Reign of Nero: Fire, Persecution, and Civil War
Nero ruled Rome for fourteen years and was the last of Augustus's family to do it. He became emperor at sixteen in 54 after his mother Agrippina, who had married her uncle Claudius and persuaded him to adopt her son over his own, arranged the succession — and probably the mushrooms. The first five years were remembered afterwards as good government, run largely by Seneca and the praetorian prefect Burrus: treason trials dropped, the senate consulted, tax reform attempted. He then had his mother murdered in 59, after a collapsing boat failed to do it, and Seneca wrote the letter explaining it to the senate. The reign became increasingly personal. He performed publicly as a singer and charioteer, which Romans found not merely undignified but disqualifying in a magistrate, and toured Greece competing in festivals whose judges gave him every prize. The fire of July 64 burned for six days and destroyed most of the city. The story that he sang while it burned comes from hostile sources; what is solid is that he organised relief, and then took a large area of the ruins for a palace with a lake and a colossal statue of himself. He blamed the Christians and had them killed in ways Tacitus, who despised them, called excessive. Revolt in Gaul and Spain and the defection of the guard finished him in 68, and he killed himself with help at thirty. Four emperors followed in the next year, and the empire learned that they could be made outside Rome.
- Year: 54 CE
- Category: Political
