At the Pythian, Nemean, Delphic and Olympic Games, Nero won prize after prize in the contests for chariot racing, lyre playing and recitals of tragic material. Indeed, the organizers of the Olympic Games had to add musical contests to the competition because it traditionally included only athletic events. Through these victories Nero continued to show his ascendancy over the senators. And yet his insecurity never left him. He sent a message commanding Helius to murder Sulpicius Camerinus and his son for simply having the family name Pythicus, believing that it diminished the glory he gained from the Pythian Games. However, Nero saved the most outrageous murder for Greece. He invited the general Corbulo, the man to whom he owed all the successes of Roman foreign policy in the east, to join him in Greece. He addressed him as ‘father’ and ‘benefactor’ in his correspondence. When Corbulo came ashore unarmed in Corinth, however, he was not given a war hero’s welcome by the emperor. He was met by Nero’s henchmen, who forced him to commit suicide. The rumour went that Nero was preparing to go on stage, and while dressed in the long, unbelted tunic of an actor, he simply could not face greeting the man who had pacified Rome’s eastern frontier with Parthia, the man who represented all that was virtuous and excellent.37
In addition to his fear of rivals, other demons, anxieties and insecurities played on Nero’s mind during his grand tour. He refused to take part in the Eleusinian Mysteries near Athens for fear of raising the wrath of his mother’s ghost. The ghost of Poppaea loomed large too, as the masks of the female characters he performed on stage were deliberately made to resemble her features. He also called Sporus, one of his freedmen, ‘Sabina’ (Poppaea’s other name) because of his resemblance to her. In fact, Nero even had him castrated and underwent a mock marriage ceremony with him, at which Tigellinus gave the ‘bride’ away. Henceforth, Nero affectionately called Sporus his ‘queen’ and his ‘lady’, as though Poppaea were alive and well and a part of the tour. ‘After that, Nero had two bedfellows at once: [the freedman] Pythagoras to play the role of husband to him and Sporus that of wife.’38
Thus the rounds of partying, pleasure-making and pursuing the arts continued. Nero was on the trip of a lifetime. He plundered many of Greece’s most famous works of art in a nakedly imperialistic fashion, and the subject Athenians emblazoned their emperor’s name in bronze above the entrance to their most treasured and sacred building, the Parthenon.39 In early AD 68, however, Nero was abruptly brought down to earth with a bump when a visitor arrived from Rome with some bad news.
Although Helius had for some weeks been sending Nero messages that a rebellion was being organized, it took his arrival in person to convince the emperor to return urgently to Rome and face the crisis. In Nero’s absence, Gaius Julius Vindex, the Roman governor of a province in Gaul, had sounded out opinions of Nero among other commanders in the provinces. Word had got back to Helius in Rome, and now here he was, face to face with Nero, telling him that Vindex’s rebellion was serious. Nero dismissed the idea. Vindex, a Romanized Gaul, had no real aristocratic pedigree to mount a serious challenge to the emperor; and anyway, he had no army at his disposal. Nonetheless, Nero agreed to return to Rome ahead of schedule. It was a return that the Roman people would not quickly forget.
Just as Nero had left Rome to conquer his rivals through art, so he now returned as though from war in a spectacular parody of the triumphal procession usually reserved for great generals. This was a triumph to match those awarded to Pompey for his conquest of the east, or to Caesar for his conquest of Gaul. In his lavish train, men carried the crowns that Nero had won, while banners of wood bore the name of the festival and the contest in which he had been victorious. As the herald announced that Nero had won 1808 crowns during his tour, his cries were reciprocated with shouts of ‘Hail Olympian victor! Hail Pythian victor!’ from the crowds who filled the streets. The finishing touch was Nero’s specially chosen vehicle – the triumphal chariot of Augustus, in which the first emperor had celebrated his many military victories.
In all the excitement a theatre producer offered Nero one million sesterces if he would perform in public, not in the state festivals organized by the emperor, but in the producer’s private theatre. Nero agreed to appear, but refused the money on grounds of principle – although Tigellinus promptly took the producer aside and demanded the money anyway ‘as the price of not putting him to death’.40 However, behind the warm welcome for the emperor, Rome, half rebuilt and with the scaffolding around its reconstruction lying abandoned, showed signs of financial suffering. Worse was to come. Although the plebs welcomed Nero as a popular saviour, he would soon prove otherwise, for his first decision upon reaching impoverished Rome was to leave it for some more fun in the most Greek of Italian cities, Naples. This was the breaking point.
Vindex now publicly declared his rebellion in Gaul. He minted local coins with the slogans ‘Liberty from Tyranny’ and ‘For the Salvation of the Whole Human Race’. It was clear his cause was not to promote Gallic nationalism and a secession from the Roman empire, but simply the removal of Nero. Of course, Nero had heard all this before. The critical development, however, and the key difference from previously was that Vindex had support on a massive scale: he was able to raise a local army of 100,000 Roman Gauls. Clearly, Vindex was tapping the deep well of hatred accumulated over the previous four years when Nero had raised taxes and plundered the wealth of the provincial élites. He had done so not as a thoughtful king making difficult decisions, but as a wilful, capricious tyrant more interested in his performing career. Now, in Gaul, he was paying the price. Yet when news of the rebellion was whispered to him, Nero blithely showed no concern; in fact, he said he was pleased because it would give him the opportunity provided by the laws of war to despoil Vindex’s province even further. Nero returned to watching the athletic competition at hand, stung less by the news of the rebellion than by an insult Vindex had levelled at him: that he was terrible lyre player.41 But a week later he would be genuinely rattled for the first time.
The news that caused Nero to collapse in a heap and lie paralysed as though dead was that five other provincial commanders had joined Vindex’s campaign. Foremost among them were his old friend Otho, governor of Lusitania (modern-day Portugal), and Servius Sulpicius Galba, governor of the Spanish provinces and figurehead of the rebellion. The elderly and arthritic Galba was an aristocrat from an ancient patrician family that had long moved in the most elevated circles of Roman society. Although he was not a member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, he stood for core, old-fashioned values and a connection with Rome’s traditions and history in a time of turmoil, decadence and amorality that was characteristic of Nero’s regime. Galba’s army proclaimed him ‘legate of the Senate and people of Rome’ on 2 April AD 68. The rebellion had finally found its leader.
At long last Nero took action. He proposed a military expedition to tackle the rebellion head-on, made himself sole consul and, with the agreement of the Senate, which remained notionally loyal, declared Galba an enemy of the state. The emperor gave orders to organize a military line of defence along the river Po, deploying units from Illyricum, Germany and Britain, as well as a legion from Italy. Nero placed all these troops under Petronius Turpilianus, the senator who had helped uncover the Piso plot. Crucially, however, Nero did not take command of the forces himself.