Behind the scenes, though, Nero was taking the threat to his regime very seriously indeed. Although he could not resist commissioning a wagon train to transport his various props to the front, nor arming his concubines like Amazons and giving them all a military short back and sides, he knew better than to rely on theatricals. So it was that he summoned the expeditionary force he had readied for the Caucasus campaign to Italy, conscripted vast numbers of marines, and even slaves, into hurriedly raised legions, and dispatched them northwards, there to patrol the frontier with Gaul. To command them, he chose a former governor of Britain by the name of Petronius Turpilianus, who had proven his loyalty to Nero’s satisfaction by taking a prominent role in the suppression of Piso’s conspiracy. Simultaneously, letters were sent to the recently appointed General of the North, a man of noted integrity named Virginius Rufus, with orders to muster the legions of the Rhine and march south against Vindex. So it was, then, even as he chatted away nonchalantly to senators about musical instruments, that Nero could contemplate with satisfaction the pincer movement threatening his foes. The rebels appeared certain to be crushed. For good measure, though, Nero made sure to offer a fortune to whomever could bring him Vindex’s head.
But then, in mid-April, the news took a turn for the worse. Galba, showing his hand at last, had declared himself a legate, not of Caesar, but of the Senate and the Roman people. Recognising in the blue-blooded veteran of the German front an altogether more formidable class of adversary than Vindex, Nero promptly fainted. When he came to, and was reassured by his old nurse that many princes in the past had faced similar evils, he brushed aside this well-meaning attempt to console him by informing her, in a tone of some asperity, that his own woes were wholly without precedent. Worse, though, was to come. Galba’s rebellion prompted numerous others who had been patiently biding their time to join him. Some familiar names were among their ranks. Otho, erstwhile husband of Poppaea, had leapt at the chance to return from Spain, where he was serving as one of its governors, and had unhesitatingly pledged his loyalty to Galba. Meanwhile, in Africa, the sinister Calvia Crispinilla, tutor to the wretched Sporus in the arts of being an Augusta, had thrown in her lot with the province’s governor, and incited him to join the insurrection. Then, in May, came the bitterest blow, a defection all the more cruel because it came garbed in the robes of triumph. The armies of the Rhine, meeting with Vindex’s forces, had annihilated their opponents. Vindex himself had committed suicide. Rather than renew their oaths to Nero on the battlefield, though, the victorious legions had hailed their general as emperor. Virginius, true to his reputation for moral probity, had turned them down; but only then to declare his neutrality in the looming struggle for control of the world. Meanwhile, it was reported of Petronius, the general entrusted by Nero with the defence of northern Italy, that he too was wavering in his loyalties. The habit of obedience to the House of Caesar, forged by Augustus and his heirs over a century and more, appeared suddenly on the verge of collapse. The old wolfishness, the savagery that in the earliest days of Rome had seen Remus felled by Romulus, had not, after all, it seemed, been tamed for good. Rushing to meet each other in the ecstasy of mutual slaughter, the legions of Virginius and Vindex had both ignored their commanders’ efforts to hold them back. ‘The crash of the battle had been terrible – like that of charioteers whose horses refuse to obey them.’104 As in the terrible days before the rise to supremacy of Augustus, so now. Events were careering madly out of control.
And Nero, seasoned charioteer that he was, knew it. Brought the news of Petronius’s defection while he was dining, he tipped over the table in his fury, and dashed a couple of precious goblets to the floor. Then, after making sure to source a supply of poison, he left behind him the sprawling magnificence of the Golden House and headed for one of his estates further out of town. Here, wrestling with his options, he abandoned himself to despair. Even the Praetorians, whose love he had always gone to such extremes to court, appeared to be wavering. When Nero urged their officers to rally to him, they temporised. ‘Is it really such a terrible thing to die?’105 These words, addressed by a Praetorian officer directly to Nero’s face, were like a touch of ice. Evidently, the cancer of disloyalty was starting to reach into the very heart of his regime. Were there any so close to him now that they could still be trusted not to switch sides? Certainly, there was no sign either of Tigellinus or of his colleague as Praetorian prefect, Nymphidius Sabinus. Both, Nero had to reckon, had abandoned his cause. Both, in his hour of need, had proven themselves true to their reputations as venal and treacherous.
In a mood of mounting desperation, Nero now began to turn other plans over and over in his mind. Perhaps, come the morning, he should head to the Forum dressed in black and make a direct appeal to the Roman people, employing all his talent for pathos? Or perhaps he should flee to Alexandria? Nero decided to sleep on it. His dreams, though, were fitful. Waking up at midnight, he found to his horror that the villa was almost empty. His guards had gone, and his friends, and even the caretakers – who, to add injury to insult, had stolen his supply of poison. Briefly, Nero wondered whether to hurl himself into the Tiber; but then, after a histrionic dash out into the night, he decided that he was not yet ready to abandon hope altogether, and returned inside. A few loyal companions still remained to him: Sporus, his beautiful woman’s face and amber hair a reminder of happier days, and three attendants. One of these, a freedman by the name of Phaon, offered his master the use of a villa to the north of Rome. Unable to think of any better bolt-hole, Nero accepted. Still barefoot, he wrapped himself up in a faded cloak and covered his head, and then, after mounting a horse, held a handkerchief up to his face. As lightning jagged in the sky, and the earth quaked, he and his four companions cantered out into the streets and embarked on their escape from Rome.
The journey was a hair-raising one. Riding past the Praetorian camp, the five horsemen could hear wild slogans being shouted: prophecies of doom for Nero and of success for Galba. A passer-by, seeing the speed at which they were riding, assumed that they were hunting the fugitive emperor, and cheered them on. Most heart-stopping of all, when Nero’s horse was startled by the stench of a corpse abandoned in the road, and he let slip the handkerchief covering his face, a retired Praetorian recognised him. The soldier did nothing, though, beyond saluting him; and so Nero, against the odds, was able to make it to Phaon’s villa. Yet even here, there were fresh indignities to endure. Because Phaon insisted that they enter by the back, Nero was required to stumble through reeds and brambles, and then, after his companions had dug a tunnel, to squeeze himself under the wall. Shattered and despairing, he tottered into the slave quarters and flung himself down in the first room he came to, a mean and squalid chamber with no furniture for him to rest on beyond a lumpy mattress. Here, mourning the ruin that had overwhelmed him, Nero ordered his companions to prepare him a pyre and dig him a grave. Still, despite the urgings of his companions, he hesitated. The scale of his downfall numbed him. He could not bring himself to take the final step. Instead, he could only weep, and lament the loss to the world that his death would spell.