69 Fun Facts About Nero

Nero sent a party of soldiers upriver to search for the source of which great river?

The Nile: the soldiers followed it south of Egypt as far as Meroë and beyond. Pliny, writing soon afterwards, thought the real purpose was to scout a war against Ethiopia that Nero never fought.

Who was Nero's mother?

Agrippina the Younger. When friends congratulated Nero's father on the birth, he is said to have replied that any child of his and Agrippina's was bound to be abominable and a public danger.

Nero's maternal uncle was which reigning emperor?

Caligula, his mother's brother. He banished his sister for plotting against him, and when Nero's father died he seized the inheritance left to the three-year-old.

Which emperor married Nero's mother and adopted Nero as his heir in AD 50?

Claudius was the bride's own uncle, and such a union counted as incest until he had the Senate pass a decree allowing it. A year later he adopted her son, putting him ahead of his own boy.

What job did Nero give the corps of some 5,000 young men known as the Augustiani?

Applauding his performances: drilled in rhythmic styles of clapping nicknamed 'the bees', 'the roof-tiles' and 'the bricks', they led the cheering whenever he sang, and the rest of the audience had to join in.

Which Stoic philosopher was Nero's tutor and early adviser?

Seneca wrote the speeches the young emperor delivered, including his first address to the Senate, and old hands remarked that Nero was the first ruler of Rome to need borrowed eloquence.

Which praetorian prefect guided Nero alongside his tutor in the early reign?

Burrus owed his command of the Guard to Nero's mother, yet he and the young emperor's tutor soon worked together to restrain her and to keep Nero's worst impulses in check.

According to Tacitus, which poison-maker prepared the toxin that killed Nero's adoptive father in AD 54?

Locusta had lately been convicted of poisoning but, Tacitus says, was kept on as a useful tool of the regime. Nero later hired her himself and rewarded her with a pardon and country estates.

Which stepbrother of Nero was poisoned in AD 55 after Nero's mother threatened to side with him?

Britannicus, the late emperor's own son. Ancient writers say he collapsed at a palace dinner in front of the court, and that Nero, without stirring, told the guests it was only one of the boy's epileptic fits.

Pliny the Elder wrote that Nero used which gemstone to watch gladiators fight?

Emerald, though perhaps not as a lens: Pliny had just noted that a flat emerald reflects like a mirror, so Nero may have watched the reflection. Pliny's word, smaragdus, covered other green stones too.

According to Tacitus, what kind of accident did Nero stage in AD 59 to kill his mother?

A shipwreck, on a boat built to come apart at sea: its lead-weighted canopy fell, a couch took the blow and she swam to safety, so Nero sent soldiers to finish her at her villa.

According to Tacitus, Nero's affair with which woman led to the conflict that ended in his mother's murder?

Poppaea Sabina, in Tacitus's telling, mocked Nero as a ward still under his mother's orders until he acted; yet he did not marry her until AD 62, three years after the murder.

Which emperor, ruling a generation after Nero, is said to have ranked Nero's first five years above every other reign?

Trajan's praise, recorded by fourth-century writers, gave the period its Latin name, the Quinquennium Neronis; modern historians credit those years to the young emperor's advisers rather than to him.

According to Tacitus, what did Nero propose in AD 58 until advisers warned it would break up the empire?

Abolishing indirect taxes, the customs dues whose private collectors were hated, was to be his gift to mankind; told the state could not survive it, he made the collectors publish their rates instead.

Nero dammed a river to make three pleasure lakes at his villa in which hill town east of Rome?

Subiaco was where, Tacitus says, lightning struck Nero's table in mid-banquet; Romans took it as marking out a rival for the throne, and Nero soon ordered that man away to Asia.

In AD 64, Nero is said to have played the bride in a wedding to which of his freedmen?

Pythagoras was the groom and Nero the bride: Tacitus lists the witnesses, wedding torches and marriage bed, all on show a few days after a banquet held on a raft.

According to Tacitus, the Great Fire of Rome began on the anniversary of the city's burning by which invaders?

The Gauls had sacked Rome some 450 years before, the one disaster Romans thought comparable; this fire broke out on 19 July AD 64, burned for six days, then flared up again for three more.

The Great Fire probably started in merchant shops beside which structure?

The Circus Maximus was ringed by shops full of flammable goods; with no walled mansions or stone temples in the way, the wind drove the fire the full length of the racetrack.

The Great Fire of Rome consumed Nero's own residence on which of the city's hills?

Palatine Hill burned, palace and all: Nero had come back to Rome only when the flames neared it. Of the city's 14 districts, three were levelled, seven left in ruins and four escaped.

According to Suetonius, Nero set fire to Rome while claiming to be disgusted by what?

Its ugly buildings and narrow streets were only his pretext, Suetonius says; Tacitus leaves the fire's cause open, and Nero's rebuilding did bring wider streets and lower houses.

Suetonius and Cassius Dio claim Nero sang which piece, in stage costume, while Rome burned?

The Sack of Ilium told of the fall of Troy; Tacitus calls the performance only a rumour, but one that cancelled out the goodwill Nero had earned with his relief work.

Nero is said to have 'fiddled while Rome burned', but which instrument did he really perform on?

The lyre, in its concert form the cithara, was Nero's instrument; the fiddle did not exist in his day, and Tacitus puts him outside Rome when the fire began.

Hadrian used 24 of which animals to move Nero's giant bronze statue to a new site?

Elephants, 24 of them, moved the statue upright to clear the ground for Hadrian's new temple; rededicated to the sun god, it no longer wore Nero's face.

A giant bronze statue of Nero is thought to have given its name to which famous Roman building?

The Colosseum rose where Nero's private lake had been, handing his pleasure park back to the public; the nickname, thought to come from the colossal statue beside it, caught on only in the Middle Ages.

According to Tacitus, Nero deflected suspicion for the fire onto which group?

Christians, then a small sect in Rome, were torn by dogs, crucified or burned as lamps after dark; Tacitus says the cruelty was so plain that the crowd began to pity them.

According to Tacitus, what did Nero do with people left homeless by Rome's Great Fire?

Opened his own gardens to them, with the Campus Martius and Agrippa's public buildings, and cut the price of grain: even the hostile Tacitus calls the measures popular.

What was the name of the vast palace complex Nero built on land cleared by the Great Fire of Rome?

The Domus Aurea, or Golden House, had its own lake, vineyards and woods in the middle of Rome; when it was finished, Nero remarked only that he could at last live like a human being.

After the Great Fire of Rome, Nero did what to the currency?

Devalued it to help pay for the rebuilding: a pound of silver now made 96 denarii, up from 84, while the provinces were squeezed for tribute until, Suetonius says, they were nearly bankrupt.

Which senator did the conspirators of AD 65 mean to make emperor in Nero's place?

Gaius Calpurnius Piso, a well-liked noble, was the figurehead of a plot Tacitus says he did not start; a freedman's tip-off exposed it, and Piso cut his own arteries as the soldiers arrived.

Which poet died for his part in the AD 65 conspiracy against Nero?

Lucan had been a favourite until, in Tacitus's telling, a jealous Nero banned him from publishing; condemned at 25, he recited his own lines about a dying soldier as he bled.

How did Nero's former tutor die in AD 65?

Ordered to commit suicide after being named in the plot against Nero, the old philosopher cut his veins, bled too slowly, took poison in vain and finally suffocated in a steam bath.

According to Suetonius and Tacitus, how did Nero kill his pregnant second wife in AD 65?

By kicking her in a fit of rage, the ancient writers say, though modern historians suspect a miscarriage or childbirth; Nero had her embalmed rather than cremated and gave her divine honours.

Nero sent a treasure fleet to Africa to dig up gold supposedly buried by which legendary queen?

Dido's gold, said to lie in caves in Africa, never turned up; Nero had already been spending on the strength of it, and was soon so short that he had to put off his soldiers' pay.

Whom did Nero marry in Greece with all the usual ceremonies, including a dowry and a bridal veil?

Sporus, a castrated boy, was chosen because he looked like Nero's dead second wife; dressed as an empress and carried in a litter, he was shown off at Nero's side across Greece.

Which queen of the Iceni led the great revolt in Britain during Nero's reign?

Boudica rose after her husband left his kingdom jointly to Rome and their two daughters: Roman officials seized the lot, had her flogged and the girls raped, and her army burned three towns in reply.

The Iceni revolt burned Londinium, Verulamium and which other town?

Camulodunum (Colchester) fell first: a colony of retired soldiers with no walls, where the last defenders held out for two days inside the great temple before it was stormed.

Which governor of Britain defeated the Iceni rebels?

Gaius Suetonius Paulinus hurried back from a campaign in Wales and, heavily outnumbered, crushed the rebels in one battle; his reprisals were so harsh that Nero found an excuse to replace him.

After the Iceni revolt, what did Nero reportedly consider doing with Britain?

Abandoning the province was on his mind, and he held back only because quitting would seem to belittle the glory of his adoptive father, whose armies had conquered it.

Which general captured the enemy capital Artaxata for Nero around AD 58?

Corbulo took Artaxata without a fight and burned it; yet Nero grew so wary of his best general that he summoned him to Greece and condemned him unheard, and Corbulo fell on his sword.

Under the AD 63 settlement with Parthia, Rome recognised Tiridates as king of which country?

Armenia's crown went to a Parthian prince on condition that Nero bestow it: Tiridates rode for nine months with 3,000 horsemen, at Rome's expense, to receive it in the Forum.

According to Dio, the Parthian prince crowned by Nero in AD 66 worshipped him as which god?

Mithras was the god the prince named as he knelt in the Forum, hailing Nero as his fate and fortune; a whole theatre was gilded for the celebration, and Romans called it the golden day.

In AD 67 Nero dispatched which future emperor to put down the Jewish revolt in Judea?

Vespasian got the command although he had offended Nero by nodding off at his recitals; two years later his legions proclaimed him emperor, and his son finished the war.

At the Olympic Games of AD 67, Nero won a ten-horse chariot race despite what?

Falling out and not finishing was no bar: put back in his chariot, he still gave up before the end, and the judges crowned him anyway. He rewarded them with Roman citizenship and a fortune in cash.

Which governor of Gallia Lugdunensis began the revolt that led to Nero's fall?

Vindex, a Romanised Gallic noble, was beaten within months and never saw the outcome; yet the revolt he began had already spread to Spain, and by June Nero was dead.

Which governor of Hispania Tarraconensis was urged to declare himself emperor in opposition to Nero?

Galba at first took only the title of general of the Senate and People; declared a public enemy, he still ended up emperor once the Praetorian Guard changed sides.

When Nero asked Guard officers to flee Rome with him in AD 68, one refused by quoting which work?

Virgil's Aeneid supplied the taunt, a line spoken by the doomed Turnus: 'Is it so dreadful a thing, then, to die?' With the Guard lost, Nero gave up his plan to sail for the East.

Nero died at a villa four miles outside Rome belonging to which imperial freedman?

Phaon offered the villa himself; Nero rode out to it disguised in a faded cloak with only four attendants, and it was there he learned the Senate had declared him a public enemy.

As his attendants dug his grave, what did the fleeing Nero keep muttering?

"What an artist the world is losing" renders the Latin Qualis artifex pereo; Nero then lost his nerve and begged one of his companions to die first and show him how.

How did Nero die in June AD 68?

By a dagger to the throat, driven home with his secretary's help as horsemen rode up to take him alive; a centurion ran in and tried to staunch the wound, but Nero was already dying.

Nero died on the anniversary of whose death?

His first wife had been divorced, banished to an island and put to death on a false charge of adultery, though Romans rioted in her favour; she died on the same June day six years before him.

In medieval legend, a pope dug up Nero's remains from beneath a haunted walnut tree and threw them where?

Into the Tiber, the legend says: Paschal II first exorcised the demons roosting in the tree, then built a chapel on the spot in 1099, the forerunner of Santa Maria del Popolo.

Nero's death sparked a period of civil war known as what?

The Year of the Four Emperors was AD 69: with the old dynasty extinct, the legions learned what Tacitus called the secret of empire, that an emperor could be made elsewhere than at Rome.

Which short-lived successor was hailed by crowds as Nero and let his statues be set up again?

Otho had been Nero's friend and courtier until a quarrel over a woman got him sent away from Rome; as emperor he gave Nero's freedmen their posts back, but he ruled for only three months.

Which emperor nearly went to war with Parthia over an impostor posing as Nero twenty years after his death?

Domitian's reign saw at least the third false Nero: in the East many believed he had never died, and Suetonius recalled the Parthians backing this one strongly and giving him up only with reluctance.

Nero swung the first pick himself on a canal meant to cut through which strip of land?

The Isthmus of Corinth defeated him: Nero carried off the first basket of earth himself in AD 67, but the digging stopped at his death, and the canal finally opened in 1893 along the same line.

In a legend from the Talmud, what did Nero do when sent to attack Jerusalem?

Fled and converted to Judaism, the tale says, after a child's verse from Ezekiel convinced him that God would punish whoever destroyed the Temple; the Talmud makes the sage Rabbi Meir his descendant.

Tradition says Peter was crucified in Nero's Rome, but which apostle is said to have been beheaded there?

Paul's beheading and Peter's crucifixion were set down together by Eusebius in his fourth-century church history, which pointed to the apostles' named tombs in Rome as proof.

Some biblical scholars argue that which figure in the Book of Revelation is a code for Nero?

The number of the beast is read as a cipher: Hebrew letters double as numbers, and 'Nero Caesar' spelled in Hebrew adds up to 666, a way to name the emperor without writing his name.

Which novel set in Nero's Rome became a 1951 Hollywood epic with Peter Ustinov as the emperor?

Quo Vadis takes its title from a legend: Peter, fleeing Rome, meets Christ on the road, asks 'Where are you going, Lord?' and turns back to face his death.

Nero was the final emperor of which dynasty?

The Julio-Claudian line ended with him: his only child, a daughter, had died at four months, and he had put to death most of the relatives who might have followed him.

Which courtier, Nero's 'arbiter of elegance', is usually credited with writing the Satyricon?

Petronius, accused of treason, opened his veins at a leisurely dinner party, chatting and hearing light verse; his will listed Nero's debaucheries partner by partner, and he sent it to the emperor under seal.

Nero was the great-great-grandson of which emperor, through his only daughter Julia?

Augustus had no son, so his line ran to Nero through three generations of women; when Nero died without an heir, the family that had ruled Rome for almost a century died with him.

With which aunt did the young Nero live after his mother was exiled and his inheritance seized?

Domitia Lepida gave the boy two tutors, a dancer and a barber, Suetonius says; years later Nero testified against her in court to please his mother, who had her put to death.

Painted rooms of Nero's buried palace, entered like caves around 1500, are thought to have given art which word?

Grotesque comes from the Italian for 'of a cave': Renaissance artists, Raphael among them, were lowered on ropes into the buried rooms, and the style they copied there is thought to have taken the name.

After Nero's death, what did Olympia's judges do about the Games he had competed in?

Struck them from the record, name and all: the Olympiad was declared void, and the judges were made to hand back the money Nero had given them.

After crushing the Gallic revolt of AD 68, what did Verginius Rufus's legions try to do with their general?

Make him emperor: Verginius Rufus refused, saying the choice was the Senate's, and refused again a year later; his epitaph boasted that he had claimed power not for himself but for his country.

Which Praetorian prefect abandoned Nero in AD 68 and promised the Guard a fortune to change sides?

Nymphidius Sabinus promised each guardsman a huge bounty in the new emperor's name, then tried to take the throne for himself before that emperor reached Rome; his own soldiers killed him.

What did Nero seal in a golden casket and dedicate to Jupiter on the Capitol?

The trimmings of his first beard: Suetonius has him shave to a sacrifice of bullocks at his own games, while Dio says he founded a whole festival, the Juvenalia, in the beard's honour.

Which emperor held funeral rites for Nero on the Campus Martius and applauded when his songs were performed?

Vitellius made offerings to Nero's shade before a crowd of priests, then called at the banquet for a tune from 'the Master's book' and was first on his feet to applaud; he ruled for only eight months.