his. Have you ever heard of Queen Boudica?

• 41:32Speaker 04

  I've heard, um, Boudicca, is that, um, with her breast bear, like, fighting the... She had, she had, she's topless at one point, isn't she?

• 41:44Greg Jenner?

  It might depend on the movie you've been watching, I'm not sure.

• 41:46Speaker 03

  It depends on the statue or the movie.

• 41:48Speaker 04

  Oh, okay, okay.

• 41:49Greg Jenner?

  She's queen of the, she's queen of the Iceni tribe, or the Iceni tribe, who are in Britain. And she leads a rebellion against Rome. And it's a pretty interesting story. Have you ever heard of this story? Is this one new to you?

• 42:01Speaker 04

  Vaguely.

• 42:01Greg Jenner?

  Vaguely, okay. She's kind of, kind of iconic.

• 42:03Speaker 04

  I know she had her boobs out.

• 42:05Greg Jenner?

  Sometimes called Bodesia. You might know her by Bodesia, different name.

• 42:08Speaker 04

  Something like that, yeah, vaguely.

• 42:10Greg Jenner?

  We have an episode on Boudicca, if listeners wanna check it out. It's our first ever episode.

• 42:13Speaker 04

  You said that she was his lover?

• 42:15Greg Jenner?

  No, enemy, enemy. So, so she was the queen of the Iceni in, what, Essex?

• 42:22Speaker 03

  In, yes.

• 42:22Greg Jenner?

  In east, east England.

• 42:24Speaker 03

  East England. And she, um, I mean, she's an example of an appalling consequence of Roman cruelty, really. Her husband, the king, Procytagus, is like many of the tribal kings in Britain, and is a collaborator with Roman. He would have called himself an ally, we might say collaborator. When he dies, he rather cannily makes his heir jointly Nero and his two daughters, thinking that that would somehow kind of sew up the safety of his kingdom. What actually happens is that the Romans in the province come in, they ransack the place, they trash it, and they rape the daughters.

• 43:06Speaker 03

  At that point, Boudicca says, according to the story, "No thanks", and she leads a rebellion. And she's successful for a bit. She destroys London, she destroys St Albans.

• 43:19Greg Jenner?

  Holchester, yeah.

• 43:20Speaker 03

  Holchester, she's, you know, but the governor of the province, a guy called Suetonius Paulinus, who's no relation of the historian, brutally squashes this. I mean, in the end, most rebellions are put down because the rebels just can't withstand the Roman legions. And he completely trashes them. He takes the most violent reprisals against the rebels. And it's, the upshot, and it kind of is strange and slightly more optimistic, because it shows you that, that not all Romans are as nasty as others. There's a whistleblower on the governor's staff.

• 43:55Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 43:55Speaker 03

  And the whistleblower writes to Nero and says, "These reprisals have got to stop." And Nero very soon replaces the governor, replaces Suetonius Paulinus with a guy who has a wonderful name called Petronius Terpilianus, which means lazy sod, basically.

• 44:14Speaker 04

  May, means what?

• 44:15Speaker 03

  Lazy, well, no.

• 44:17Greg Jenner?

  Lazy so and so.

• 44:17Speaker 03

  Lazy so and so.

• 44:18Speaker 04

  Oh, lazy so and so, okay.

• 44:19Speaker 03

  You know, kind of Terpilianus, it means kind of slow, lazy.

• 44:24Speaker 04

  Oh, okay, torpid.

• 44:25Greg Jenner?

  Torpid, yeah, torpid, yeah, Mr. Sluggish Do Nothing.

• 44:28Speaker 03

  Mr. Sluggish, but it was a right move. There'd been this absolute monster of a governor, really wreaking havoc against, okay, the rebellious Britons, but horribly.

• 44:41Greg Jenner?

  Right.

• 44:41Speaker 03

  And to the credit of Nero's administration, whether Nero really had anything to do with it or not, we don't know, they took notice of the whistleblower and they replaced the governor.

• 44:52Greg Jenner?

  So, and what are you making of Nero so far? Obviously, pretty monstrous in terms of his personal life.

• 44:57Speaker 04

  Um, I'm, I'm torn because God, I love the theater. No, um.

• 45:02Greg Jenner?

  Have you ever heard of the Great Fire? Have you heard, have you heard of Nero fiddling while Rome burns?

• 45:07Speaker 04

  I mean, I've heard that phrase.

• 45:08Greg Jenner?

  Well, in what context have you heard the phrase?

• 45:10Speaker 04

  In the context of Rome is burning to the ground, then he is, I've always pictured it as him just alone, just amusing himself, playing the fiddle, which, did they have fiddles back then?

• 45:20Greg Jenner?

  No, they didn't.

• 45:21Speaker 04

  So was he playing a liar, leer, liar or a lute, or what was he doing?

• 45:25Speaker 03

  People say it must, it's a liar.

• 45:27Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 45:27Speaker 03

  It's a liar.

• 45:28Greg Jenner?

  I, I like to imagine.

• 45:29Speaker 04

  The truth is, it's a liar.

• 45:31Greg Jenner?

  He's a, he's a liar, he's a liar, yeah, okay. And the Great Fire of Rome happened.

• 45:37Speaker 04

  Oh, it did?

• 45:38Greg Jenner?

  Did happen.

• 45:39Speaker 04

  What, what do they think started it?

• 45:40Greg Jenner?

  Oh, this is a good question. What do you, okay, who do you think?

• 45:44Speaker 04

  I, again, because of the phrase, "He fiddled while Rome burned," doesn't it, to me, it feels like he set the fire.

• 45:52Greg Jenner?

  Oh.

• 45:53Speaker 04

  Almost like a gangster burning down a nightclub that he wants, wants to get the insurance on.

• 45:58Speaker 03

  You you ought to have been an ancient Roman historian.

• 46:01Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 46:02Speaker 03

  Because you you just got the right mindset for this.

• 46:05Speaker 04

  I'm so close.

• 46:06Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, you're on the money.

• 46:07Speaker 04

  All the time.

• 46:07Speaker 03

  Because, you know, what, one thing we know about Rome is it was a it was a it was a tinderbox that fires happened in the city of Rome.

• 46:18Greg Jenner?

  It was always on fire.

• 46:18Speaker 03

  Always.

• 46:19Greg Jenner?

  Rome was always, at any point, Rome was always on fire.

• 46:21Speaker 04

  Really?

• 46:22Greg Jenner?

  Right, yeah.

• 46:22Speaker 03

  And they didn't have very good firefighting equipment. And the most that they could do in is they did in this case was actually just knock down buildings so that to to have a fire break.

• 46:34Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 46:34Speaker 03

  And nevertheless, the story arose that Nero had started it. So Atticus thinks he started it in order to clear the ground so he could build himself a fantastic new palace, because that's exactly what he did.

• 46:53Speaker 04

  Oh, OK.

• 46:54Greg Jenner?

  That's your mob boss argument, right?

• 46:55Speaker 04

  That's the mob boss thing, yeah.

• 46:56Speaker 03

  You know, the the golden, it's called the Golden House. He built it fast palace, fantastic.

• 47:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, what a shame this city just burned down. I guess I gotta buy a little new palace here.

• 47:08Greg Jenner?

  Hey, boss, did you just take our fire insurance?

• 47:11Speaker 04

  What are they, what are the odds? It's weird. All right, anyway.

• 47:16Speaker 03

  Another historian, Cassius Dio, he he doesn't have that argument so much as saying, look, he just wanted to kind of go down in a blaze, right? He really wanted, as it were, to be like the king of Troy and see his city blaze around him and go down with his city, you know, because it was such a great way to go.

• 47:40Greg Jenner?

  So he wants to sort of cosplay as King Priam in the Iliad.

• 47:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, and the story, the story is.

• 47:45Speaker 04

  King Priam fantasy camp.

• 47:46Speaker 03

  Yeah. The the story really is that he Nero was outside Rome when the fire started, but people said that they'd seen some of Nero's staff going around, you know, setting fire to things, you know, the kind of the, we'd say with a can of oil and some matches, but it was.

• 48:04Greg Jenner?

  Wearing the Nero merch, right? You know, with the kind of, the kind of the football jackets that says, I'm. With the king, yeah, I'm with emperor.

• 48:09Speaker 03

  And he does come back and it is repeatedly reported that he goes and what he does go and watch it from just a little bit, you know, from into safety. And while he does that, he he plays his lion, he sings a song about the destruction of Troy, the city of Troy.

• 48:27Greg Jenner?

  I mean, that's what, yeah, I mean, you know.

• 48:30Speaker 04

  Look, if if you gotta seize the moment, that's such a great moment for the Graham. You got the city burning behind you, you sing that song, man.

• 48:38Speaker 03

  Again, there are things to be said in favor of him and against.

• 48:42Greg Jenner?

  Well, okay, so in the against column, he blames Christians.

• 48:46Speaker 03

  Blamed the Christians. And he punished that there were, there was already a relatively small sect of Christians in Rome. Roman pagan writers thought it was perfectly fine to trash the Christians.

• 48:59Greg Jenner?

  So they're fine with this, Suetonius, Tacitus, they're like, yeah, good, blame the Christians.

• 49:03Speaker 03

  The punishments that he meted out were so awful that it was said that there was even pity for the Christians because of the horrible ways in which he put them to death. So basically Christians were were partly fair game in this kind of PR campaign. But Nero is said to have gone too far.

• 49:24Speaker 04

  Is this the, like, throwing Christians to the lions or?

• 49:28Speaker 03

  It comes, that comes a bit later, but but in the Christian tradition, it's Nero is said to be the first persecutor of the Christians. And Nero is a kind of the devil incarnate in Christian teaching. And it goes back to this, it goes back to him blaming them for the fire of Rome and punishing them horribly.

• 49:48Greg Jenner?

  There is a genuine conspiracy against him. There's a thing called the Pisonian conspiracy.

• 49:52Speaker 04

  This conspiracy of people hating me because I suck.

• 49:56Greg Jenner?

  Arguably justified, right, this conspiracy?

• 49:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, it comes after the fires, the year after the fire.

• 50:02Greg Jenner?

  In sixty five C E, this one, yeah?

• 50:03Speaker 03

  And it's in sixty five C E and tens, fifty odd people are charged with being in a conspiracy to overthrow Rome. Overthrow Nero, not Rome.

• 50:13Greg Jenner?

  Well, he is Rome, he is Rome.

• 50:15Speaker 03

  What they want to do is they want to have a new emperor. They've got a guy called Piso as a as a potential candidate and replace Nero. Now, why it's important in the Neronian story is that Seneca the tutor.

• 50:29Speaker 03

  Was said to be implicated in it. So Nero's tutor by this stage has turned against him and he is forced to suicide because that's a standard form of Roman execution.

• 50:41Greg Jenner?

  So Seneca is implicated, nineteen people are executed, thirteen are banished, fifty one people are charged, Nero crushes the conspiracy, but three years later, another one comes along.

• 50:52Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 50:52Greg Jenner?

  Because he has, he's alienated enough people now that people are like, well, look, the first, I mean, he tried five times to murder his mum, you know, if at first he does succeed.

• 51:00Speaker 04

  They learn from him, you gotta keep showing up and trying.

• 51:03Greg Jenner?

  Exactly.

• 51:03Speaker 04

  Can't give up.

• 51:04Greg Jenner?

  And they don't collapse the ceiling over his head and they don't send him an unthinkable boat.

• 51:07Speaker 03

  No, this was a military, this was, you know, a military conspiracy, it was a military revolt.

• 51:12Greg Jenner?

  This is a coup, right?

• 51:13Speaker 03

  It's a coup, it's basically a coup and it's not trying to kind of, it's not a few of the kind of not terribly effective elite like Seneca and his friends doing it in Rome. This starts in the provinces and Nero is, sees the game is up. There's fighting, but in the end it's clear that, that people are turning away from Nero to the rebels. And what he does is he goes out to a suburban villa and he realises he has to kill himself.

• 51:48Greg Jenner?

  His Praetorian guard have deserted him, right? His bodyguard have switched sides to this guy Galva who's coming in.

• 51:54Speaker 03

  Everybody is doing, everybody is deserting him. And he goes out and there's a pathetic, they're very, really pathetic stories, again, believable or not, I don't know, about how he was hopeless even in when he came to try to die. And he has some very odd last words.

• 52:11Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, what do you think his last words are, Patton?

• 52:12Speaker 04

  Um, tell me his last words or what his supposed last words were.

• 52:17Speaker 03

  He's got more than one lot, I'm afraid. But the famous one is, qualis artefex perio? What an artist, an artefex, what an artist is dying when I die.

• 52:32Greg Jenner?

  Some proper ego there, Patton.

• 52:33Speaker 04

  That's some confidence, my friend.

• 52:35Greg Jenner?

  Isn't it?

• 52:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 52:36Greg Jenner?

  With your last gesture to say, "The world is about to lose a great artist here."

• 52:40Speaker 04

  That is ridiculous. I gotta remember that for when I die. Hang on, let me write that down. I'm gonna say that when I die. Alright, go ahead.

• 52:45Greg Jenner?

  So, his famous last works are, "What an artist in me dies, he is assisted in his death, and dies aged..." How old do you think he is, Patton?

• 52:55Speaker 04

  In his 40s.

• 52:56Greg Jenner?

  He's 30.

• 52:58Speaker 04

  Whoa!

• 52:59Greg Jenner?

  What a life, eh?

• 53:00Speaker 04

  Well, all the Beatles were 30 when they broke up, so he did the same thing, man. He got it all in quick.

• 53:05Greg Jenner?

  I feel like Paul McCartney was slightly less monstrous than Nero.

• 53:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, if only Nero had said, "The love you take is equal to the love you make." I don't know. I mean, good lord.

• 53:17Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 53:17Speaker 04

  30?

• 53:18Greg Jenner?

  He was 30 years old.

• 53:19Speaker 04

  He did all that in 30.

• 53:20Greg Jenner?

  He did.

• 53:20Speaker 04

  God, I'm so lazy. I gotta do more with my life.

• 53:24Greg Jenner?

  I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I don't know. Personally, I wouldn't, like, you know, mirror yourself against Nero. He's not one of the great emperors in terms of modeling.

• 53:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 53:32Greg Jenner?

  But it's a hell of a life, right? So, that's the end of Nero's life. He died in 68 CE.

• 53:38Speaker 04

  The Nuance Window!

• 53:44Greg Jenner?

  Time now for the Nuance Window. This is where Patton and I sit quietly for two minutes while Professor Mary takes to the stage and sings for us, perhaps, I don't know. Unlike Nero, she is not locking us into the theatre.

• 53:56Speaker 03

  Oh, you wait, you wait and see.

• 53:58Greg Jenner?

  We're here winningly. So, my stopwatch is ready. Mary, take it away, Professor Bird.

• 54:01Speaker 03

  Okay, I've got two mini nuances. And the first one picks up a theme that we've been, we've been playing with, actually, quite often in our discussion. Tried to pull that together. And it's what I suppose I call the T-word. And it's T for truth, right? Are the kind of amazing, intriguing, memorable, brilliantly evocative stories that we read about Nero, are they actually true, with a capital T? Now- We can't actually, literally, know that. A long time ago, I used to really worry about that. But I've sort of become a post-truth person now.

• 54:42Speaker 03

  Because what I think is really important about these stories, and they are important, is that the fact that the Romans told them about their emperors. And they sometimes told the same stories about different emperors. And in a way, it was their way, I think, telling these stories, thinking them up, construction, was their way of getting their head around what the power of autocrats was, what you might fear about them, what they might do to you. And so, in a way, I think their way of getting inside the head of the Romans to think about how the Romans thought about emperors. My second nuance is that it's easier to complain about the gaps in our knowledge

• 55:24Speaker 03

  about emperors like this than to celebrate what we know about Nero. And, you know, I'm guilty of that. I'm complaining about what we don't know all the time. But really, we should be turning this on its head, I think. And we should say, what is amazing is that 2,000 years on, we know so much about Nero. Not just in the amazing writing that we've been looking at, but we can still hold the coins of Nero. We can still visit Nero's golden house, or at least part of it. We can walk through Nero's corridors and we can see where he sat down or lay down to dinner. So my message to people is, if you're in Rome, go and see Nero's golden house. Because you still can.

• 56:08Greg Jenner?

  You still can. Pat, are you going to go and see Nero's golden house?

• 56:11Speaker 04

  I'm leaving right now. I'm going. I'm gonna go get a taxi.

• 56:14Greg Jenner?

  It's interesting, isn't it? The idea of, if these are scurrilous rumours, if these are kind of monstrous lies, they still tell us about the Romans.

• 56:21Speaker 04

  No, that, I love that aspect of it. You can tell what their daily lives and also what their, it's almost like you can tell the psychological scars that are left on a population by almost the nursery rhymes and myths that they tell later on, if those things are, you know, like how Dracula is really just about how terrible. terrified they were of foreigners coming in, they just couldn't handle it. Victorian England was so wound up. So yeah, this is them. You know, the emperors were bad enough as they were, but it had such an emotional impact on them that all the stories got blown up even crazier.

• 56:56Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 56:56Speaker 03

  And historians ought to be interested in things that aren't true as well as things that are.

• 57:00Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 57:01Greg Jenner?

  Yes.

• 57:01Speaker 04

  Because the things that aren't true were still made up by somebody for a reason.

• 57:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly.

• 57:07Greg Jenner?

  So what do you know now?

• 57:14Greg Jenner?

  Time now for the So What Do You Know Now? This is our quickfire quiz for Patton.

• 57:17Speaker 04

  Let me look at my notes.

• 57:18Greg Jenner?

  To see how much he's learned. Patton, tell me about your notes. They are extensive. I can see.

• 57:23Speaker 04

  Oh my gosh. I mean, it's just they, I've written them so, I took so many notes that that actually just looks like lines on a blank page. That's how, that's how small I had to write them.

• 57:33Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, your font is so, so beautifully accurate that it's actually imperceptible to the eye. Yeah, okay. So no notes at all. Let's see if it's gone in. Okay, 10 questions for you. Question one, what was the name of Emperor Nero's mother?

• 57:47Speaker 04

  Oh, Agrippina?

• 57:49Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, very good. Well done. Agrippina the Younger. Question two, through what method did Nero's uncle, Emperor Claudius, and stepbrother Britannicus both allegedly die?

• 57:58Speaker 04

  They were poisoned by different modes of poison.

• 58:03Greg Jenner?

  Very good. Mushroom or whatever.

• 58:04Speaker 04

  It would have been mushrooms every time. That would have been a little.

• 58:07Greg Jenner?

  Question three, who was Nero's famously stoic tutor and advisor, who he later turned against?

• 58:11Speaker 04

  That would be Seneca.

• 58:13Greg Jenner?

  It would be Seneca. Very good. Question four, name one of Nero's three wives.

• 58:18Speaker 04

  Oh dear God. Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. I can't remember the name.

• 58:22Greg Jenner?

  It begins with O?

• 58:24Speaker 04

  I, Olivia? I don't know. I'm so sorry. I'm telling you right now, I'm drawing a blank.

• 58:30Greg Jenner?

  It's all right. Octavia, Papua, and Messalina.

• 58:33Speaker 03

  Most people forget the names of Emperor's wives.

• 58:35Greg Jenner?

  Question five, what did Nero do after his first shave?

• 58:40Speaker 04

  Well, what didn't he do? Have he got an hour? He put all his shavings in a little gold box and dedicated it to Jupiter and then he threw basically a raging kegger where there was singing and basically a pub party. And I'm, and I'm, can I just say, I'm so glad that I got Dame Mary Beard, historian emeritus, to say pub party. That is going to be on the top of some of my, the next time I'm on the show, I want to be Grammy and Emmy award winning and maker of Mary Beard saying the term pub party, Patton Oswalt.

• 59:17Greg Jenner?

  Done. Question six, Nero still won the Olympic chariot race despite falling out. How many horses were pulling him?

• 59:23Speaker 04

  He had 10. That was a 10 horsepower chariot, baby.

• 59:28Greg Jenner?

  Way too many horses.

• 59:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 59:29Greg Jenner?

  Yep, he crashed out, but he still won. Question seven, which queen led the British revolt of the Iceni against Nero in Britain?

• 59:36Speaker 04

  That would be Boudica.

• 59:37Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, Boudica or Boudassia or some story.

• 59:39Speaker 04

  Boudassia, yeah.

• 59:40Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, very good. Question eight, name one cause given by classical authors for how the great fire of Rome allegedly started. Conspiracy theory, please.

• 59:48Speaker 04

  One of the alleged thing, and it's the third one, because it's the one I thought of, is it was started by Nero himself in order to, A, build his big new gold palace, and also have someone be able to persecute Christians.

• 1:00:01Greg Jenner?

  Yep, well, that's two. Very good. Well done.

• 1:00:03Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:00:03Greg Jenner?

  Question nine, what were Nero's last words?

• 1:00:07Speaker 04

  Oh, his last words were, it's better to burn out than, no, his last words were, what a great artist dies in me.

• 1:00:17Greg Jenner?

  Very good. Well done. Very good. Question 10.

• 1:00:20Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 1:00:20Greg Jenner?

  How old was Nero when he died?

• 1:00:22Speaker 04

  Dude was 30.

• 1:00:25Greg Jenner?

  He was very much 30.

• 1:00:26Speaker 04

  30.

• 1:00:27Greg Jenner?

  30. Yeah, young at 30.

• 1:00:29Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 1:00:29Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, very good. And I'm going to give you a bonus question, because see if you can get 11 out, see if you can get 10 out of 11.

• 1:00:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, okay, okay.

• 1:00:36Greg Jenner?

  Okay, bonus question.

• 1:00:37Speaker 04

  All right.

• 1:00:37Greg Jenner?

  Which country did he tour in the 60s?

• 1:00:40Speaker 04

  Uh, he did a tour, much like Elton John in the 80s, he did a tour of Greece.

• 1:00:44Greg Jenner?

  I'm giving you 10 out of 11. There you go.

• 1:00:46Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 1:00:47Greg Jenner?

  Perfect score. You earned it. You deserved it. Fantastic. Thank you, Patton, and thank you, of course, Professor Mary Beard. If you want more from Patton, of course, we have our episode on the American War of Independence, which was an absolute hoot. And for more Nero context, if you want to put him in context, we have obviously the episode on Agrippina, his mum. We have the episode on Boudicca, his mortal enemy, and we have an episode on the rise of Julius Caesar. In some ways, a model, in other ways, not. They're all very interesting episodes. And remember, if you've enjoyed the podcast, please share the show with friends. Subscribe to You're Dead to Me on BBC Sounds to hear new episodes 28 days earlier than anywhere else. And if you're outside the UK, you can listen at bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts. But I'd just like to say a huge thank you to our guests. In history corner,

• 1:01:31Greg Jenner?

  we had the magnificent Professor Mary Beard. Thank you, Mary.

• 1:01:34Speaker 03

  Total pleasure.

• 1:01:35Speaker 04

  Yay.

• 1:01:36Greg Jenner?

  And in comedy corner, we had the outstanding, what, pub games inventor, Patton Oswalt.

• 1:01:40Speaker 04

  No pub party, sir.

• 1:01:42Greg Jenner?

  Sorry.

• 1:01:43Speaker 04

  Pub games. We're not animals here. Please.

• 1:01:46Greg Jenner?

  We had Patton Oswalt. Thank you, Patton.

• 1:01:48Speaker 04

  Thanks for having me on again. I really appreciate it.

• 1:01:50Greg Jenner?

  And to you, lovely listener, join me next time as we reassess another historical figure and possibly decide they're just as bad as we thought. But for now, I'm off to go and launch my own podcast awards in Greece that only I can win. Bye.

• 1:02:06Greg Jenner?

  You're Dead to Me is a BBC Studios production for BBC Radio 4.

• 1:02:15Speaker 05

  Political language can seem archaic.

• 1:02:18Speaker 03

  It's like the light from one of those stars that actually died.

• 1:02:20Speaker 05

  Sometimes bamboozling.

• 1:02:22Speaker 03

  It's a theme park with a five-foot log flume from one thought to another.

• 1:02:26Speaker 05

  And very often beyond words.

• 1:02:28Greg Jenner?

  I don't know how to describe the language I use.

• 1:02:31Speaker 05

  I'm Amadou Nschi. I'm all reset and turbocharged to stress, test, destruction, used and abused buzzwords and phrases from the world of politics. I come with a dazzling array of guest presenters and I'll be exploring the verbal tricks of the political trade, the intentions behind them, and the effect they have on all of us. The new series of Strong Message here with me. Amanda Yonouchi from BBC Radio 4. Listen now on BBC Sounds.

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