I have taken the most precious jewels from that treasure, but in life there are many things which I cannot endure any longer. Do not suppose, I pray, that I am offended because thou didst kill thy mother, thy wife, and thy brother; that thou didst burn Eome and send to Erebus all the honest men in thy dominions.
No, grandson of Chronos. Death is the inheritance of man; from thee other deeds could not have been expected. But to destroy one's ear for whole years with thy poetry, to see thy belly of a Domitius on slim legs whirled about in a Pyrrhic dance; to hear thy music, thy declamation, thy doggerel verses, wretched poet of the suburbs, — is a thing surpassing my power, and it has roused in me the wish to die.
Eome stuffs its ears when it hears thee; the world reviles thee. I can blush for thee no longer, and I have no wish to do so. The howls of Cerberus, though resembling thy music, will be less offensive to me, for I have never been the friend of Cerberus, and I need not be ashamed of his howling.
Farewell, but make no music; commit murder, but write no verses; poison people, but dance not; be an incendiary, but play not on a cithara. This is the wish and the last friendly counsel sent thee by the — Arbiter Elegantiae. I like it. Caesar was swimming in blood, Rome and the whole pagan world was mad.
But those who had had enough of transgression and madness, those who were trampled upon, those whose lives were misery and oppression, all the weighed down, all the sad, all the unfortunate, came to hear the wonderful tidings of God, who out of love for men had given Himself to be crucified and redeem their sins. When they found a God whom they could love, they had found that which the society of the time could not give any one, -- happiness and love. Do these nights of popular celebration cause ancient and forgotten avatars to stir in the depths of the human soul?
This evening, in the movement of the sweaty and excited crowd, I am certain that I passed between the masks of the liberated Bythinians and encountered the courtesans of the Roman decadence.
Claudius allowed Agrippina to return from exile. It was the fourth marriage of Claudius and he had had his previous wife Messalina executed in 48 AD. Being older than his stepbrother Britannicus , Nero became heir to the throne. Claudius died in 54 AD. Many ancient historians believe he was fed poisoned mushrooms by Agrippina. He was the youngest ever Roman emperor till that time. Nero was unsatisfied with his marriage to Octavia and began an affair with Poppaea Sabina , wife of his friend and future emperor Otho.
Agrippina opposed this affair. Agrippina responded by promoting her stepson Britannicus as the true heir to the throne. Britannicus died in February 55 under dubious circumstances. He was most probably poisoned by Nero. In 59 AD , Nero ordered the execution of his mother. Nero divorced and banished his first wife Octavia on grounds of infertility and adultery.
Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as nightly illumination when daylight had expired. While it is not known whether Nero started the fire, he did take advantage of the space it cleared. He started work on a new palace called the Domus Aurea golden palace , which was said, at the entranceway, to have included a foot-long 37 meters column that contained a statue of him.
In Britain, in A. Her husband, King Prasutagus, had made a deal with Claudius that would see him rule as a client-king. Upon his death in A. At first, Boudicca was successful, overrunning a number of Roman settlements and military units. Ancient sources say that Nero considered evacuating the island, but this proved unnecessary as the Roman commander on the island Gaius Suetonius Paulinus massed a force of 10, men and defeated Boudicca at the Battle of Watling Street.
In the east, Rome fought, and essentially lost, a war with Parthia, having to give up plans to annex the kingdom of Armenia, which served as a buffer between the two powers. Additionally a rebellion in Judea in A. One effect of this was the abandonment of Qumran , the site where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found stored in nearby caves. Shotter writes that Nero took part in several Greek festivals, taking home 1, first prizes for his artistic presentations.
The Greeks also agreed to postpone the Olympic Games by one year so that Nero could compete in them. He had killed his mother, first wife and, by some accounts, his second. And yet still the empire enjoyed moderate and responsible government by the administration. Hence the senate was not yet alienated enough to overcome its fear and do something against the madman whom it knew on the throne. The historian Suetonius describes him singing from the tower of Maecenas, watching as the fire consumed Rome.
But Tacitus also takes care to point out that this story was a rumour, not the account of an eye witness. If his singing on the roof tops was true or not, the rumour was enough to make people suspicious that his measures to put out the fire might not have been genuine.
This was a huge area, ranging from the Portico of Livia to the Circus Maximus close to where the fire was said to have started , which now was turned into pleasure gardens for the emperor, even an artificial lake being created in its centre. Judging by the sheer scale of this complex, it was obvious it could never have been built, were it not have been for the fire. And so quite naturally Romans had their suspicions about who had actually started it. It would be unfair however to omit that Nero did rebuild large residential areas of Rome at his own expense.
But people, dazzled by the immensity of the Golden Palace and its parks, nonetheless remained suspicious. Nero, always a man desparate to be popular, therefore looked for scapegoats on whom the fire could be blamed. He found it in an obscure new religious sect, the Christians. And so many Christians were arrested and thrown to the wild beasts in the circus, or they were crucified.
It is this brutal persecution which immortalized Nero as the first Antichrist in the eyes of the Christian church. The second Antichrist being the reformist Luther by edict of the Catholic Church. Then in AD 65 there was a serious plot against Nero. The plot was uncovered and nineteen executions and suicides followed, and thirteen banishments.
Piso and Seneca were among those who died. There was never anything even resembling a trial: people whom Nero suspected or disliked or who merely aroused the jealousy of his advisers were sent a note ordering them to commit suicide.
Nero, leaving Rome in charge of the freedman Helius, went to Greece to display his artistic abilities in the theatres of Greece. He won contests in the Olympic Games, — winning the chariot race although he fell of his chariot as obviously nobody dared to defeat him , collected works of art, and opened a canal, which was never finished. Alas, the situation was becoming very serious in Rome.
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