Death of Nero (AD 68): The End of the Julio-Claudian Dynasty

The death of Nero on 9 June AD 68 ended the Julio-Claudian dynasty, the family that had ruled Rome since Augustus. Facing revolts in the provinces, deserted by the Praetorian Guard and declared a public enemy by the Senate, the 30-year-old emperor took his own life at a freedman’s villa outside the city. His fall opened the civil wars of AD 69, the Year of the Four Emperors.

A reign gone sour

Nero became emperor in AD 54 at the age of 16, after the death of his great-uncle and adoptive father Claudius. His early years, guided by the philosopher Seneca and the Praetorian prefect Burrus, were remembered as a time of good government.

That reputation did not last. In AD 59 Nero had his mother, Agrippina the Younger, murdered. In AD 62 Burrus died, Seneca withdrew from court and Nero divorced and executed his first wife, Octavia. The Great Fire of Rome in AD 64 was followed by rumours of the emperor’s guilt, the persecution of Christians and the costly building of his Golden House.

After the failed Pisonian conspiracy of AD 65, Nero forced Seneca, the poet Lucan and many others to die. In AD 66–67 he toured Greece, competing in music and chariot races at the great festivals, while Rome was left in the hands of his freedman Helius. In the same years revolt broke out in Judea, and the general Corbulo, Rome’s most successful commander, was ordered to kill himself. Senators and generals alike came to fear for their lives.

The revolts of AD 68

In March AD 68 Gaius Julius Vindex, governor of Gallia Lugdunensis in central Gaul and himself of Gallic royal descent, rose in revolt. He did not claim the throne himself but invited Servius Sulpicius Galba, the elderly and respected governor of Hispania Tarraconensis in Spain, to lead the movement. In early April Galba’s troops hailed him, and he declared himself the legate, or representative, of the Senate and Roman people.

Vindex’s forces were defeated near Vesontio (Besançon) in about May by the Rhine legions under Lucius Verginius Rufus, and Vindex killed himself. But the Rhine soldiers then offered the throne to Verginius, who refused it. Meanwhile Lucius Clodius Macer, commander in Africa, also rebelled and threatened Rome’s grain supply.

Nero’s response was erratic. Suetonius describes him swinging between plans for bloody revenge and fantasies of winning back the soldiers by weeping before them and singing songs of victory. He prepared an expedition but did little to carry it out.

Abandoned in Rome

The decisive blow came in Rome itself. One of the Praetorian prefects, Gaius Nymphidius Sabinus, persuaded the guard to abandon Nero by promising them a huge payment in Galba’s name. With the guard gone, the emperor had no protection.

The Senate, many of whose members had lost relatives and friends to Nero’s purges, now moved against him. Once it was clear that the soldiers in the city would not defend the emperor, the senators were free to recognise Galba, and they did so with little hesitation. Even Nero’s closest advisers began to look for ways to save themselves.

On the night of 8–9 June, according to Suetonius, Nero woke to find his bodyguard gone and his friends’ doors shut. He considered fleeing to Egypt or appealing to the people. Instead, he accepted an offer of refuge from his freedman Phaon, whose villa lay about four miles from the city between the Via Salaria and the Via Nomentana.

The last hours

Nero rode out barefoot, in a tunic and a faded cloak, with his face covered, accompanied by a few companions, among them Phaon, his secretary Epaphroditus and the young Sporus. On the way he heard soldiers in the Praetorian camp cheering for Galba. At the villa he crept in through a hole in the wall and hid in a small back room.

News came that the Senate had declared him a public enemy and condemned him to be punished “in the ancient fashion”, which meant being stripped and beaten to death. Nero urged himself to die but hesitated, testing the points of two daggers. According to Suetonius he kept repeating “Qualis artifex pereo” (“What an artist dies in me”).

When horsemen sent to take him alive were heard approaching, he drove a dagger into his throat with the help of Epaphroditus. A centurion rushed in and tried to stop the bleeding. Suetonius reports that Nero’s last words were “Too late” and “This is loyalty”. He was 30 years old.

Burial and the false Neros

Galba allowed Nero’s body to be cremated without mutilation. His nurses Egloge and Alexandria and his former mistress Acte placed the ashes in the family tomb of the Domitii on the Pincian Hill, at a cost of 200,000 sesterces, according to Suetonius. For years afterwards, unknown people decorated the tomb with flowers.

Nero remained popular with parts of the Roman people and in the eastern provinces. Because few saw his body, rumours spread that he was alive and would return. At least three impostors claiming to be Nero appeared in the East, in AD 69, around AD 80 and in about AD 88, the last nearly sparking war with Parthia. Some early Christian writers came to see Nero as a figure of the Antichrist, and a legend of “Nero returning” (Nero redivivus) lasted for centuries.

Key people

• Nero (AD 37–68): the fifth and last emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, great-great-grandson of Augustus.
• Galba (3 BC–AD 69): governor of Spain, proclaimed emperor in AD 68 and murdered by the Praetorians in January AD 69.
• Gaius Julius Vindex: governor in Gaul whose revolt began the end of Nero’s reign.
• Nymphidius Sabinus: Praetorian prefect who turned the guard against Nero and was killed when he later tried to seize power himself.
• Epaphroditus: Nero’s freedman and secretary, who helped him die; he was executed by Domitian years later for this act.

Consequences

Nero had no surviving children, and with him the descendants of Augustus who held power came to an end. For the first time, as Tacitus later wrote, it was revealed that an emperor could be made elsewhere than at Rome, by the armies in the provinces.

Galba entered Rome in the autumn of AD 68 but quickly lost support through his strictness and his refusal to pay the promised donative. In the Year of the Four Emperors, he, Otho and Vitellius all fell before Vespasian established a new dynasty, the Flavians, in AD 69.

Timeline

• 15 December AD 37: Nero is born at Antium.
• 13 October AD 54: Nero becomes emperor after Claudius’s death.
• AD 59: Nero has his mother Agrippina killed.
• AD 64: The Great Fire of Rome.
• AD 65: The Pisonian conspiracy is crushed.
• March AD 68: Vindex revolts in Gaul.
• April AD 68: Galba is proclaimed by his troops in Spain.
• About May AD 68: Vindex is defeated at Vesontio and dies.
• 9 June AD 68: Nero kills himself at Phaon’s villa.
• 15 January AD 69: Galba is murdered in Rome.

Why it matters

The death of Nero ended nearly a century of rule by Augustus’s family and showed that the throne could be won by armies far from Rome. The civil war that followed set a pattern for later crises, and Nero’s dramatic end helped make him one of the most remembered, and most mythologised, of all Roman emperors.