The plebs of Rome, however, did not seem to care. Their attention was distracted from Thrasea’s ugly trial by another expensive state occasion that had been timed by Nero for that very purpose: the crowning of King Tiridates of Armenia. The occasion was a piece of political pageantry staged to represent the victorious pacification of the Roman empire’s eastern border with her hostile neighbouring empire Parthia. Tiridates was to be installed as Rome’s client-king in the buffer kingdom of Armenia, which lay between the two. The general who achieved this successful pacification was the brilliant, honourable Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo. For the ceremony, however, he remained in the east.
No expense was spared for the king’s reception. It cost Rome 800,000 sesterces a day for Tiridates and his train of family, servants and 3000 cavalry to make the nine-month journey to the capital. When the royal entourage arrived it was welcomed by a megalopolis decked out in garlands, colourful banners and fancy lights; the Praetorian soldiers guarded the roads in their finest armour, and the citizens wore their best clothes as they flooded in their thousands to the Forum, or thronged streets and even rooftops to catch a glimpse of the grand occasion.32
The crowning was to take place in the Great Theatre of Pompey, the interior of which had been gilded with gold leaf for the occasion. On the stage where Tiridates would kneel before Nero, a massive cloth awning had been set up to shade the proceedings from the sun; on it was the embroidered figure of Nero driving a chariot and surrounded by heavenly constellations. When Tiridates compared the emperor to the eastern god Mithras, the disenchanted senators looking on were apalled. The contrast between the trial and suicides of dignified senators and the theatrical glorification and submission of a foreign potentate for which Nero could claim little responsibility was truly nauseating. Surely things could get no worse? Indeed, they could.
The cumulative costs of Nero’s Golden House, the second Neronia, Poppaea’s funeral and now the reception of Tiridates meant that the finances of the Roman empire were quickly spiralling out of control. To avoid financial ruin the coinage was devalued, but in AD 66 and 67 Nero turned to more extreme measures. He was already fearful of any aristocrat who could rival him for wealth. He believed that his homes, estates and possessions provided the very basis, the proof of his eminence in the state; men of conspicuous wealth were, as a result, rivals who could undermine him.33 Now, however, he began murdering them for their money. It was like a continuation of the purge that he had carried out the year before, but this time without even the excuse of an assassination plot to justify it.
Tigellinus was again instrumental in the purge, and the process of elimination was simple. An aristocrat whose wealth was desired was falsely accused of treason: some slave, crony, or servile senator or knight seeking to win favour, eliminate an enemy or settle an old score could always be found to turn informer and make the accusation. The charges were many and various. Cassius Longinus was accused of honouring his ancestor Cassius, the assassin of Julius Caesar, the founder of the Julio-Claudian dynasty; the charge against Lucius Junius Silanus Torquatus was that he had given his slaves and staff titles usually bestowed on members of the imperial household, as though he himself were aspiring to be emperor; others were accused of incest, black magic and consulting astrologers about the death of Nero. All the charges, according to Tacitus, were fatuous.
Often the accused would do the honourable thing and commit suicide after signing over much of his wealth to the emperor in order to protect some small part of it for his remaining family. If, however, there was any resistance in signing the will, as in the case of Anteius Rufus, Tigellinus would bring along a lawyer or a witness who would forcibly sanction it and ensure that the money went either to the emperor or directly to Tigellinus himself before the victim died. While many were murdered in this way, others escaped death by ‘purchasing their lives’ from Tigellinus.34
With this spree of tyrannical murders, many below the upper echelons of the élite – the families, allies, associates, friends and dependants of those connected to the persecuted senators and knights – now also turned against the emperor too. The ordinary people of Rome continued to love their populist emperor; they marvelled at his lavish shows and grand spectacles.35 Those of more substantial means took a very different view. They now saw their money stolen, their chances of inheritance destroyed, and their prospects for future advancement and achievement in Roman public life evaporate. If further evidence were needed, they only had to look at the temples of Rome and Italy. These were further plundered and the ancient sacred relics, statues and treasures won during the centuries of the glorious republic were melted down. It was as if the heart was being ripped out of the character of the Romans and their ancient virtues.
Nero took this growing disenchantment as a personal rejection. He was hurt by the ingratitude he was being shown after all he had done for the Roman people. Far from tackling the mounting crisis head-on, Nero’s response was to retreat further into fantasy. He said he wanted to escape from the world of Rome, which he increasingly disliked, to a place of like-minded souls who really appreciated him and who were worthy of his talents. So in September AD 66, with an entourage of servants, freedmen, compliant senators and knights, and some Praetorian guards led by Tigellinus, Nero left for Greece.
Before departure there was one final insult to level at the Roman élite, the clearest sign yet that they counted for nothing. It lay in his choice of the person left in charge of affairs in Rome. The man chosen to stay behind was not the consul for the year, not even a senator, but a vicious former slave from the imperial household: Helius. He was given complete authority to banish, confiscate from and even put to death citizens, knights and senators. The historian Cassius Dio was moved to quip:
Thus the Roman empire was at that time a slave to two emperors at once, Nero and Helius; and I am unable to say which of them was the worse. In most respects they behaved entirely alike, the one point of difference being that the descendant of Augustus was emulating lyre-players and tragedians, whereas the freedman of Claudius was emulating the Caesars.36
Away from the capital, Nero saw his tour of the great pan-Hellenic games of Greece as a chance to express the full flowering of his artistic career. And in that ambition the Greek city-states were happy to accommodate him. Although some of the four-yearly festivals, such as the Olympic Games, were not due for the year of Nero’s visit, the Greeks simply brought them forward to coincide with it. To Nero, however, his participation in the competitions represented much more than artistic freedom. It was an opportunity to silence his critics and vanquish his rivals in Rome. For a militaristic society that valued virtue and excellence above everything else, Nero would assert once and for all his primacy as emperor; his chosen field to prove his excellence was not the theatre of war, as it was for Augustus, but the theatre itself.