Pod Insights You're Dead to Me Emperor Nero (Radio Edit) About this episode 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.
This is a radio edit of the original podcast episode. For the full-length version, please look further back in the feed.
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
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.
0:06 Speaker 01 Hey, I'm Niall Rogers. This fall, I'll be driving across the country, meeting some of today's coolest and most fascinating artists. We'll explore the stories before the moments that changed everything. Because every musician remembers the moment where it all began. Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series, on the iHeart Radio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.
0:38 Speaker 02 OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.
1:11 Greg 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 Pompey: 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 Pompey: New Secrets Revealed, and she's the co-host of the acclaimed Instant Classics podcast. It's only Professor Mary Beard. Welcome, Mary.
1:52 Speaker 04 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.
1:59 Greg 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 Including Ratatouille, Ghostbusters Frozen Empire and Secret Life of Pets 2. Or you've caught him on the celebrity edition of the American Great British Baking Show. 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.
2:27 Speaker 05 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.
2:34 Greg Jenner? Ah, okay, right. Nero.
2:37 Speaker 05 Hang on, I don't have a spell check on my phone. That might, that might explain a lot.
2:42 Greg Jenner? Okay.
2:43 Speaker 05 Sorry.
2:43 Greg Jenner? That's all right. Last time out, we did the American War of Independence and you knew quite a lot.
2:47 Speaker 05 I actually did. I didn't know that I knew so much.
2:49 Greg 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?
2:58 Speaker 05 Uh, not at all. Those literally and figuratively, I'm not comfortable in that world.
3:04 Greg Jenner? Okay. Do you know the name Emperor Nero?
3:07 Speaker 05 I know, 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.
3:15 Greg Jenner? So, what do you know?
3:22 Greg 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 Ostenov 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. 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? Let's find out. Right. Professor Mary, Nero was born nearly 2000 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?
4:07 Speaker 04 Well, there's quite a lot of sources around Nero. Where the thinner pickings are found is if you're looking for a standard ancient account of Nero A to Z.
4:22 Speaker 04 We've got some. They agree on one thing, that he wasn't a good thing, right? That's it. They are quite, we call euphemically, they're a bit hostile.
4:30 Greg Jenner? The reviews are in.
4:31 Speaker 04 The reviews are in, and they are not good ones.
4:34 Greg Jenner? So Nero's childhood, let's get to the actual guy we're talking about. He's not called Nero at birth. What was he called? When was he born? What's his childhood like?
4:42 Speaker 04 Well, he's in a dysfunctional family, I think would be the our way of putting it. He's born in thirty-seven CE, and his name is actually then Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, which means bronze beard. And his-
4:57 Greg Jenner? He had a bronze beard when he was a baby?
5:00 Speaker 04 That was what we would call his surname.
5:02 Greg Jenner? Oh.
5:02 Speaker 04 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 horrible stories told about him, like how he once ran over a child deliberately in the street in his chariot. Happily, perhaps for Nero, he died when Nero was about three.
5:27 Greg Jenner? Was his dad in politics? What did his dad do?
5:29 Speaker 04 All Roman men are in politics.
5:31 Greg Jenner? Oh, okay, okay. Never mind, sorry, sorry.
5:34 Speaker 04 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 to 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.
5:58 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
5:59 Speaker 04 Even though dad died when he was three, that was the same year as his uncle happened to be assassinated. That was the Emperor Caligula. And new Emperor Claudius comes to the throne, and before too long, we find that mum-
6:18 Greg Jenner? Agrippina.
6:20 Speaker 04 Agrippina, oh yes, sorry. And you've done a programme on Agrippina.
6:22 Greg Jenner? We have, we've got an episode on her, so listeners can check back in.
6:25 Speaker 04 You should go back and listen to the Agrippina programme, because Mum Agrippina married the Emperor Claudius.
6:32 Greg Jenner? Who was her uncle?
6:33 Speaker 04 Oh, yes, yes.
6:36 Speaker 04 And then Claudius adopted Nero, and he got a new name, which is why we call him Nero, because he's called Nero Claudius Caesar Drusus Germanicus, right?
6:50 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
6:51 Speaker 05 For short.
6:52 Greg Jenner? For short. In the show before, we've done husbands who are brothers, we call those brusbons.
6:57 Speaker 05 Brusbons.
6:58 Greg Jenner? But now we have uncle husbands, we're thinking maybe hunkle? How do you feel about hunkle?
7:04 Speaker 05 Hunkles?
7:05 Greg Jenner? Yeah?
7:06 Speaker 05 Or husbands?
7:07 Greg Jenner? Unbuns? Okay, so he's the sort of father-in-law, stepdad to Nero, he's given Nero his name, he already has a son, but...
7:16 Speaker 04 That's going to be a problem.
7:17 Greg Jenner? That's going to be a problem.
7:18 Speaker 04 And in due course, there is a problem there.
7:21 Greg Jenner? 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 duties. Have you ever heard of Seneca?
7:30 Speaker 05 I have heard of Seneca, he's a big stoic, yes?
7:34 Greg 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 upbringing, it's good education.
7:45 Speaker 04 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.
8:01 Greg Jenner? Yeah, Britannicus.
8:02 Speaker 04 And he's called Britannicus, call that to celebrate Claudius's conquest of Britain, so names his son specially.
8:08 Speaker 05 Oh!
8:09 Speaker 04 The story is that Agrippina started to engineer Britannicus being marginalised, right? And Claudius does die.
8:19 Greg Jenner? Very passive phrasing there, does die.
8:21 Speaker 04 I was using it slightly euphemistically. Claudius dies, and the allegations are that he was poisoned by mush, poison, mushrooms.
8:32 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
8:33 Speaker 04 He's at dinner and he's eating his favourite mushroom omelette, or whatever it is, the idea is that the mushrooms are actually poison mushrooms, all that Agrippina had put poison on the mushrooms.
8:43 Greg Jenner? And the doctor's in on it supposedly.
8:45 Speaker 04 That is the story.
8:46 Speaker 05 Wow.
8:48 Speaker 04 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.
8:59 Greg Jenner? Yeah. People die of stuff, right? People can die of ordinary things.
9:02 Speaker 04 They could die of ordinary things, but everybody always wants them to be die of poison.
9:08 Speaker 05 But so, but when Claudius died, was this at a moment that was opportune to move Nero into position?
9:15 Speaker 04 Of course.
9:15 Greg Jenner? And also Britannicus, very soon after, also dies of poison.
9:19 Speaker 05 Whoa!
9:20 Greg Jenner? Or, of course, might have been epilepsy.
9:23 Speaker 04 An epileptic fit.
9:24 Greg Jenner? Might have been epilepsy.
9:24 Speaker 04 But people on that occasion had clear grounds for suspicion because it was said that after he'd keeled over at dinner, they had a quick burial, but the funeral pyre had already been prepared.
9:40 Speaker 05 There are too many clues in this room.
9:45 Greg 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.
9:51 Speaker 05 How, how old is he when he becomes emperor?
9:52 Speaker 04 Sixteen.
9:53 Speaker 05 There you, oh, perfect. Great age to run an empire.
9:57 Greg Jenner? I mean, your daughter's, what, sixteen?
9:59 Speaker 05 I would not want my daughter having the remote control at this point, let alone an empire.
10:05 Greg Jenner? Fair enough.
10:06 Speaker 05 For a god.
10:07 Greg Jenner? Teenage emperors, they don't tend to do too well, which is why mum tends to run the show from backstage.
10:13 Speaker 04 Well, one story is, and it's not without some evidence, that the power behind the throne was Agrippina.
10:21 Greg Jenner? We should say Nero soon gets tired of mum running the show and starts to plot her death.
10:27 Speaker 04 Yeah.
10:28 Greg Jenner? He starts to plot the, so, so Claudius has been murdered perhaps, Britannicus has been murdered perhaps, mum is now going to be murdered. Talk us through how you think he's gonna...
10:37 Speaker 05 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?
10:51 Speaker 04 Well, you're not so far.
10:54 Speaker 05 Does he do a murderpalooza?
10:57 Speaker 04 What it shows is how easy it is to invent these stories.
11:01 Speaker 05 Oh, okay, oh.
11:03 Speaker 04 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 took a daily dose of antidote in order to kind of to protect her body against poison.
11:32 Speaker 05 A fish called Wanda, he'd keep trying to kill her.
11:35 Greg Jenner? No, but it is, it's like a farce, isn't it?
11:37 Speaker 05 Yeah, it is.
11:38 Speaker 04 The next attempt is even more farcical. The idea is that he arranged for tiles to crash from the roof where she was sleeping, but
11:48 Speaker 05 This is like a Roadrunner cartoon.
11:50 Speaker 04 She had been tipped off. 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 in the sources, you know, so that they're over the top and unbelievable. There is a temptation to think that this is all very funny, but this is a woman being killed by her son.
12:13 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
12:14 Speaker 04 This is matricide, right?
12:16 Greg Jenner? And in the end, she is murdered.
12:17 Speaker 04 And in the end, he sends a hit squad.
12:20 Greg 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 running around.
12:28 Speaker 05 The conqueror.
12:29 Greg Jenner? The conqueror. Claudius had invaded Britain and defeated Britain, you know, so we have conqueror models.
12:34 Speaker 04 Yeah.
12:34 Greg Jenner? But Nero is the theater kid. He's, he's, he's the show tunes guy.
12:39 Speaker 05 Gotta dance.
12:41 Greg Jenner? Let's talk about what he does, right?
12:43 Speaker 05 Okay.
12:44 Greg Jenner? He performs in plays.
12:45 Speaker 04 It's a great age of culture. It is a huge literary renaissance.
12:49 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
12:50 Speaker 04 Not quite clear what Nero's role in that is, but it certainly is. So he himself performs. It is said that perhaps wasn't as brilliant as he liked to be told it was. And there are amazing stories.
13:04 Greg Jenner? It's like Florence Foster Jenkins, isn't it? It's sort of, it's sort of like hiring, hiring out the theatre and getting all your friends to come.
13:11 Speaker 04 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. And that in order to get out, people used to fake their deaths so they could be carried out.
13:24 Speaker 05 I do that at my shows. People constantly pretend to fake. I lock the doors. Come on. The performer doesn't do that.
13:30 Greg Jenner? Captain audience, I promise.
13:31 Speaker 05 Yeah, yeah.
13:32 Speaker 04 And women gave.
13:34 Speaker 05 Is that where the expression, wow, you killed them? Is that where that comes from? Like, man, how'd you do? Killed them.
13:39 Greg Jenner? I killed them.
13:40 Speaker 04 Women gave birth.
13:41 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
13:42 Speaker 04 Because they couldn't get out once they got in and the baby came.
13:46 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
13:46 Speaker 04 And they were forced to flatter him. It's said they were, they were forced to say, blimey, you're brilliant, Nero. Now, yeah, 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.
14:14 Greg Jenner? Fair enough. In Ernesto Nero, supposedly he stars, he plays starring roles in the play Orestes, in which the character murders his mother.
14:21 Speaker 05 Okay.
14:22 Greg 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. And also there's a play called Can I See, I think, in childbirth, which again.
14:34 Speaker 04 Can I see, yes.
14:35 Greg Jenner? Again, incest. So if he's a guy who's like trying to sort of say, I didn't have incestuous relationships with my mum.
14:39 Speaker 05 Yeah.
14:40 Greg Jenner? It's quite on the nose to then perform in numerous plays about incest.
14:43 Speaker 05 Wow, hiding in plain sight.
14:45 Greg Jenner? Maybe.
14:45 Speaker 05 I dare you to call me out.
14:47 Greg Jenner? Maybe.
14:48 Speaker 04 It's where the boundary is between the gossip and the hiding in plain sight that's very hot.
14:53 Greg Jenner? The important thing here, Patton, is that Nero took it on tour. Do you know where he toured?
14:58 Speaker 05 I mean, did he tour through every land that they conquered or where would he tour?
15:03 Greg Jenner? He went to the most cultured place that a Roman emperor could go to, the land of culture, the land of philosophy.
15:09 Speaker 05 Greece.
15:10 Greg Jenner? He did.
15:10 Speaker 05 Oh.
15:11 Greg Jenner? Yeah, he took it on tour to Greece.
15:13 Speaker 04 And he went round.
15:14 Speaker 05 And what did they think?
15:15 Speaker 04 Well, he went around all the major games, the Olympic Games, the Ismian Games, all the others.
15:20 Greg Jenner? He changed all the events in the Olympics, the things that he liked.
15:24 Speaker 04 And he won everything.
15:27 Speaker 05 Wow, so he was a really good athlete, is what you're saying?
15:29 Greg Jenner? Well.
15:30 Speaker 04 He is reported even to have won when he kind of fell out of his chariot and didn't finish the course.
15:37 Greg Jenner? Yeah, so he crashes in that, but they declare him the winner. He comes home with all his garden prizes. He has a big triumph back in Rome.
15:44 Speaker 04 I'm on Nero's side here, possibly.
15:47 Greg Jenner? Okay, alright.
15:47 Speaker 04 Maybe, 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 place.
15:59 Speaker 05 So you're saying shows like The Voice and British Idol are keeping us from worldwide war and conquest?
16:06 Speaker 04 You could take it as so.
16:08 Speaker 05 Yes.
16:08 Speaker 04 You could take it as so.
16:09 Speaker 05 And that's why I did the Great American Baking Show.
16:13 Speaker 04 Maybe he's trying to find another way of being an emperor and we just have not got on that, his wavelength.
16:19 Greg Jenner? That's interesting, that he's trying to create a new model of what power looks like.
16:21 Speaker 04 Yes, possibly. I mean, I think the jury's out, but we have to keep that as a possibility.
16:26 Greg 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 they're 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.
16:39 Speaker 05 Patton, don't make any jokes, Patton. Hang on, Patton, don't make any jokes right now.
16:42 Greg Jenner? He was brutal to his lovers. He had three wives and horrible man, right?
16:48 Speaker 04 Yeah, Nero's first wife is Claudius's natural, as it were, inverted commas, daughter, Britannicus's sister. A woman called Octavia. And it was a kind of a brilliant move in a way for sowing up Nero's, you know, perfect right to rule. 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. He divorced her, sent her into exile, and then had her killed.
17:29 Speaker 04 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.
17:44 Speaker 04 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 one of Rome's also horriblest bits of domestic violence, if it's true, he comes back after an evening out and he hits her in the stomach while she's pregnant.
18:29 Speaker 04 And she dies.
18:30 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
18:31 Speaker 04 And then he conveniently gets remarried.
18:32 Greg Jenner? Yeah. To a third wife, Messalina?
18:35 Speaker 04 Yes, to Attila Messalina.
18:37 Greg Jenner? Yeah, I mean, it's not, not very nice.
18:39 Speaker 05 Did Messalina survive or?
18:41 Speaker 04 She survived him.
18:43 Speaker 05 Oh.
18:43 Speaker 04 And she actually had more husbands than he'd had.
18:46 Greg Jenner? Good, good, all right, thank you for that. So what are you making of Nero so far? Obviously pretty monstrous in terms of his personal life.
18:54 Speaker 05 Um, I'm, I'm torn because God, I love the theater. No.
18:59 Greg Jenner? Have you ever heard of the great fire? Have you heard, have you heard of Nero fiddling while Rome burns?
19:03 Speaker 05 I mean, I've heard that phrase.
19:05 Greg Jenner? Well, in what context have you heard the phrase?
19:06 Speaker 05 In the context of Rome is burning to the ground and he is, I've always pictured it as him just alone, just amusing himself.
19:14 Greg Jenner? And the great fire of Rome happened.
19:16 Speaker 05 Oh, it did.
19:17 Greg Jenner? Did happen.
19:18 Speaker 05 What, what do they think started it?
19:19 Greg Jenner? Oh, this is a good question. What do you, okay, who do you think?
19:23 Speaker 05 I, again, because of the phrase, he fiddled while Rome burned, doesn't it? To me, it feels like he set the fire. Almost like a gangster burning down a nightclub that he wants, wants to get the insurance on.
19:37 Speaker 04 You you ought to have been an ancient Roman historian.
19:40 Speaker 05 Yeah.
19:41 Speaker 04 Because you you just got the right mindset for this.
19:45 Speaker 05 I'm so close.
19:45 Greg Jenner? Yeah, you're on the money.
19:46 Speaker 05 All the time.
19:47 Speaker 04 Because one thing we know about Rome is it was it was a tinderbox that fires happened in the city of Rome.
19:54 Greg Jenner? It was always on fire.
19:55 Speaker 04 Always.
19:55 Greg Jenner? Rome was always, at any point, Rome was always on fire.
19:58 Speaker 05 Really?
19:58 Greg Jenner? Right, yeah.
19:59 Speaker 04 And nevertheless, the story arose that Nero had started it. Suetonius 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.
20:18 Speaker 05 That's okay.
20:18 Greg Jenner? That's your mob boss argument, right?
20:20 Speaker 05 That's the mob boss thing, yeah.
20:21 Speaker 04 You know, the golden, it's called the golden house. He built it, fast palace, fantastic.
20:27 Speaker 05 Yeah, what a shame this city just burned down. I guess I gotta buy a new palace here.
20:33 Greg Jenner? Hey boss, did you just take our fire insurance?
20:35 Speaker 05 What are the, what are the odds? It's weird. All right, anyway.
20:39 Speaker 04 But 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. Again, there are things to be said in favor of him and against.
21:07 Greg Jenner? Well, okay, so in the against column.
21:09 Speaker 04 In the against column.
21:10 Greg Jenner? He blames Christians.
21:11 Speaker 04 He blamed the Christians.
21:12 Speaker 05 Oh.
21:12 Speaker 04 And he punished, 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, but Nero is said to have gone too far.
21:28 Speaker 05 Is this the, like, throwing Christians to the lions or?
21:31 Speaker 04 That 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.
21:55 Speaker 01 Hey, I'm Nile Rodgers, producer, songwriter, guitarist and co-founder of the group Chic. A great song has a way of defining a moment, a moment of joy, heartbreak, or anything in between.
22:11 Speaker 01 This fall, I'll be driving across the country, dropping in on some of the coolest, most fascinating artists working today. We'll go deep into their lives and careers and hear what it was like before the moment that made them. From hitmakers like Miguel...
22:28 Speaker 06 That last year, finishing that record was the hardest experience of my life. Regardless of how everyone else buys into this, I believe in this and I'm gonna push.
22:40 Speaker 01 To rising stars like Alex Warren.
22:43 Speaker 07 You know, a song is a story and the verse is setting the scene. And for me at least, it's allowing me to be personal and vulnerable with the audience. Whether it's about my wife and I'm being vulnerable about her, or it's about, you know, my parents and I'm being vulnerable to them. And it's almost like a cinematic piece in a way where each song tells that beautiful story.
23:01 Speaker 01 It's gonna be one hell of a trip. Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln Original Series on the iHeartRadio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.
23:13 Greg Jenner? Hey, this is Mario Lopez from All Mario Lopez Daily Podcast. Buy smart, drive for less and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability. And it starts with a great deal on an all-wheel drive Camry, Corolla Cross, or a Corolla sedan with the latest features in tech. Or test drive a spacious Grand Highlander or adventure-ready RAV4. And with so many hybrid models available, you can enjoy longer trips without all the stops. While Toyota's legendary resale value means you could get more at traded. So get a great deal today and great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for deals and details. Toyota, let's go places. Undec is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps.
23:57 Greg Jenner? OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A plus by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five star trust pilot reviews. OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.
24:20 Greg Jenner? There is a genuine conspiracy against him. There's a thing called the Pisonian conspiracy.
24:24 Speaker 05 There's this conspiracy of people hating me because I suck. It's terrible.
24:29 Greg Jenner? Arguably justified, right? This conspiracy.
24:31 Speaker 04 Yeah, it comes after the fires, the year after the fire.
24:34 Greg Jenner? In 65 CE, this one, yeah?
24:35 Speaker 04 And it's in 65 CE and tens, 50 odd people are charged with being in a conspiracy to overthrow Rome. Overthrow Nero, not Rome.
24:45 Greg Jenner? Well, he is Rome. He is Rome.
24:47 Speaker 04 What they want to do is they want to have a new emperor. They got a guy called Piso as a potential candidate and replace Nero. Now, why it's important in the Neronian story is that Seneca, the tutor, 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.
25:13 Greg Jenner? So Seneca is implicated, 19 people are executed, 13 are banished, 51 people are charged. Nero crushes the conspiracy, but three years later, another one comes along. 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 mom, you know? If at first he does succeed.
25:32 Speaker 05 They learn from him, you gotta keep showing up and trying.
25:35 Speaker 04 This was a military, you know, a military conspiracy. It was a military revolt.
25:39 Greg Jenner? This is a coup, right?
25:39 Speaker 04 It's a coup. It's basically a coup. 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.
26:06 Speaker 04 And he realises he has to kill himself.
26:11 Greg Jenner? What do you think his last words are, Patton?
26:13 Speaker 05 Um, tell me his last words, or what his supposed last words were.
26:18 Speaker 04 He's got more than one lot, I'm afraid. But the famous one is, qualis artifex perio. What an artist, an artifex. What an artist is dying when I die.
26:32 Greg Jenner? Some proper ego there, Patton.
26:34 Speaker 05 That's some, that's some confidence, my friend.
26:35 Greg Jenner? Isn't it?
26:36 Speaker 05 Yeah.
26:36 Greg Jenner? With your last gesture to say the world is about to lose a great artist here.
26:41 Speaker 05 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. All right, go ahead.
26:46 Greg Jenner? So his famous last words are, what an artist in me dies, he is assisted in his, his death, and dies aged, how old do you think he is, Patton?
26:55 Speaker 05 In his 40s.
26:56 Speaker 04 Thirty.
26:57 Speaker 05 Whoa!
26:58 Greg Jenner? What a life, eh? That's the end of Nero's life. He died in 68 CE. The nuance window!
27:09 Greg Jenner? Time now for the nuance window. This is, this is where Patton and I sit quietly for two minutes while Professor Mary takes to the stage and, and sings for us, perhaps, I don't know. Unlike Nero, she is not locking us into the theatre.
27:20 Speaker 04 Oh, you wait, you wait and say.
27:22 Greg Jenner? We're here willingly. So my stopwatch is ready, Mary. Take it away, Professor Beard.
27:26 Speaker 04 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, a post-truth person now. Because what I think is really important about these stories, and we, they are important,
28:12 Speaker 04 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, constructing them, 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 heads 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 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.
28:57 Speaker 04 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.
29:32 Greg Jenner? You still can. Patton, are you going to go and see Nero's golden house?
29:35 Speaker 05 I'm leaving right now. I'm going.
29:37 Greg 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.
29:44 Speaker 05 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.
29:59 Speaker 04 And historians ought to be interested in things that aren't true as well as things that are.
30:03 Greg Jenner? Yes. 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, I believe 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 Your Dead to Me on BBC Sounds to get episodes 28 days earlier than on any other app in the UK. But I'd just like to say a huge thank you to our guests. In history corner, we had the magnificent Professor Mary Beard. Thank you, Mary.
30:42 Speaker 04 Total pleasure.
30:43 Speaker 05 Yay.
30:44 Greg Jenner? And in comedy corner, we had the outstanding Patton Oswalt. Thank you, Patton.
30:47 Speaker 05 Thanks for having me on again. I really appreciate it.
30:49 Greg 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.
31:05 Speaker 01 Political language can seem archaic. It's like the light from one of those stars that actually died. Sometimes bamboozling. It's a theme park with a five-foot log flume from one thought to another. And very often beyond words.
31:18 Greg Jenner? I don't know how to describe the language I use.
31:20 Speaker 01 I'm Amanda Yonouchi. I'm all reset and turbocharged to stress, test and 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.
31:47 Greg Jenner? It's the film that convinced Americans the Second World War was worth fighting.
31:53 Greg Jenner? A reason to be in Hollywood that is really quite a terrifying situation. And its production is an extraordinary story in itself. Ronald Reagan had been named as the potential lead. Join me, Mischa Glenning, and three expert guests for a special live edition of In Our Time, where we discuss Casablanca. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
Previous The Terracotta Army (Radio Edit) Next Renaissance Medicine (Radio Edit) Page updated October 30, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated