The Parthian War started in AD 58 and, after initial victories and following set-backs, ended in AD 63 when a diplomatic solution was reached between Nero and the Parthian king Vologases I.Īccording to this settlement Tiridates, brother of the Parthian king, would rule over Armenia, but only after having travelled all the way to Rome to be crowned by Nero. The two powers had long been contending for control over the buffer state of Armenia and open conflict sparked again during Nero's rule. Minted in France, 66 AD.Ĭentred on greater Iran, the Parthian empire was a major political and cultural power and a long-standing enemy of Rome. This act was celebrated with the issue of a special coin, showing the temple with its doors closed. In AD 66, Nero closed the gates of the temple, marking the end of war with Parthia. The gates of the temple of Janus in Rome were symbolically closed during periods of peace and opened in times of war. The fact that Octavia couldn't produce an heir while Poppaea was pregnant with Nero's daughter likely played an important role in deciding Octavia's fate. No further motives were offered for Octavia's death other than Nero's passion for Poppaea, and we will probably never know what transpired at court. According to ancient writers, her banishment and death caused great unrest among the public, who sympathised with the dutiful Octavia. Octavia was first exiled then executed in AD 62 on adultery charges. According to ancient writers, Nero had various affairs until his lover Poppaea Sabina convinced him to divorce his wife. In order to arrange their marriage, Octavia had to be adopted into another family. Octavia was the daughter of the emperor Claudius from a previous marriage, so when Claudius married Agrippina and adopted her son Nero, Nero and Octavia became brother and sister. The marriage between Nero and Octavia, aged 15 and 13/14 at the time, was arranged by their parents in order to further legitimise Nero's claim to the throne. With permission of the Ministero della Cultura ̶ Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli.
Marble portrait, possibly of Claudia Octavia. However, this did not stop historians from fabricating dramatic stories of Agrippina's murder, asserting that Nero tried (and failed) to kill her with a boat engineered to sink, before sending his men to do the job.Īgrippina allegedly told them to stab her in the womb that bore Nero, her last words clearly borrowed from stage plays. Given the lack of eyewitnesses, there is no way of knowing if or how this happened. The Roman historians Tacitus, Suetonius and Cassius Dio all claim that Nero, fed up with Agrippina's interference, decided to kill her. His mother Agrippina exerted a significant influence, especially at the beginning of his rule. When Claudius died in AD 54, Nero became emperor just two months before turning 17.Īs he was supported by both the army and the senate, his rise to power was smooth. Photo © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée du Louvre) / Hervé Lewandowski. Marble relief with soldiers of the Praetorian Guard, who served as personal guards to the emperor. These accounts became the 'historical' sources used by later historians, therefore perpetuating a fabricated image of Nero, which has survived all the way to the present. Authors writing under the Flavians all had an interest in legitimising the new ruling family by portraying the last of the Julio-Claudians in the worst possible light, turning history into propaganda. Nero's demise brought forward a period of chaos and civil war – one that ended only when a new dynasty seized power, the Flavians.
However, far from being impartial narrators presenting objective accounts of past events, these authors and their sources wrote with a very clear agenda in mind. All written decades after Nero's death, their accounts have long shaped our understanding of this emperor's rule. Most of what we know about Nero comes from the surviving works of three historians – Tacitus, Suetonius and Cassius Dio. After Carl Theodor von Piloty.īut what do we really know about Nero? Can we separate the scandalous stories told by later authors from the reality of his rule? Nero after the burning of Rome from Le Monde Illustré.
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