Nero (37 to 68 CE) was the fifth Roman emperor, who reigned from 54 to 68 CE. The last emperor of the Julio-Claudian Dynasty, he came to power at the age of 16 with the help of his mother, Agrippina the Younger. Initially a popular ruler, his reign was characterized by both artistry and tyranny. He loved singing and playing the lyre, enjoyed chariot races, and often acted in tragedies. But he also murdered his mother, killed two of his wives, and purged his opponents in the army and the Roman Senate. He lost much of his popularity after the Great Fire of 64 CE and committed suicide in 68 CE after being declared a public enemy by the Senate. His death was followed by a brief civil war known as the Year of the Four Emperors.

Nero was born Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus on 15 December 37 CE in Antium, a seaside town south of Rome. His father, Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus, was a Roman politician whom the historian Suetonius describes as "a man loathsome in every respect" (Suet, Nero, 5). Domitius had apparently once gouged out the eye of a man who had criticized him and had deliberately run over a child with his chariot while speeding down the Appian Way. Nero's mother, Agrippina the Younger, had married Domitius when she was only 13. She was the great-granddaughter of Augustus and the sister of Caligula, but, despite this high pedigree, she had had to scratch and scrape for survival all her life. She had watched the destruction of her parents and siblings, and had even spent some time in exile; the experience had made her ambitious, cunning, and dangerous. They were certainly a formidable couple. As Domitius himself said after learning of his son's birth: "It is impossible for any good man to be sprung from me and this woman" (quoted in Strauss, 86).

Domitius would not live to see how his prediction turned out, as he died when his son was only three. The boy was thereafter raised by Agrippina, who sought to use him as a pawn to advance her own position. She would get a chance in 49 CE, when she married her uncle, Emperor Claudius. Claudius's previous wife, Valeria Messalina, had recently been executed after allegedly conspiring against him. Not wanting to follow her to the grave, Agrippina was more careful about her own intrigues. She quietly packed the court with her supporters – she won over the treasury secretary, a freedman named Pallas, and appointed her loyal friend, Sextus Afranius Burrus, as prefect of the Praetorian Guard. She persuaded Claudius to adopt her own son, who was given the extravagant new name Nero Claudius Caesar Drusus Germanicus. Nero formally entered public life at the age of 13, giving a speech before the Senate. A few years later, he married Claudius's daughter, Claudia Octavia. Clearly, Agrippina was trying to position Nero as heir apparent to the Roman Empire, superseding Claudius's natural son, the teenaged Britannicus.

Claudius may have been aware of this, and, as Britannicus grew older, started talking about finding ways to advance his career. But then, in October 54 CE, Claudius suddenly died. It may have been natural – after all, a fever had been sweeping through Rome all year – but many ancient sources claim that he was poisoned by Agrippina, to secure the throne for her son. Although it is impossible to know for sure if she was complicit in her husband's death, she certainly took advantage of the situation. She showered the Praetorian Guard with bribes, and they, in turn, proclaimed Nero emperor. Not yet 17, his youth provided a stark contrast to his aged and feeble predecessor; blue-eyed and sandy-haired, with a face that had "regular but not especially pleasing features," his boyishness excited the Roman people, who saw in him a new beginning (quoted in Strauss, 81). Indeed, Nero promised as much in his first speech to the Senate, vowing to put an end to the abuses of past emperors, such as the dreaded treason trials, and to restore some of the Senate's powers.

Though he was now emperor, Nero could not escape the domineering shadow of his mother. All his clothes were carefully chosen by her, as were the men who surrounded him; even his tutor, the philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Seneca the Younger), was one of her appointees. Agrippina's likeness appeared on coins, facing that of her son as if they were co-rulers, and she was accompanied everywhere she went by two lictors and a German bodyguard. She used her newfound powers to liquidate political opponents and even attended Senate meetings; since women were not allowed to witness senatorial proceedings, she observed from behind a curtain. It could be said that, at this time, Agrippina was the true power in Rome, a fact that bothered her vain and jealous son.

For Nero, the last straw was when Agrippina told him to put an end to a sexual affair he was having with a slave girl, Acte. He responded by publicly stopping his mother from joining him on the tribunal to hear a foreign embassy. Then, he dismissed Pallas, one of her biggest supporters at court. Enraged, Agrippina approached her son and told him that if he continued to act out, she would have him deposed and replaced with the more pliable Britannicus. Nero did not immediately respond, but took his frustrations out on his stepbrother, whom he repeatedly sodomized. On 11 February 55 CE, he hosted a feast in which he invited a large selection of family members and courtiers, including Agrippina and Britannicus. Partway through the meal, Britannicus began convulsing and was unable to breathe – he was carried out of the room, and the feast continued, the guests nervously avoiding Nero's gaze. Britannicus was cremated the next day. Though the official story was that he had suffered an epileptic fit, few failed to see Nero's hand in his death.

But the message was intended for Agrippina, who took the hint. With no more cards to play, she left the imperial palace and spent the next few years lying low. It was not long, however, before she tried to worm her way back into power, looking for opportunities to reassert influence over her son. By 59 CE, Nero had had enough. He invited her to join him for dinner at his villa in Antium. Before parting, he kissed her and said, "For you I live, and it is thanks to you I rule" (quoted in Holland, 360). She then boarded a ship which, unbeknownst to her, had been rigged to collapse. After being flung into the Bay of Naples, however, she managed to swim to shore and stumble back to the villa. There, she was approached by a group of armed men, and it finally sank in what was happening. Rather than beg for her life, she pointed to her womb and told them to strike her there. They did, putting an end to one of the most incredible women of Ancient Rome. Her body was brought back to Rome and stripped to make ready for cremation. Looking upon her naked corpse, Nero was said to have remarked, "I did not know I had such a beautiful mother" (quoted in Holland, 361).

Upon his return to Rome, Nero did not try to cover up his crime. Instead, he had the Senate brand Agrippina a traitor and presented himself as a tragic hero who had been forced to kill her before her lust for power destroyed Rome. Though some people were horrified by his matricide, others were dazzled; historian Tom Holland explains that Nero had calculated that the enormity of his crime would only end up adding to his charisma and that "the crowds lined up to meet him as though for a triumph" (362). He even held games to celebrate his victory over her, inviting all the Roman people to attend; staged in several different venues across the city, the games were quite spectacular and included plays, gladiator fights, and chariot races. The emperor lavishly showered his adoring people with gifts. At one party, held later in the summer, Nero even appeared on stage, singing and playing the lyre.

Though Nero took matters of state seriously, he considered himself an artist first and foremost. He had always enjoyed singing but had been forced to do it privately while Agrippina was alive. Now, with her gone, he could perform wherever he wished and increasingly began to sing for audiences. He was also fond of writing poetry and, though none of it survives, some ancient commenters have judged it quite good. But perhaps his biggest passion was acting. He was known for performing tragic roles like Hercules and Oedipus. Not willing to confine his theatrics to the stage, he took part in chariot racing in the Circus Maximus – though some old school senators disapproved of this pastime, it won him great favor with the masses. At night, Nero often wandered the streets with his friends, including Marcus Salvius Otho (the future emperor). Disguised in wigs and slave garments, they would enter bars and theatres where they would solicit prostitutes and start brawls.

In 59 CE, Nero fell in love with the most beautiful woman in Rome. Poppaea Sabina was famed for her looks – it was said that she bathed in the milk of 500 donkeys to preserve her beauty, and that she had once said that she would rather die young than grow old and ugly. She even had her own popular brand of cosmetics. Nero was instantly smitten and wrote a poem praising her amber hair. The fact that she was already married to Nero's friend Otho was no obstacle. Nero got him out of the picture by appointing him governor of the remote province of Lusitania. Nero and Poppaea began an affair that lasted until 62 CE, when she fell pregnant. The emperor responded drastically, divorcing his wife, Octavia, and exiling her to the barren island of Pandateria. When this was met with public outcry, Nero simply had Octavia executed; her head was brought back to Rome and gifted to Poppaea. He and Poppaea were married that same year, though their child would die in infancy.

On the evening of 18 July 64 CE, a fire began in one of the merchant shops on the Aventine Hill overlooking the Circus Maximus. It quickly spread through the cramped wooden buildings, devouring entire neighborhoods. It lasted six days. Many lives were lost, and many more people were displaced. Nero was at his seaside villa when the fire broke out and did not return to Rome until the flames threatened his own palace. Once he returned, however, he sprang into action. He opened public buildings and parks to those who had lost their homes, brought in food from surrounding cities, and slashed the price of grain. But for many Romans, this was all too little too late. They would not forget his initial inactivity, and indeed, a rumor soon spread that Nero had been playing his lyre and singing about the burning of Troy while flames consumed his own city. (The idea that he had fiddled while Rome burned was a later addition to the story, as fiddles were not invented until the 16th century.)

Nero did not help his own reputation when, in the wake of the fire, he confiscated much of downtown Rome to build a new palace. Called the Domus Aurea (Golden House), it would consist of grandiose living quarters for the emperor, beautiful works of art, and even a magnificent public park. But for many, this display of excess and ostentatious power was too much; some even came to believe that Nero had started the fire himself, just so he could rebuild Rome in his image. Alarmed that he was losing the goodwill of the masses, Nero knew he needed to find a scapegoat to shift the blame. According to some ancient sources, he tried to blame the fire on Christians, who were then a small but growing sect in the city. He rounded up Christians and had them crucified, thrown to wild beasts, or set alight as human torches in his gardens. However, Nero's persecution of the Christians did not put the minds of the people at ease. After the Great Fire, Nero was never able to regain the same popularity he had once enjoyed.

In 62 CE, Burrus, the Praetorian prefect, died. This proved to be a turning point in Nero's reign – Burrus had served as a moderating influence on the emperor while his successor, Ofonius Tigellinus, only encouraged Nero's worst impulses. At Tigellinus's urging, Nero reopened the treason trials that he had once promised to abandon. Later that year, he ordered the executions of two senators who had offended him, and he made jokes when presented with their severed heads. This, combined with the wanton divorce and execution of Octavia, unnerved the Senate, which was afraid that Nero was becoming a tyrant.

In 65 CE, one of the most prominent senators, Gaius Calpurnius Piso, orchestrated a conspiracy to depose Nero. Ultimately, the plot was betrayed, and the conspirators were arrested. 19 men were put to death and 13 exiled. Piso was forced to commit suicide, as was Nero's old tutor Seneca. Though he had not been an active participant in the conspiracy, Seneca had known about it yet had chosen to remain silent. The crushing of Piso's conspiracy did nothing to quell Nero's fury. That same year, he got into a heated argument with Poppaea after she confronted him about staying out all night at the races. He ended up kicking her in the abdomen, which caused her death shortly thereafter. She had been pregnant with their second child.

Throughout his reign, crises erupted across the empire. In 60 CE, the Iceni Queen Boudicca led a revolt against Roman occupation in Britannia. It was put down a year later after tens of thousands of deaths. In 66 CE, a revolt broke out in Judea stemming from tensions between the Greek and Jewish populations. Nero dispatched one of his generals, Vespasian, to crush this rebellion the following year. In neither case did Nero deal with the crisis himself; instead, he entrusted the problems to his generals. In fact, he left Italy only once during his reign. In 66 CE, he went to Achaea in Greece to compete in the Olympic Games. He participated in four different contests and, unsurprisingly, was allowed to win each time. During this self-indulgent trip, he met a young slave boy named Sporus who closely resembled Poppaea. In a strange act of what may have been grief or regret, Nero had the boy castrated and married him with full ceremonies.

By 67 CE, Nero had shown himself to be a bitter and jealous man capable of great cruelties. Nowhere were these traits on better display than when he ordered his best general, Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo, to kill himself. Corbulo, who had seemingly committed no other crime than being popular with the masses, dutifully fell on his sword. This unnerved the other generals, who knew that if it could happen to Corbulo, it could happen to any of them. While these generals contemplated self-preservation, there were those in the Senate horrified by rumors that Nero was planning to rename Rome 'Neropolis' after himself. This level of egomania outdid even the most outrageous actions of Caligula. The Roman elite knew that somehow, Nero had to be stopped.

The first domino fell in March 68 CE when Gaius Julius Vindex, governor of Gallia Lugdunensis, rose in revolt against Nero's tax policies. In the letter he sent to Rome declaring his rebellion, Vindex taunted Nero by referring to him by his birthname 'Ahenobarbus' and insulting his musical abilities. Nero retaliated by calling for Vindex's head and ordering Lucius Verginius Rufus to lead an army against the rebels. In May, Verginius defeated the rebel army in battle, and Vindex committed suicide.

But this was only the beginning, as Vindex's defection had opened the floodgates of rebellion. In Hispania, Servius Sulpicius Galba revolted, and many prominent Romans flocked to his banner. Armies in both Africa and northern Italy rebelled, and Verginius's troops even tried to proclaim their general emperor (Verginius refused; he stayed neutral for the rest of the conflict). Growing desperate, Nero tried to rally the Praetorian Guard to his side, but even they saw the writing on the wall. One Praetorian told Nero to accept his fate by quoting a passage from Virgil's Aeneid: "Is it really such a terrible thing to die?" (quoted in Holland, 414).

After contemplating his options but not coming to any decisions, Nero decided to get some sleep. He awoke around midnight on 9 June to find that his guards had abandoned him and his palace was nearly empty. Panicked, Nero disguised himself and fled, alongside Sporus and three attendant freedmen. They made their way to a villa about 4 miles (6.4 km) outside Rome, where Nero ordered his attendants to dig him a grave. A short while later, they learned that the Senate had declared him a public enemy. Having lost the army, the Senate, and soon even the empire, Nero knew that there was only one thing left to do. With the help of one of his freedmen, he lifted his dagger to his throat and drove it deep. "What an artist dies in me!" he was said to have lamented just before committing suicide. With him died the Julio-Claudian Dynasty, the House of Caesar, that had ruled since the founding of the empire.