05 NERO (30; r.54.10-68.06)
Claudius apparently regretted having made Nero his heir, but too late, on 13 October 54 Claudius died. Some say Agrippina poisoned a dish of mushrooms, his favourite food, to prevent him reversing his decision. The Praetorian Guard proclaimed Nero emperor and the Senate recognized his imperial powers.
Agrippina now proceeded to rule behind the throne. She murdered or drove to suicide several potential rivals, including the secretary Narcissus, a supporter of Britannicus, and maintained a strong alliance with the financial minister Pallas.
But within a year of his Nero’s succession he had developed a passion for 02Claudia Acte (fl.55-58), an imperial freed-woman; Pallas had been dismissed from the court; Seneca, Nero’s tutor, and Afranius Burrus, the praetorian prefect, had replaced Agrippina in her influence on the emperor.
Agrippina now planned to remove Nero and put Britannicus on the throne. When Nero discovered the plot he arranged to have Britannicus poisoned. Not long afterwards he had Agrippina removed from the palace and she then joined with Nero’s wife Octavia, the rival of Nero’s mistress Acte. Nero then took away Agrippina’s bodyguard and started to harass her with lawsuits in order to drive her from the city.
Agrippina, having apparently deterred a young noble from marrying her, was accused by 02Junia Silana (fl.54-59), the wife of Gaius 03Silius, of supporting another rival to the throne, Rubellius Plautus (29; fl.55-62), the great-grandson of Tiberius. When Agrippina was brought before Nero she convinced him that the accusation against her was false.
In 56 Nero became less willing to accept his advisers’ standard of conduct, and in 56 he first embarked on such antics as roaming the streets at night in disguise with a gang for the purpose of petty thieving and violence.
In 58 the future emperor Salvius Otho (36; fl.58-69) introduced his young wife Poppaea Sabina (35; fl.59-65) to Nero, who promptly made her his mistress and sent Otho to govern the distant province Lusitania before the year was out.
In 59 Nero decided that it was time for Agrippina to die. A freedman Anicetus arranged for her to travel on a ship that would sink and drown her. The plot failed when the ship did not completely sink. Agrippina managed to swim ashore only to be beaten to death in her home by Anicetus’ henchmen.
Nero introduced games known as the Juvenalia, in which men and women of all classes and ages enrolled in poetry and song. He sponsored theatrical productions called Ludi Maximi, and founded another set of games called the Neronia (61) to be celebrated every five years with contests in music, gymnastics, and equestrian events. There were also gladiatorial combats, beast fights, naval battles and Pyrrhic dances. In 61 Pedanius Secundus, a Roman politician, was killed by a slave in his house in the middle of the night. The Senate, in particular 08Cassius Longanus (fl.30-c.69), demanded that all of Secundus’ four hundred household slaves to be executed in accordance with Roman law. The common people demanded the release of the innocent, but Nero deployed the army to prevent the mob from disrupting the executions.
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