Chapter 1: Why is Nero's reputation considered so negative?
Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. There are very few people for whom the name Nero brings up positive associations. It's a name that at this point has almost entirely negative connotations, right?
During the fire of Rome, Nero supposedly fiddled and watched it all happen, that this is what bad leaders do, this is what indifferent, cruel, uncaring people do. Even in the ancient world, there were rumors that Nero set the fire on purpose to clear out undesirables so he could build a bigger palace. Now, why does Nero have such a terrible reputation and is it deserved?
I think we can all concede that a lot of what we know about Nero, and this is true for a lot of historical figures, including Seneca, who worked for Nero, a lot of what we know about him comes from people who didn't like him. Enemies, critics, historians writing after he was dead who maybe had political agendas. So does Nero get a fair shake? Was he the villain that history has turned him into?
Actually, this was a question that Smithsonian Magazine wrote about at length in 2020. The article, I remember reading it when it came out. It said, the new, nicer Nero. And basically, the article challenges this reputation of Nero as a self-indulgent tyrant who, again, fiddled while Rome burned.
And they claim that most of this reputation was shaped by hostile ancient sources, Tacitus and Suetonius. And then, of course, the Christians who were opposed to Nero because of his cruel treatment of them. And then later that this reputation was continually reinforced in each subsequent generation and novels and plays and films like for 2000 years.
This guy, who certainly wasn't perfect, but perhaps wasn't as bad as people said, was turned into a caricature of a caricature of a caricature. And there are no shortage of modern scholars, namely John Drinkwater, who wrote a book called Nero, Emperor and Court, who claim that much of what we've been told about Nero is exaggerated or misleading.
If you go out into the street and ask someone to name a Roman emperor, it's almost certain that they'll say Nero. And most people just won't know why. He's become such a character that he's just an epitome of evil. What has struck me in researching Nero is that people love evil. There's no doubt about it. And if you want a really bad character, nasty character, this is Nero.
The question is, really, do professional Roman historians believe this anymore? I mean, it's out there, but do professional historians really believe it? Can we say it's true? And the answer is no. Very little of it is in fact true. So this popular Nero is not the Nero we know.
And it is because of the way that the science of ancient history developed that what this picture I'm giving you is the picture of a group of ancient sources. There are some Roman sources, Latin sources, Greek sources, but there are also Christian sources and Jewish sources.
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Chapter 2: What myths surround Nero and the Great Fire of Rome?
And these sources combine to give this hugely negative picture of Nero. Now, what modern historians have done whether people like it or not, is to look at this information and to look at it forensically, to pretend that these sources, the authors of these sources, are in court. And so you start probing Why are they saying this? And the answer is really that they are biased in many ways.
The main Latin and Greek sources, their names are Tacitus Suetonius and Cassius Dio. They all come from a particular level of society. They're all aristocrats. The Roman aristocrats were against this system that Nero was head of anyway. And to some degree, they've all suffered from it. So they don't like anyone in Nero's position.
And it doesn't matter if it was just Nero, that they're against anyone who's in the top position. I think once this bad Nero is in circulation, you can't get rid of it. My wife and I often discuss what makes a classic. And the classic is something, a novel in particular, or a play or a film, that once it's there, can be distorted in any number of ways.
I mean, there are a number of ways that Alice in Wonderland has been portrayed. I mean, there are ways for kids, there's some very dark ways for adults. umpteen ways in which Sherlock Holmes has been portrayed, right? Once this model is in circulation, people can do with it what they want. And this Nero model, the evil Nero, is so useful.
I mean, he's attractive in this curious way because people love to hate. He can be used as a model of the tyrant. And the different sources, you know, as they're trying to rehabilitate Nero's reputation or trying to mitigate some of the claims, they'll come at it from a couple of angles.
Like, okay, maybe he was poorly suited for the role, but not like a psychopath, that he was a young man thrust into power and most young emperors didn't do a good job. Or they'll say that, you know, he actually did a great job allowing competent administrators to govern the empire while he focused on his interests.
They'll try to break down each of the individual crimes that have been blamed on him and try to... Knocked down this one or that one. Maybe they'll even point to the fact that he responded apparently decently well to the great fire of 64 A.D., that he organized relief efforts, that there were some reforms after. And, you know, they'll point out that he wasn't actually responsible. Fiddling.
And then they'll look at some of the political murders like his brother and his mother and go, well, he wasn't the only one. In fact, Athena Darius and Arius Didymus, as I talk about in Lives of the Stoics, had Octavian, the first emperor of Rome, get rid of his half-brother, Caesarion.
So they're saying that Nero is not a monster or a saint, but a complex historical figure whose reputation was shaped by these hostile historical facts rather than by like the actual evidence. And look, I myself have piled on to Nero over the years. We did a YouTube video in 2024 about narcissistic leaders and why they always fail in the end. And this is what I said about Nero.
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Chapter 3: How did hostile sources shape Nero's historical image?
And they find Nero to be repugnant. Although Seneca fancies himself the adult in the room, the moderating influence on Nero, the other Stoics, Stoics like Gaius Plautus, Thracia, Hephaestus, There's a number of Stoics who just refuse to go along with Nero. They defy him. They are what you might call the resistance. Nero just can't handle anyone not rubber stamping what he is doing.
He can't stand that there's anyone or anything that disagrees with him, that wants to challenge him. And so they get locked in this cycle of conflict. He doesn't like that there's a stoic named Agrippinus who has a sort of hereditary hatred of emperors, Tacitus tells us. He just doesn't like that Agrippinus won't come to his parties.
He just, he can't wrap his head around people not wanting to celebrate and love him. He thinks this is something he's entitled to rather than something he has to earn. Helvidius, one of the Stoics, is banished for having said something positively about Brutus, the killer of Caesar. Nero takes this somehow indirectly as a threat. Paranoia is just spitting him out of control.
Ultimately, Nero is just incompetent. He just doesn't have the stuff. This is the problem with hereditary rulers, but he doesn't do the work to be qualified to do this job. He doesn't take it seriously. And as he's piling up bodies after body of critics of his regime, there's a story about one conspirator against Nero who's put to death.
And as he stares out into the grave they're about to throw him in, he says, this too is not up to code. It was an embodiment of everything that was wrong with Nero. It's not just that he was cruel. It's that he was bad at being in charge. Nero's greatest enemy is this stoic named Thrasia.
And basically the source of their disagreement is that Thrasia insists on truth and justice and reality, that he tries to be good at his job. And this inevitably puts him on a collision course with Nero. He's the guy that says, this is not normal that, there's something wrong with this guy, that this doesn't make sense.
And so when Nero wants to shower his new wife with honors, Thrasia doesn't want to go along with it. When Thrasia saw corruption, he called it out. But this was in parcel of what Nero wanted on what his regime sat on. And so they were inevitably going to be enemies. Nero's sycophants whispered that he has to kill Thracia.
He says, the country in its eagerness for discord is now talking of you, Nero. One man whispered into his ear, they're talking of you and Thracia as it once talked of Caesar and Cato.
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Chapter 4: What evidence suggests Nero may not have been as bad as portrayed?
Cato was a hero and Nero couldn't handle a hero existing, so he has to get rid of him. Nero expresses his displeasure to Thrasia. He expects him to throw himself at him, beg to be forgiven. Instead, Thrasia says, if you think I'm guilty of something, name your charges. Accused me out in the open. And ultimately they bring Thrasia up on these false charges and he is executed.
We're told that some of his last words are, Nero can kill me, but he cannot harm me. Meaning that he refused to be corrupted by and degraded by Nero, even though Nero did have the power of life and death over him. But as it does for all gangsters and tyrants and bullies, eventually the support for Nero arose. And it erodes slowly and then all at once.
Ultimately, Nero has to kill Seneca as well, and he sends goons to dispatch the man who had raised him, basically like a son. And as everyone wept and cried in Seneca's house, Seneca stopped him and he goes, why is this surprising to you? He said, who knew not Nero's cruelty? He said, look at all the other terrible things he's done to people close to him.
He said, what's left then for him to take me out to? It had always been there. Who Nero was, was always there. Power just enabled it. Nero had driven himself into a wicked downward spiral. He descended into madness. And eventually the stoic opposition applies enough pressure. But of course, even at the end, Nero was a coward. He couldn't take responsibility. He couldn't take ownership.
He couldn't go out like a man. One of the members of the Praetorian Guard, when they're watching this cowardly, selfish man-child frantically try to save himself, he goes, is it as awful as that to die? Finally, even his trusted bodyguards abandoned him. I just heard this stat that shocked me, given that I hear from the sales staff at my publisher quite a bit.
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