Nero's Accomplishments

that he did things like refuse to eat apples because he thought they would damage his vocal cords. His love for Greek Hellenism led him to sing at many Greek festivals where he earned over a thousand gold crowns for his mediocre performances. Nero delighted in performing, as well as in indulgence and frivolity. At one point, the treasury was so exhausted from his spending that he relentlessly taxed large estates and confiscated wealth to refuel it. Nero loved applause and he even hired 6,000 Roman Knights as his claque. Besides being a lover of the arts, Nero was also a personally acclaimed athlete. He dreamed of one day participating in the Greek Olympic Games and even created his own Neronian games that took place every five years. As an

In the midst of this personal devotion, Nero fell in love with a slave girl named Acte. She became his mistress and he even considered running away to marry her. Acte wasn’t Nero’s only mistress, though. After finding out his lover Poppaea was pregnant, Nero divorced and killed his wife Octavia, and married Poppaea twelve days later. The historian Tacitus describes Poppaea with the words, “This woman had every attribute except decency. From her mother, she inherited beauty and ambition in equal measure” (Holland 98). Pregnant Poppaea gave birth to, Princess Claudia, in January of 63 but Claudia died four months later. Years later, Poppaea got pregnant for the second time and this time both the baby and Poppaea died from hemorrhaging, possibly hemorrhaging inflicted by Nero. After Poppaea’s death, Nero married his third wife Statilia

At the time, fires in large cities were not uncommon. Open flames were everywhere as fires were the only source of heat, light and cooking. Wood, charcoal and cooking oil were stored in large quantities in the Circus Maximus where the fire initiated. Apartment buildings and businesses were built very close together, so fires would spread quickly from building to building. These conditions, in addition to a strong breeze and sweltering heat brought on by midsummer temperatures, turned the city into a tinderbox waiting to blow. Different theories on what or who started the fire are still debated today. Some say that Roman Christians, eager to fulfill a prophecy predicting the burning of Rome, began the fire. Others say Nero sent men to start the fire. Still, others say that Nero started it himself and that he sent men to fuel fires as they were being put out. This last theory that Nero started the fire is the most unlikely of the all the theories. At the start of the fire, Suetonius reports that Nero was thirty-five miles away in the cool coastal city of Antium escaping the political and summer heat brought on by Rome in that fateful July. Once the fire was close to reaching the palace, a messenger was deployed to tell Nero of the fact that his city was being burnt to ashes. The messenger arrived in the middle of the night and Nero immediately rode back to Rome. Upon his arrival back