Essential Question
Published on Nov 25, 2015
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Based on the actions and characteristics of Nero, to what extent was he a good ruler?
Source 1: "Little by little, however, as his vices grew stronger, he dropped jesting and secrecy and with no attempt at disguise openly broke out into worse crime. He prolonged his revels from midday to midnight, often livening himself by a warm plunge, or, if it were summer, into water cooled with snow. Sometimes too he closed the inlets and banqueted in public in the great tank, in the Campus Martius, or in the Circus Maximus, waited on by harlots and dancing girls from all over the city. Whenever he drifted down the Tiber to Ostia, or sailed about the Gulf of Baiae, booths were set up at intervals along the banks and shores, fitted out for debauchery, while bartering matrons played the part of inn-keepers and from every hand solicited him to come ashore. He also levied dinners on his friends, one of whom spent four million sesterces for a banquet at which turbans were distributed, and another a considerably larger sum for a rose dinner."
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Source 2: "He also drove a chariot in many places, at Olympia even a ten-horse team, although in one of his own poems he had criticised Mithridates for just that thing. But after he had been thrown from the car and put back in it, he was unable to hold out and gave up before the end of the course; but he received the crown just the same. On his departure he presented the entire province with freedom and at the same time gave the judges Roman citizenship and a large sum of money. These favours he announced in person on the day of the Isthmian Games, standing in the middle of the stadium."
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Source 3: "Those outside his family he assailed with no less cruelty. It chanced that a comet had begun to appear on several successive nights, a thing which is commonly believed to portend the death of great rulers. Worried by this, and learning from the astrologer Balbillus that kings usually averted such omens by the death of some distinguished man, thus turning them from themselves upon the heads of the nobles, he resolved on the death of all the eminent men of the State; but the more firmly, and with some semblance of justice, after the discovery of two conspiracies. The earlier and more dangerous of these was that of Piso at Rome; the other was set on foot by Vinicius at Beneventum and detected there. The conspirators made their defence in triple sets of fetters, some voluntarily admitting their guilt, some even making a favour of it, saying that there was no way except by death that they could help a man disgraced by every kind of wickedness."
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Source 4: "[Nero] opened the Circus Maximus, public buildings, and even his private gardens to the recently homeless citizens."
Ancient Rome, 1000 B.C-A.D. 500/Nero--A complete villan?
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Source 5: "In addition to his help during the fire.... Nero banned executions, lowered taxes, reduced the number of bloody public games...."
Ancient Rome, 1000 B.C-A.D. 500/Nero--A complete villan?
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Source 6: "Its vestibule was large enough to contain a colossal statue of the emperor, 120 feet high; and it was so extensive that it had a triple colonnade a mile long."
Suetonius: on Nero's Palace
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Source 7: "Nero dispatched his henchmen to Baiae, where they surprised Agrippina in her bedchamber. According to the historian Tacitus, she presented her belly to an attacker and told him to stab her in the womb that had borne Nero. She was slashed many times, and when the emperor later viewed the uncovered body, he supposedly remarked, "I did not know I had so beautiful a mother.""
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