Nero Flashcards
(18 cards)
Nero Senate Good (largesse, freedmen, consuls power, kindness x2)
Suet 10 - gave impoverished senators 500k sesterces to settle accounts
Suet 15
Limiting power of freedmen (‘excluded sons of freedmen from Senate’, forbade previous freedmen office holders from doing so again)
Tac 12
- ‘the palace and the state would be separate’ (power to the consuls in consular provinces)
- a display of leniency towards Plautius Lateranus, degraded from his rank for adultery with Messalina, but now restored to the senate
Nero Senate Bad (honour, killing/treason, fraught, steal, conspiracy)
Keeps senators late to vote ‘many of the high honours’ except ‘Pater Patriae’ (Suet 8)
Revives maiestas in 62 -
anyone who said or did anything that could be used against them by an informer was accused of treason (32)
Dissidence of Thrasea leading to senate voting with the ‘imperial displeasure’ (Tac 14)
- Robbing family estates if not giving them enough (Suet 32)
Tacitus book 15 - Piso conspiracy including senators, knights and officers, even Faenius Rufus (commander of the guard)
Nero influenced (Agrippina, Poppaea, Tigellinus
‘turned over all his public and private affairs to Agrippina’ (Suet 9)
Suet 28
- restrained from consummating with his mother for fear ‘she would become even more powerful and ruthless’
- On killing octavia - the head was amputated and carried to Rome, where it was viewed by Poppaea.
- Poppaea, dominating Nero first as an adulterer, then as a husband - 14 (62ad)
- Bradley: ‘With the help of the low-born Praetorian prefect Tigellinus, whose cruelty and debauched activities offended all dignified Romans, Nero’s artistic activities and extravagances increased
Nero character positive
Suet 10
Augustus as ‘model for his rule’
‘never missed an opportunity of being generous or merciful’ (supported by Tac 12 ‘pledge to clemency’)
Tac 12 “He would not constitute himself a judge of all cases’
(similar to suet 15 - differs to Claudius 14)
‘Nero vetoed an offer of effigies in solid gold or silver to himself’
Nero character negative
‘His insolence, lust, extravagance, greed and cruelty he at first revealed only gradually and secretly; but even then there could be no doubt that these were the faults of his character - Suet 26
Bias of sources
Tacitus says nero loved children and wife but suet says nothing of that - disparity between sources
Tac not always biased
Nero plebs largesse
Suet 10
Lowered and abolished taxes
400 sesterces in largesse
Suet 11 - extravagant shows and chariot races, plays dedicated to his rule, ships and farms given out
Paid ‘claques’ - clapping groups 400k sesterces per performance (made of equites and plebs)
(20)
Nero equestrian positive
Reserved seats for them (same as Claudius for senators) (suet 11)
Nero music and performance positive
(21) - no comments of ridiculing - so actual talent not sycophancy
Nero music and performance negative
‘freedmen replacing magistrate’ in public arts function (22)
Sycophantic giving him ‘every available prize for lyre playing’ - 23
‘no one was allowed to leave the theatre during his recitals, however pressing the reason…we hear(reliability) of women in the audience giving birth and of men being so bored…they dropped down from the wall at the rear or faked death’
Nero ‘bribed’ fellow competitors (23)
Nero vices games
Game ‘to attack men on their way home from dinner, stab them if they offered resistance’ (26)
‘beaten almost to death by a senator whose wife he had molested’ (26)
‘fun’ to throw things on the heads of the crowd, fracturing skulls (26)
Nero vices parties/sexual
(27)
‘gradually Nero’s vices gained the upper hand…turned quite brazen’
Brothels with ‘number of nombleman’ waiting to ‘solicit’ him
Forcing friends to spend more than ‘4 million sesterces’ on banquets
28 - ‘raped the vestal virgin Rubria’
Wedding ceremony to ‘boy Sporus’ (after attempted castration)
Mocked for this: ‘amusing joke still going the rounds: the world would have been a happier place had Nero’s father married that sort of wife’
passion for ‘his mother Agrippina was nortorius’ ‘some say he did in fact commit incest’
Nero vanity/wasteful
(31) ‘wastefulness showed most of all in the architectural projects’
Golden house and 120 feet high statue
‘Garden consisting of ploughed fields….wild animal roamed about’ - recreating nature artificially
Parts of the house were overlaid with gold and studded with precious stone
Nero bankruptcy
32 - Nero found himself ‘bankrupt’ - not paying soldiers and veterans’ benefits
Resorted to ‘robbery’ and blackmail’
Nero family
Agrippina assasination attempts (34) (tried 9 times to get rid of her/kill her) - 9th time success
Drove Seneca ‘to commit suicide’ (acc. Tac. pushed by Poppaea and Tigellinus/post-Piso purge)
kicked Octavia ‘to death while she was pregnant’
‘no family relationship Nero did not abuse’
Posioned Burrus and his advisors, who ‘arranged’ his ascent to the throne (35 + Tacitus 14.65)
Nero fire
Suet 38
‘pretending to be disgusted’ by the state of Rome
‘brazenly set fire to the city’
Set fire to grounds ‘near the Golden House’
‘sang the fall of troy from beginning to end’ ‘enraptured’ by the ‘beauty of the flames’
Fire relief fund ‘bled the provincials’ (probably useful)
Nero foreign affairs/death
Suet 39 - lost British towns ‘huge numbers of Romans’ massacred
Syria and Armenia ‘almost lost’
Gallic revolt (40-49)
‘Ignored the whole affair’ for ‘eight days’
Only responded when Vindex sent ‘series of insulting edicts’
Galba revolt - Nero ‘fainted away and remained mute’
Took over from consuls
47 - other armies revolt
Nero death/succession
Ends in abandoned, even by guards and suicide - 47
Galba 1 - With Nero, the line of the Caesars became extinct.
