Perhaps as a result of this, a rumour went around Rome describing the following fantasy. Nero was preparing to go to Gaul unarmed and show the rebelling armies his tears in the hope that this would persuade them to recant. Another rumour had it that he hoped singing a victory ode would do the trick. Finally, to quell the crisis, the emperor had settled on an equally fantastic solution – a full-scale drama production. He would ride out with an army of mythical Amazons (actually prostitutes and actresses dressed up and equipped with bows, arrows and axes), and the vehicles accompanying the expedition would carry not provisions and supplies, but stage machinery.42 Although the Senate and Praetorian Guard had so far remained nominally loyal, now they waited, primed for the moment to jump. That moment came in May, when the crisis reached its climax in a series of damaging blows.
First, the Roman governor of North Africa, Clodius Macer, joined the rebellion by shutting down the grain supply to Rome. The city was already suffering a shortage of food, and the corn supply was its lifeline. Macer was backed by his one standing Roman legion, an auxiliary force and an alternative provincial senate. They were motivated perhaps by Nero’s murder of six North African landowners, who between them owned half of the agricultural land.43 The prefect of Egypt, the other granary of the Roman empire, also wavered in his allegiance. Then news came that the army once loyal to Nero in Gaul, which had even fought Vindex’s recruits on his behalf, had now switched its allegiance to Galba. The final blow was the discovery that Turpilianus, the commander of the armies defending Italy from Galba, had now sided with him. When Nero heard this, while he was having his lunch, ‘he tore up the letters brought to him, overturned the table, and hurled to the ground two of his favourite goblets, which he called his “Homerics” as they were decorated with scenes from Homer’s poems’.44
Tigellinus, now ill, had long realized that Nero was doomed. While in Greece he had lost control of the Praetorian Guard to his colleague Nymphidius Sabinus, and now, in secret, he secured a neat exit (as well as his safety) by ingratiating himself with Galba’s envoy in the city.45 The Senate waited for the Praetorian Guards to declare their position. Sabinus bribed them with money given in the name of Galba, and with that they abandoned their loyalty to the emperor. As with Nero’s coronation, so it was with his downfalclass="underline" the Senate soon followed suit, this time declaring Nero an enemy of the state.
After considering various options for escape, Nero put off his decision until the following day. In the early hours of 9 June, however, he woke up in his palace alone. He quickly realized that the Praetorians had indeed defected. Further investigation of the rooms and corridors showed that his friends and even the caretakers had gone. There remained only four loyal freedmen for company, among them Sporus, Epaphroditus and Phaon. When Nero said that he wanted to hide somewhere, Phaon suggested his own villa 6 kilometres (4 miles) outside the city. The emperor, shoeless and dressed in a plain tunic covered by a dark cloak to avoid being detected by the search parties now looking for him, mounted his horse and set out with the others.
At some point, Nero’s horse suddenly reared. It was shying away from the stench of a dead body abandoned on the road. ‘Nero’s face was exposed and he was recognized and saluted by a man who had served in the Praetorians.’46
The last part of the journey was undertaken on foot. The emperor and his petty entourage reached Phaon’s villa via a path overgrown with thickets and brambles. A robe was laid on the ground so that Nero could protect his feet. The path eventually led to a back wall. While Nero waited for a hole to be made in it, he picked out the thorns from his torn cloak; then he climbed through the narrow passage. Once inside the villa, the freedmen pleaded with him to put himself beyond the reach of his enemies by killing himself. It was the opportunity for one last piece of stage management – his own death scene. Nero gave instructions about making a grave and the disposal of his body, all the while repeating the words, ‘What an artist dies with me’.47
Despite news that the search party was getting closer and that he would be punished as an enemy of the state, Nero procrastinated further. He directed Sporus when and how to weep, and begged the others to set an example first. Finally, as the sounds of horsemen drew near, Nero, aided by Epaphroditus, drove a dagger through his throat. He was thirty-one years old. His dying wish for a funeral was granted, and his blotchy, full body was afterwards cremated. At the ancestral monument of his natural father’s family, the Domitii, Nero’s nurses and his former mistress Acte buried the remains of the last emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty.
EPILOGUE
Nero left no heir or successor, so control of the Roman empire was now up for grabs. Between the summer of AD 68 and December AD 69 Rome was shaken by a civil war in which contenders staked their claim to the empire. Hoisted on a tide of support from their armies, three provincial commanders – Galba, Otho and another old friend of Nero’s, Vitellius – became emperor in quick succession, only to be defeated by a stronger candidate a few months later. What is striking is that, despite the meltdown of effective government in the empire, there was no suggestion during this time of once again making Rome a republic. Now, as in 31 BC and the end of the great civil war, everyone seemed to agree that in exchange for peace and stability, power had to reside in one man. But what kind of man?
Certainly not an aristocrat of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Few now existed, for Nero had killed most of them during the last bloody years of his regime. Indeed, the tide of opinion was turning away from the idea that the royal bloodline was the best measure of who should be emperor. While the hereditary principle would in part remain, the élite believed it should be secondary to a new basis on which to choose future emperors: merit. In his history of the civil war of AD 68–9, Tacitus touches on this significant shift. In choosing a successor, the short-lived emperor Galba wanted to cast the net wider than a single aristocratic family: ‘. . .my introduction of the principle of choice will represent a move towards liberty.’48 These were the words that the historian Tacitus, writing less than forty years later, put in Galba’s mouth. Whether or not Galba was really able to conceptualize the problem as clearly as this at the time is open to dispute. However, it is revealing that, even with hindsight, the historian was able to pinpoint the change in the tide’s direction.
The move away from birth as the criterion for selection was also reflected in the reality of the civil war. Galba, Otho and Vitellius could all claim some high-born ancestry, and this would have pleased some conservative senators. However, what the civil war would show was that their opinion was increasingly irrelevant: it was not the senators who were putting forward candidates to be emperor, but the armies in the provinces. The deciding factor in who should be the next emperor was force of arms and success on the battlefield. The general who could command the greatest and widest support among the army would not only win the civil war, but would also be victorious in becoming emperor.
The Senate and the Roman people would come up with a means of explicitly conferring the supreme power. Where Augustus and his descendants had disguised that power to varying degrees, it was now to be made public and explicit, as an inscription of the time reveals. The new emperor would be conferred ‘the right and power. . .to transact and do whatever things divine, human, public and private he deems to serve the advantage and overriding interest of the state’.49 This blunt statement perhaps made up for the prestige and authority that the new dynasty, which had risen by merit alone, lacked through ancestry. But there was a more important lesson to be learnt from Nero’s life: the successor dynasty to the Julio-Claudians would need to put that power to a different end; it would need to create a new image for the position of emperor.