Ancients Behaving Badly (2009–…): Season 1, Episode 5 - Nero - full transcript

NARRATOR: The emperor Nero, he fiddles
while Rome burns, tortures the Christians.

He has them dressed up in

wild-animal skins and torn apart

limb from limb by wild dogs.

Then he turns them into human torches.

He kills his wives and

squanders money like an oil sheikh.

He's bankrupted the empire,

he's sacked all the temples,

and he's murdered most of the ruling elite.

Using historical accounts



from Roman times, it's possible

to uncover the truth behind these stories.

Investigators will put Nero's

life under the microscope with

a range of scientific tests,

revealing his sadistic

methods of torture and

how he pulled off one of

history's biggest financial

scams, and the part he played

in the killing of his wife, his

second wife and his mother.

And a leading forensic
psychiatrist will analyze this

bad boy's character, all to



reveal how he stacks up against

other Ancients Behaving Badly.

♪ Emperor Nero rules
Rome for just 13 years.

In that time, he carves out a

place for himself as one of

history's most notorious tyrants.

By the middle of his reign, the

very sight of him makes Romans

tremble with fear.

Nero is certainly
psychologically ripe for a good

evaluation.

His life reads like a

modern-day movie as he tries to

square his own desires with the

role he's been asked to play,

namely the emperor of Rome.

To understand Nero better

psychiatrist David Mallott will

examine his behavior and

position him on a unique

Ancients Behaving Badly

psychograph to reveal how he

compares to other tyrants from history.

Going by his rap sheet, Nero ranks with the
worst of them. He comes to power with the

killing of his emperor uncle.

He laces the wine of his rival

stepbrother with a fatal dose of poison.

He has openly committed

murder to get what he wants.

He tries to have his mother

crushed to death.

And when that fails, has his

thugs finish her off.

He blames the Christians for

the burning of Rome and burns

them alive in retaliation.

This butchery of these
Christians blamed for the fire

of Rome is so graphic, is so disgusting.

He uses whips and branding

irons on senators who displease

him, and he kicks his pregnant

wife to death.

The shocking stories come from Roman historians
Tacitus and Suetonius, writing decades

after Nero's death.

They're the gossip columnists

of their day, demonizing Nero

to make their own later rulers look good.

So how much should we trust them?

To find out, the search for

evidence begins with Nero's childhood.

He's born in 37 AD into a very

troubled Roman family.

His father dies when Nero is

just three years old and, for a

while, his male role model is

Uncle Caligula, not the type of

guy to get out and throw the ball around.

Nero finds no comfort in the

bosom of his mother

Agrippina, Caligula's little sister.

She's not one for family values.

MIKE IBEJI: Agrippina's
really messed up.

She was brutalized and then

banished by her brother Caligula.

She's basically grown up

believing that murder and

incest are the norm, and she's

perfectly prepared to use them

to get what she wants.

Agrippina's aim: to get to the center of
power in Rome. And she plans to use young Nero

to do so.

This is the road to Rome, but

it is also Agrippina's route to power.

Because in ancient Rome women

aren't legally allowed to wield power.

That's a man's job.

But Nero can and, with Nero in

Rome, Agrippina can pull the strings.

Step one, get close to power.

The beautiful and cunning

Agrippina seduces and marries

the emperor Claudius, even

though he is her Uncle.

Agrippina's incestuous

marriage with Claudius reviles

the people of Rome as it reviles us today.

But she was a person who was

willing to cross any line to

obtain ultimate power.

Agrippina pressures Claudius

into adopting Nero and making

him heir to the throne ahead of

his own son Britannicus.

Nero is now emperor in waiting.

Nero is suddenly faced with a

tremendous change in his life.

He is now in line to become

emperor of Rome, something he's

never been trained for,

something he's not prepared for,

and, psychologically, it's not

at all clear that he wants it.

He is thrust into this role as

a puppet of Agrippina, his mother.

According to the sources,

Agrippina is impatient for power.

Tacitus and Suetonius say

Agrippina wants her husband dead.

She is very powerful, and she

knows just who to use: a

convicted poisoner, Locusta.

It is virtually impossible to

slip poison into the food of the emperor.

But Agrippina finds a way.

According to the sources,

Claudius meets his end at a

drunken banquet when he eats a

dish of poisoned mushrooms.

With Claudius out of the
picture, Nero is crowned emperor.

That should make him the most

powerful man in the world.

(Thunder rumbling) >> But according to the sources,
the real power lies in the manipulative hands of

Agrippina.

Is this just an attack on

Caligula's sister, or is there

some truth to it?

Coins dating from early
in Nero's reign hold crucial

clues.

MATTHEW PONTING: The coin's

unusual because it shows the

bust of both Nero and his

mother, Agrippina, on the same side.

It is very unusual to see both

mother and son together, and is

indicative of the power of

Agrippina, and clearly says

that there was something very...

Very special about the

relationship between mother and son.

How special? They
are, in effect, joint rulers.

But soon there's a falling out

between mother and son, and it's over...

What else?

...a woman.

Fifty-five AD, Nero, now 18, falls head over
heels for an ex-slave girl, and Agrippina is

just sick about it.

This could jeopardize her hold

on power, her place on the coin.

She tries to break it up, but Nero digs in.

And so Agrippina now

demonstrates her power.

Nero's control over Rome is

not yet absolutely secure.

That's because Claudius had a

natural son, and that is Nero's

stepbrother, Britannicus.

Pushed away by Nero, Agrippina

now threatens to replace him on

the throne with Britannicus.

Britannicus is just 13.

Maybe she can keep him in line.

But before she can disown Nero and transfer
her allegiance, young Britannicus tosses back a

cup of wine, collapses in

violent convulsions and dies,

foaming at the mouth.

The whole thing looks fishy.

Nero is quick to claim it was an epileptic
fit. After all, epilepsy runs in the

family.

Uncle Caligula was always having fits.

But Suetonius doesn't agree.

He accuses Nero of homicide.

Could Nero have poisoned

Britannicus and got away with it?

That's a question for a toxicologist.

Certainly there were several
poisons, many poisons available

to poisoners and Nero at that time.

There's three poisons that

come to mind that this could have been.

One is a cyanide component

commonly found in fruit pits of the day.

The other would be

strychnine and finally hemlock.

The sources say Britannicus drank wine diluted
with water, and that the poison was in that

water.

So if Nero did pull off murder,

whatever poison he used had to

be undetectable in water.

One possibility, cyanide.

It's found in peach pits, but

you need a lot of them to make

a lethal cocktail.

The effect of cyanide on the

human body is very profound.

This can be rapidly fatal, but

it's all about the delivery and

making sure it's disguised.

And as you can see, even with

stirring, it doesn't quiet

dissolve, so it would have been

quite noticeable that something

was slipped into the drink.

That rules out cyanide.

Next, strychnine.

The effects of strychnine

poisoning on the human body is

really quiet remarkable.

Once it hits the system, the

patient starts to have

something very dramatic.

They're actually having muscle

spasms, almost like someone with rabies.

The symptoms match but

strychnine is extremely bitter.

Britannicus would have tasted

it with the first sip.

That leaves hemlock.

Water hemlock, it's one of

the most, if not the most toxic

plants on the planet.

As you can see it's clear, it's

difficult to detect, and

water hemlock hits quickly.

For Nero's setting and his

poisoners, this was the perfect

poison to give Britannicus.

And what's most demonstrable,

what's most famous about water

hemlock is that it causes

convulsions, it causes seizures.

And with seizures it would

be easy for Nero to pass it

off as his childhood disorder.

So Nero, perhaps with the

help of the poisoner Locusta,

could have killed Britannicus.

He had the means, the

opportunity and a very big motive.

And there's something else that

looks suspicious.

Britannicus dies under

strange circumstances.

Stranger still are the funerary

proceedings.

They're hasty, they're abrupt,

and they take place in the next

day without much pomp and

circumstance as would have been

befitting of a person like Britannicus.

Get rid of the evidence fast.

Historians are convinced that

this all points to the fact

that Nero did murder his young stepbrother.

He has openly committed

murder to get what he wants, and

that is a big, big step.

With that, Nero moves out of

the shadow of his mother Agrippina.

She's taught him well, and

nothing is going to stop him now.

NARRATOR: 59 AD. Five years into
his reign, the emperor Nero, 25 years old,

makes a momentous decision, even for him.

He's going to kill his mother.

The reviled Agrippina is the only person
standing between him and absolute power.

He can't just kill her in cold blood.
That would be too much, even

for a Roman emperor.

Historian Darius Arya has
come to visit the scene of the

crime.

He has to remain above suspicion.

The sources say he makes it

look like an accident.

According to the historian Suetonius, Nero
plans to bump mom off with a booby trap and

make it look like an accident.

It's supposed to happen here,

in the Bay of Naples.

Nero invites his mother down
from Rome to the Festivity of Minerva.

It's the perfect cover.

And he greets her as she

arrives in Baiae with great

fanfare and puts her in a boat,

a craft specially made just for

her to view the festivities from.

This boat is special, because it's rigged.

This sounds like a far-fetched

story out of a James Bond movie.

The story goes that the boat

is rigged with a lead-weighted

canopy to fall on Agrippina,

crushing her to death.

But dropping the canopy at the

right time will require a

release mechanism and a team of

confederates frightened by Nero

into keeping their mouths shut.

Could Nero, even with expert

help, have pulled it off?

Engineer Paul Swayze and

historian Robert Mason are

planning to find out whether

contemporary Roman technology

could actually have produced a

contraption like this.

So this would be a good

facsimile for a royal barge of

Nero's period.

The whole aspect of Roman

society was about hierarchy, and

the most important place in

the hierarchy was in the bench

where you recline like this.

Okay.

And above her head would be

this lovely canopy, so it all

it needs to do is fall on her

head, and it's all over.

And this is the scene of the

crime, right here.

Using the mast as an anchor

point, a lead-weighted canopy

could be raised directly over

Agrippina's head.

The only issue would be how

you trigger off the weight.

The Romans were skilled

metal workers, known to fashion

release systems like this.

Here's my mass hanging off the
bottom loop. Here's my point of contact

connected to a loop, looping

around the nose.

This slight negative arc holds

our loop in position.

And when levered from the top, a

child could release thousands of

pounds that way.

What you have basically drawn

is quite a widespread Roman way

of releasing a siege engine.

Ah, yes.

So... >> Excellent.

So let's do it.

That's great.

I'm in.

That's the release
system. Now for the canopy.

Okay, well, here's our pulley.

What about the trigger?

And the next thing we got

to do is connect our trigger here.

That just barely fits through

there, doesn't it?

Give it a little bit of weight,

and set it and that should hold

it in place nicely.

I think it'll work.

Historians say Agrippina

lies under the booby-trapped

canopy on a Roman couch.

So here we have an imperial

couch for an imperial lady to recline upon.

Let's see what we can do to poor Agrippina.

Sandbags simulate the lead

weights used by Nero's accomplices.

The Romans used elaborate

pulley systems, enabling one

man to raise heavy loads.

It's show time.

The historians say Agrippina survives with
only a shoulder injury, confirmed by this

demonstration.

That's all the damage it
probably would have done to

her.

The ends of bench would have

stopped her from being more

injured than she was.

According to the historian Tacitus, the
injured Agrippina swims ashore and flees to the

safety of her villa.

Tacitus says she's put two and

two together, and knows Nero is

behind the attempt on her life.

But she decides to try and

defuse the situation by sending

Nero a message that she

believes the collapsing boat

was nothing more than an accident.

Nero's waiting in a villa not

unlike this when Agrippina's

messenger rushes in and says

that there's been an accident.

Nero has to react quickly.

Here the sources attribute to

Nero a quick intelligence.

He takes a sword, throws it

at the feet of the messenger

that's been sent by Agrippina,

and says that Agrippina has

sent the messenger to kill him.

Nero has the excuse he's

been looking for, an attempted

assassination by his mother.

Anything he now does will be

taken as an act of self-defense.

It's a brilliant move.

He goes from being the villain

to the victim.

Nero sends his Praetorian

Guard to Agrippina's villa to

finish the job.

Agrippina bares her stomach and

tells the guards to strike her

in the womb that gave life to her killer.

They do and she dies.

That night, he is
plagued with nightmares.

And when he wakes up Nero announces,
"Today is the first day of my rule."

He's finally got the power.

He learned from the best, his mother.

Romans start looking

nervously over their shoulders.

If the big guy is willing to

do in his mom, anyone could be next.

Nervous senators send

extravagant messages of thanks

and congratulations.

With Agrippina out of the way,

Nero turns to the next

annoyance in his life, his wife Octavia.

She's very popular but Nero doesn't care.

He only has eyes for his

mistress Poppaea, the now

pregnant ex-slave girl.

He divorces Octavia and

banishes her from Rome.

He marries his mistress, Poppaea.

It's a way of severing his final

ties with his mother, Agrippina.

The reaction of the public is

one of outrage.

They take to the streets.

They riot.

The people want their fairy tale.

(Shouting indistinctly)

Nero has made a fatal PR blunder.

It's like Charles divorcing

Diana for Camilla.

He decides Octavia needs to

be more than divorced.

She needs to be dead.

He sends his guards to explain

to her how it's going to be.

She can take her own life, or

they'll do it for her.

The guards return to Rome with

the severed head of Octavia.

With that, Nero goes beyond

caring about what the public thinks.

Nero was now ready to be
the man he always wanted to be.

And according to Suetonius, that

man was a poet, an actor and a musician.

(Cheering, applause)

Which doesn't sound too bad to us today,
but in Ancient Roman terms, it's dynamite.

Because in ancient Rome, actors

are on the same status as prostitutes.

So it would be like the

president of the United States

today publicly soliciting on

Sunset Boulevard.

Respectable Romans just don't do that.

So what does this say about

Nero's mental state?

Nero has now become emperor of Rome.

But rather than just pure

power, what he has now

achieved is the stage that he

has always wanted.

He now has the platform which

he can fulfill his dream of

everybody loving him.

He is now literally the center

of attention of the world.

Nero's desire for attention spirals out of
control just as a historic catastrophe strikes

Rome.

NARRATOR: Ten years into his rule, 27-year-old
Nero has settled in for the long haul.

Anyone who displeases him

doesn't last long.

No one dares plot against him.

When Romans aren't fearing for

their lives, they're squirming

with embarrassment over Nero's

lowbrow antics on stage.

Psychological analysis
suggests that Nero just can't help

himself.

Nero has now become addicted

to the crowd.

He's totally hooked on adulation.

Any amount of it is not enough.

This is part of his personality pathology.

It shows that deep inside of

him he needs that continued

love by the crowd.

He's become like a rock star,

on call 24 hours a day.

The stage is now set for

Nero's role in an appalling

event: the Great Fire of Rome.

Ancient Rome was made of
wood, and the streets were very

narrow, much more narrow than this.

Fire could jump from one

building to the next very easily.

And the stories are fires spread

quickly and frequently.

The fire of Nero is the most

destructive fire ever to hit Rome.

Half of Rome is totally burnt

to the ground.

Nero fiddles while Rome
burns. It's the myth that dogs him

through history.

But it's not a fiddle.

It's a lyre, an ancient

stringed instrument.

And Nero isn't playing a jig.

The sources even tell
us what song he was singing.

It was a lament to the fall of Troy.

And you know what?

That tells us a great deal.

It tells us that he probably

did fiddle while Rome burnt, but

not for the reasons you might suppose.

I mean, think about it.

He's an artiste, so when faced

with this great glorious city

burning to the ground, he

probably was moved to pick up

his lyre and sing a lament to

that other great doomed city, Troy.

(Lyre playing)

It's viewed as the beginning of Nero's descent
into madness. >> IBEJI: But he's not doing it

because he's mad.

He's not glorying in the death of Rome.

He's mourning it to the depths of his soul.

And then of course the tabloid

hacks get hold of it, and it's a

public-relations disaster.

And all because Nero doesn't

realize what it's going to look

like to people who don't understand him.

(Crowd jeering)

One possibility is to think of Nero a psychotic
at this point, but the evidence doesn't

not support that.

If anything, he has accepted

this reality as his shining moment.

The world is in flames around

him; he continues to perform.

This is the moment that he

has been waiting for.

The fire burns for six days.

Rumors spread that it was arson.

Romans demand justice.

Nero quickly finds somebody to blame, a
bunch of religious zealots who've become an

annoyance around the city, the Christians.

The Christians were a gift to

Nero, because they were a cult

on the fringes of society.

There were even rumors that

they ate the flesh and blood of

humans, which was probably a

misunderstanding of the

sacrament of the bread and wine.

But what made them deeply

suspicious to the Romans was

the fact that they refused to

sacrifice to the cult of the

emperor on the grounds that

there was only one god.

In modern terms it would be a

bit like refusing to swear

allegiance to the American flag

on the grounds that it was the

image of Satan.

That makes them perfect scapegoats.

IBEJI: There were even

Christian pamphlets circulating

at the time saying that Rome

would burn in hell fire for

worshipping false gods.

And of course to the Romans

that's like incitement to arson.

Nero orders Christians

rounded up and subjected to a

savage form of punishment.

He prefers to use scourging,
which is like whipping but far worse.

That's because the whip is

weighted with spiked metal balls.

We are going to use this
piece of pork to simulate what

would happen.

Keep in mind that the pork's

skin is a lot thicker and a lot

tougher than a human's skin would be.

♪

Look at the depth of injuries that are penetrating
all the way down into the actual muscle

tissue, below the fat layer, and

all the way through the skin.

The individual would suffer

a tremendous amount of agony

from this type of scourging.

This would have completely

destroyed their back, torn them right open.

You would not be surprised to

see fractured shoulder blades,

broken ribs as well.

Severe bleeding would have set in.

The individual would be able to

survive several hours of this

kind of torture before they would succumb.

Skilful use would be required

if you didn't want the individual to die.

It's a common punishment for serious crimes,
but Nero uses it on a large scale, beating

Christians with abandon.

It reveals a growing appetite

for cruelty, one that will lead

to horrifying public spectacles

in the arena.

NARRATOR: Fire destroys most
of Rome. Nero believes it's arson, and

blames the upstart Christians.

The reprisals are savage.

The Romans are used to
bloodshed in the arena, but what

Nero does to the Christians is excessive.

He has them dressed up in wild
animal skins and torn apart limb

from limb by wild dogs.

This is too much for the Romans.

This butchery of these

Christians, blamed for the fire

of Rome, is so graphic, is so

disgusting that it moves the

public to pity these people,

which is exactly what Nero did not intend.

But Nero no longer cares about
public opinion, and the atrocities worsen.

At night he has Christians tied

to stakes, coated with tar, set

on fire and turned into human torches.

With Rome in ruins, Nero begins
rebuilding. But his priorities don't sit

well with homeless Romans.

He gives himself an even

greater, more magnificent

palace that extends from the

Palatine Hill in the distance,

through the valley of the

Colosseum, all the way over to

the Esquiline Hill.

And it's highlighted by his

Domus Aurea, so famous for the

gilding of the structure on the

roofs, on the walls, everywhere.

This is not a way to win over the Romans.

Sure he's modernized their city,

but he's now taken a huge chunk

for himself.

His sense of entitlement is

similar to the worst of Wall

Street excesses.

Nero loves himself. He
loves other people to love

him.

But he is not psychotic.

He is not insane.

There's no evidence that he's

hallucinatory or delusional.

He continues to be very planful

and very goal directed.

Now, those goals are all

directed at making him look

better, but there's no evidence

that this guy is psychotic.

While half the city starves, Nero
builds a palace but hits a roadblock.

He's running out of money.

Nero won't let that stop him.

He has a plan.

The workhorse of the Roman

economy is the denarius,

rock-solid because it's 100%

silver, guaranteed.

In antiquity it was very
important for the ordinary

person, the man on the street

as it were, to have faith in

the silver content of the

coin that was paid in,

whether he was a Roman solider,

whether he was a senator or

whether he was just an

agricultural laborer.

Historians say Nero figures
out a way to stretch the denarius.

He intimidates coin makers

at the mint into watering

down the silver content.

But that wasn't backed up by

previous chemical analysis of a

denarius from Nero's reign,

identified by Nero's face on the coin.

This showed the coin to be pure silver.

So it sounded like the whole

story was an exaggeration.

But Dr. Matthew Ponting decided

to dig deeper, literally, and

take the bold move to drill

into the interior of one of

these precious coins.

The analysis will be able to

tell us exactly how much copper

was added to debase the silver

coinage by Nero, because it's

been taken from inside the coin

itself, missing any surface

layers, which would have had

their silver content enriched

prior to striking.

A sample from inside the

coin is passed through an

atomic-absorption spectrometer

to measure the silver content.

We're getting a figure of 170 parts per
million on this particular sample, which,

calculated back to account for

dilution factors, gives us a

figure of slightly less than 80%.

This would have saved the

imperial administration a

significant amount of money.

The other 20% is plain copper.

So Nero really does debase the

Roman currency and uses the

money for his grand building projects.

But if his scam is exposed,

he'll be lynched.

Dr. Ponting has discovered that

Nero goes to great lengths to

hide his tracks, diluting the

precious metal content inside

the coins, but leaving the

surface pure silver.

So it is different to laying on a...

Say, a silver foil over a

base-metal core, which was the

technique that was used by

forgers to actually forge coins.

In this case it's a much more

sophisticated process, where you

are actually enhancing the

surface silver content of the coin only.

Nero's audacious gamble with

the Roman currency was without precedent.

For the first time we see a

systematic and quite serious

debasement of the silver content

of the major silver unit of the

Roman Empire, the silver denarius.

Nero is now completely out of
control. A cabal of senators gather to

plot an assassination attempt.

ARYA: This is the Curia. This is the meeting
place of the senators, and they have a

conspiracy.

They are discussing removing the emperor.

They want him gone.

They want him killed.

But Nero's up for the fight.

Nero is ready to strike back,

having been prepared by his

mother to defend himself.

And he does so brutally, he does

so rapidly and he does so successfully.

They face Nero's wrath.

The culprits are branded, scourged,
torn apart and put out of their misery.

No one is safe around Nero, not even
his new wife. >> We're here in a part of

Nero's palace on the Palatine Hill.

(Whip snapping)

One night Nero comes home,

and he has a bit of a row with his wife.

Poppaea is pregnant with their

second child, and she is

complaining bitterly that Nero

is spending too much time at

the games, too many races.

(Horses running)

(Horse whinnying)

And in a fit of rage, Nero reacts.

Nero kicks her, kicks her to

death, killing her and their unborn child.

Nero gives up any pretense of running the
empire and sets off to Greece to explore his

creative side.

IBEJI: Artistic competitions
are a big thing in Ancient

Greece, and Nero throws himself

wholeheartedly into the

competition circuit.

It's hardly surprising that he

wins every award going.

I mean, they give him prizes for

competitions he didn't even take part in.

And Suetonius says he

won 1,808 awards, but that would

be five awards a day for an

entire year, which sounds pretty

unbelievable to me.

(Crowd laughing)

Nero returns to a grim
reckoning. Rebellion is in the air.

The Roman Senate passes a

resolution declaring him an

enemy of the state.

His luck has finally run out.

NARRATOR: Nero's mismanagement of the
empire and the bloody murder of powerful

figures in Rome has finally

been his undoing.

His last allies desert him.

Nero's out of options.
He's bankrupted the empire,

he's sacked all the temples

and he's murdered most of the ruling elite.

His only option left is to

commit suicide by falling on his sword.

His last words were supposed to

have been, "Oh, what an artiste

dies in me!"

Which would only be fitting.

In fact, he's such an artiste

that he can't even do that

properly, and he needs a

companion to help him kill himself.

A freed slave helps Nero with the
final deed. The curtain falls for the last

time.

Nero is 30 years old.

(Heart pounding)

At news of Nero's death
there is public rejoicing.

But very quickly that rejoicing,

that celebration becomes anger.

Romans don't just want him
dead. They want all traces of him

obliterated.

♪

For the first time, they pass a new law to
actually wipe him from history called a damnatio

memoriae.

At the news of Nero's death,

the senate took immediate

action, damnatio memoriae.

They wanted to condemn his

existence; they wanted to

condemn the fact that he had

ever been a ruler of Rome, so

they carve out his names, they

topple his statue, and he will

cease to have exist.

But when later rulers want

to make their predecessors look

bad, they make an example of

Nero because of his terrible crimes.

So writers like Suetonius made

absolutely certain that he's

never been forgotten.

He poisons his stepbrother
and has his mother killed.

He has one wife beheaded and kicks
another to death while she's pregnant.

He uses the scourge on

Christians and turns them into

human torches.

He kills senators and steals

from Romans by tampering with their money.

Where do these actions of an ancient behaving
badly put Nero on a scale of tyrants?

He didn't torture and kill
for the thrill of it, like his

uncle Caligula.

He had goals.

He killed for personal or

political gain, like Julius Caesar.

When he does use violence,

and it's a very directed

administrative sense, he does

not have the blood lust that

a number of the other famous

Roman rulers had.

But beating his pregnant

wife to death in an

uncontrollable rage moves him

along the scale towards the psychotic.

And what about his need to be

the center of attention?

The major personality trait

of Nero is this histrionics, to

the point of having a histrionic

personality disorder.

The theatricality and

superficiality, that need, that

craving for attention is what's

going to really drive his personality.

On this scale Nero rates very highly.

So who in history has a similar

personality profile?

When I compare Nero to a

modern-day or more recent

historic figure, I'd be looking

for somebody who, like Nero,

needed the stage.

He needed the crowds and adulation.

He needed himself to be the

center of attention.

At the same time I would be

looking at somebody ruthless and immoral.

We can look no further than a

recent ruler of Italy, Benito Mussolini.

Mussolini was a dictator

with a big ego, a streak of

cruelty and a flair for the dramatic.

Romans celebrate Nero's suicide, but
not for long. Rumors soon spread that Nero

is still alive.

He's spotted singing and playing music.

Even today, this is a familiar delusion.

Think of today of Elvis.

Elvis disappears.

Elvis is dead.

But there are sightings, and

then a lot of people, over time,

believe it.

And a lot of people today still

believe he is still alive.

And that kind of legend lives with Nero.

That much of an impact did he

have on Roman society.

Nero's ultimate desire was
to be remembered as a great

artiste.

That isn't how it turned out.

His disturbed mother and his

extreme self-obsession

ensured that his 13 years in

power is remembered not as an

artistic golden age but as the

reign of a ruthless tyrant and murderer.

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