In the year 808 from the founding of the City, Nero Caesar, the fifth from Augustus, obtained the principate and held it for not quite fourteen years. A follower — or rather an outstripper — of his uncle Gaius Caligula in every vice and crime, he practised wantonness, lust, luxury, avarice and cruelty with every kind of crime. Driven by wantonness, indeed, he travelled through almost all the theatres of Italy and Greece, and, assuming even the disgrace of varied costumes, he often believed he had outdone heralds, lyre-players, tragic actors and charioteers.
1 Anno ab urbe condita DCCCVIII Nero Caesar ab Augusto quintus principatum adeptus est mansitque in eo annis non plenis quattuordecim. Gai Caligulae auunculi sui erga omnia uitia ac scelera sectator immo transgressor, petulantiam libidinem luxuriam auaritiam crudelitatem nullo non scelere exercuit; siquidem petulantia percitus omnia paene Italiae ac Graeciae theatra perlustrans, adsumpto etiam uarii uestitus dedecore cerycas citharistas tragoedos et aurigas saepe sibi superasse uisus est.
He was so tormented, moreover, by his lusts that he is reported to have kept his hands off neither his mother nor his sister nor any reverence for kinship; he took a man as his wife, and was himself received by a man as a wife.
2 libidinibus porro tantis exagitatus est, ut ne a matre quidem uel sorore ullaue consanguinitatis reuerentia abstinuisse referatur, uirum in uxorem duxerit, ipse a uiro ut uxor acceptus sit.
His luxury was so unbridled that he fished with golden nets drawn out with purple cords, and bathed in cold and hot perfumes. He is reported, too, never to have made a journey with fewer than a thousand carriages.
3 luxuriae uero tam effrenatae fuit, ut retibus aureis piscaretur, quae purpureis funibus extrahebantur, frigidis et calidis lauaret unguentis. qui etiam numquam minus mille carrucis confecisse iter traditur.
Finally, he made the burning of the city of Rome a spectacle for his pleasure; for six days and seven nights the burning city fed the eyes of the king;
4 denique urbis Romae incendium uoluptatis suae spectaculum fecit; per sex dies septemque noctes ardens ciuitas regios pauit aspectus;
granaries built of squared stone, and those great tenement blocks of old which the spreading flame could not reach, were shaken down and set alight by great engines once prepared for foreign wars, while the unhappy populace was driven to take shelter among tombs and monuments.
5 horrea quadro structa lapide magnaeque illae ueterum insulae, quas discurrens adire flamma non poterat, magnis machinis quondam ad externa bella praeparatis labefactatae atque inflammatae sunt, ad monumentorum bustorumque deuersoria infelici plebe conpulsa.
He himself watched this from that lofty tower of Maecenas, and, delighted, as he said, by the beauty of the flame, he sang the Iliad in tragic costume.1
6 quod ipse ex altissima illa Maecenatiana turre prospectans laetusque flammae ut aiebat pulchritudine tragico habitu Iliadam decantabat.
1Suetonius (Nero 38) says he sang the “Capture of Troy” (Halosis Ilii); Orosius writes Iliadam, “the Iliad”.
His avarice was so headlong that after this burning of the City — which Augustus had boasted of having turned from brick into marble — he allowed no one to approach the remains of his property; everything that had survived the flames in any way he carried off himself;
7 auaritiae autem tam praeruptae exstitit, ut post hoc incendium urbis, quam se Augustus ex latericia marmoream reddidisse iactauerat, neminem ad reliquias rerum suarum adire permiserit; cuncta, quae flammae quoquo modo superfuerant, ipse abstulit;
he ordered that ten million sesterces a year be contributed to him by the senate for his expenses; he deprived very many senators of their property without any cause at all; and in a single day, applying torture as well, he wiped out the entire wealth of all the merchants.
8 centies centena milia sestertium annua ad expensas a senatu conferri sibi imperauit; plurimos senatorum nulla exstante causa bonis priuauit; negotiatorum omnium sub una die, tormentis quoque adhibitis, omnem penitus censum abstersit.
He grew so wild with the frenzy of cruelty that he killed the greater part of the senate and almost emptied the equestrian order. Nor did he refrain even from parricide: his mother, his brother, his sister, his wife, and all his other kinsmen and relatives he struck down without hesitation.
9 crudelitatis autem rabie ita efferatus est, ut plurimam senatus partem interfecerit, equestrem ordinem paene destituerit. sed ne parricidiis quidem abstinuit, matrem fratrem sororem uxorem ceterosque omnes cognatos et propinquos sine haesitatione prostrauit.
He increased this mass of crimes with the rashness of his impiety towards God. For he was the first at Rome to visit the Christians with tortures and deaths, and he ordered them to be tormented by a like persecution throughout all the provinces; and attempting to root out the very name, he killed the most blessed apostles of Christ, Peter by the cross and Paul by the sword.
10 auxit hanc molem facinorum eius temeritas impietatis in Deum. nam primus Romae Christianos suppliciis et mortibus affecit ac per omnes prouincias pari persecutione excruciari imperauit ipsumque nomen exstirpare conatus beatissimos Christi apostolos Petrum cruce, Paulum gladio occidit.
Soon disasters rising on every side fell in heaps upon the wretched city. For in the following autumn so great a pestilence lay upon the City that thirty thousand funerals were entered in the register of Libitina. Then a disaster in Britain followed hard upon it, in which two principal towns were sacked with great loss and slaughter of citizens and allies.2
11 mox aceruatim miseram ciuitatem obortae undique oppressere clades. nam subsequente autumno tanta urbi pestilentia incubuit, ut triginta milia funerum in rationem Libitinae uenirent. Britannica deinde clades e uestigio accidit, qua duo praecipua oppida magna ciuium sociorumque clade et caede direpta sunt.
2The British disaster is Boudicca’s revolt of AD 60–61, when Camulodunum (Colchester) and Londinium were sacked; it and the Armenian defeat of 62 came before the fire of 64. Orosius takes the list from Suetonius (Nero 39) and makes it follow the persecution.
In the east, moreover, great provinces of Armenia were lost, Roman legions were sent under the Parthian yoke, and Syria was retained only with difficulty. In Asia three cities — Laodicea, Hierapolis and Colossae — collapsed in an earthquake.
12 praeterea in oriente magnis Armeniae prouinciis amissis Romanae legiones sub iugum Parthicum missae, aegreque Syria retenta est. in Asia tres urbes, hoc est Laodicia Hierapolis Colossae, terrae motu conciderunt.
But when Nero learned that Galba had been created emperor by the army in Spain, he collapsed entirely in spirit and in hope. And while he was plotting incredible evils for throwing the commonwealth into confusion, or rather for overthrowing it, he was declared a public enemy by the senate and, fleeing most ignominiously, killed himself at the fourth milestone from the City; and in him the whole family of the Caesars came to an end.
13 at uero Nero postquam Galbam in Hispania imperatorem creatum ab exercitu cognouit, totus animo ac spe concidit. cumque incredibilia perturbandae, immo subruendae reipublicae mala moliretur, hostis a senatu pronuntiatus et ignominiosissime fugiens, ad quartum ab urbe lapidem sese ipse interfecit, atque in eo omnis Caesarum familia consumpta est.