Lhis cause seemed hopeless, but, after almost two millennia of unanimous condemnation, Nero could achieve what would look like a rehabilitation. It is necessary to take tweezers because the mission is delicate so much the indictment file is thick. The Roman emperor (37-68) is accused of having murdered his mother, Agrippina, with whom he would have had incestuous relations, but also his wives Octavia and Poppea, among others.
And then, of course, there is the memorable fire of July 64 which destroyed three quarters of Rome, which he would have contemplated from his palace in stage costume (the man also prided himself on the theater) while playing the lyre. A fiery serenade immortalized by Mervyn LeRoy in Whither goest thou (1951), one of thirty-seven peplums inspired by the character. Néron is Peter Ustinov, staring hallucinated, plucking the strings of his instrument in front of a set of cardboard paste that ignites.
According to the Roman historian and senator Tacitus, the little music of the incendiary lyre began to be heard in the form of a rumor a few days after the disaster. He then declared that the emperor was not in Rome, but in his native town of Antium. Nero opened the Champ de Mars and distributed food to the victims, lowered the price of wheat, but nothing helped. As if protesting his innocence wasn’t enough, his impulsive nature led him to blame Christians for causing the disaster and spreading “fake news.” Many were massacred, which only worsened his case, for centuries.
” Damnation of memory “
While it is quite possible that the origin of the flames was accidental (in 69 and 80, other fires ravaged Rome), Nero’s eagerness to build his new palace on the still smoking rubble, the very bling-bling Golden House (House of Gold), was, again, very badly perceived.
Abandoned by the Praetorian Guard, with no escape but to kill himself, then doomed by the Senate to the damnation of memory (which required erasing the traces of those who were struck by it), Nero was covered in infamy in the following decades in the chronicles of Pliny the Elder and Suetonius.
Today, many contemporary researchers are sorry that the trace of Nero boils down to an incriminating account. In 2011, a major exhibition organized in Rome tried to question this regular vituperation while the very bloodthirsty Trajan and Caligula are not subject to so much resentment.
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