A history lesson on Roman Emperor Nero

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is a podcast from WOOR. It is The Jesse
Kelly Show. Another hour of The Jesse Kelly Show on
a Wednesday, a Hoday, a day where we will eventually
get back to making fun of Doug m Hoff. We
are going to continue to pray for Florida as Hurricane

(00:20):
Milton bears down on them, so please keep Florida in
your prayers. We are going to read emails. We're going
to do many things still on the world famous Jesse
Kelly Show, but we're not doing any of those things
right now. You ever thought about gouging out somebody's eye? What, Chris?
It's part of this story we're about to tell is

(00:42):
an eye gouging thing. I can't stop thinking about it.
It was one of the parts of the Bible that
used to fascinate me when I was a kid, because
I was a big Samson fan, because you know, he
and I have a lot in common. But Samson, when
they Philistines got him, they gouged out his eyes or
burnt out his eyes. I don't know. I heard it
a couple different ways, but I will tell you that
occupied a lot of my thinking when I was a child.

(01:03):
Why Chris, Because it's sick and it's gruesome, and I
want to know how they did it, and I want
to know how bad it hurt, and I want to
do it to you. So no, I'm just kidding, but
gouging out people's eyes is terrible, and it's part of
our story. We talk about politics, the degradation of our politics.
We look at all the idiots and losers who run

(01:24):
our country now and I'm not going to lie and
say it's good, but I think every now and then
maybe some perspective on real ugliness at the highest levels
of power, how ugly it can get. You want to
talk a little bit about Nero, You want to talk
about Nero and branding. To stay with me here, Nero.

(01:47):
I know you know who Nero was. You're probably going
to learn a couple of things here, but I know
you know who Nero was. He was a Roman emperor,
remember the Roman Empire. It's not how Rome began. Rome
is mostly known today by people for its emperors, the

(02:08):
Neros and Caligulas, and everyone knows who Julius Caesar is
and those types. Even if you don't know anything about
any of these people, that's what you know about. But
Rome was originally a republic run by the Senate, and
then through a long list of things that we've discussed
many times on the show, Rome ended up well where

(02:29):
we're going to be here in the time of Nero.
Rome ended up being run by one man, an emperor. Now,
who is Nero? Where'd all this stuff come from? Okay,
so let's do just a little bit of background on Nero.
Something you know about Nero? I'm going to shoot a
hole in today, should I should let you know right now? Yes?

(02:52):
He was very very bad human being with there are
some things about Nero that have been inaccurate anyway, So
who was what's going on the time? This is about
the time of Jesus. It's after the time of Jesus,
but I don't like to get specifics in nerd out
on the dates. It's after fifty years after the time
of Jesus. Okay, so that's roughly where we're at here.
Jesus is gone, Chris's people killed him. It's over. Now

(03:16):
we're in Rome, and there's another part of Rome. Honestly,
Chris jokes aside, there's another part of Rome. You should
understand the religious aspect of it. This is going to
come into play in Nero's life later on. Anyone who
knows the history will understand a little bit of why.
But the religious aspect of it. First Rome, you know

(03:36):
what kind of religion they had, or at least I
think you probably know what kind of religion they had.
They had very similar to the Greeks. There's a god
of the sun, and a god of war and a
god of love, and you need a temple for this
guy and a temple for this guy. So it's one
of those types of places. And we've had this talk
before on the show, because it was a false religion

(04:00):
was really its roots were created by the state to
serve the state. That's a great way to test your
religious beliefs. Do they serve the state? Do they serve
the needs of the people in power? Miraculously, these societies
so often had religions that really helped out the guys

(04:20):
who were in charge, right, So it's a great way
to test your belief system. Well, that was Rome's belief system,
you know, all the different all that crap. Well, then
it comes to Jews in Christians Jews and Christians in
Rome at this period of time, the Jews were a
little bit more accepted, but not very much at all,

(04:44):
for the exact same reason Jews in Christians, their belief system,
their God, you know, the same God, Yahweh. He is
outside of and above the Roman system. Initially, for the
longest time Jews and Christians were persecuted in Rome. It

(05:06):
wasn't specifically that they had an act to grind with
Chris or me or Yahweh himself. They had an ax
to grind with any kind of a belief system that
was above the Roman system, above and beyond the Roman emperor.
You know, if you pin Chris down in the alleyway
and you say, hey, you could choose Yahweh or Nero.

(05:27):
They need here, They need him to say nero or
that's a problem. Okay, you understand. So the Jews and
the Christians were second class citizens is probably the most
simplistic way I can put it at this time. But
separate is really what they were. This will come, This
is going to come into play in a little while. Separate,

(05:48):
separate meaning we have this whole Roman society, we have
this whole Roman belief system. But then you have the
Jews or the Christians. They live around each other, they
prefer to work around each other. We know their God.
They consider him above Nero, above the Senate, above Rome.
They had that. Okay, So remember they're not only fairly

(06:12):
new as far as being introduced to the Romans go.
They've set themselves apart from the Roman system. That was
a problem. Right now, Back to the Nero thing. Nero
was part of the Julius Caesar line. It's known as
the Julio Claudian dynasty. Don't worry about that. That's nerding
out on details. History nerds will nerd out on that.

(06:35):
Don't worry about that. He was. He was part of
the line of emperors. Back to Caesar Augustus. Who's Caesar
Augustus again, don't worry about memorizing all this. Caesar Augustus
was the one who came after Julius Caesar, who actually
did take over as the emperor and lived for so
long and ruled Rome. He was still revered at this time.

(06:57):
His mother, Nero's mother was actually the descendant of Augustus.
All right, Now, it was a rough time, and it's
it's crazy, it's funny, it's awful. There are a bunch
of words I can use to describe ruling families throughout history.
We talk a lot about our Kennedys here in the

(07:19):
United States of America, not just the fact that they've
been in and around power forever. You know, we got
Jack as a US ambassador, JFK himself obviously the president,
our FK. You have all these different Kennedys. There's still
Kennedy's today, our FK Junior just ran for president. All
these Kennedys out there, we talk about the power they

(07:39):
have and what else do we talk about? The tragedy
and the and the scandal around them all the time.
Ted Kennedy's killing women with his car. JFK is getting
shot in Dallas are. It's just been thing after thing
after thing after thing, and that is a pretty consistent

(07:59):
thing throughout history. When you get a family, you would
think it'd be the opposite, at least I would if
you were to say that Kelly family, we were about
to become presidents. In fact, I was going to be
elected president. Haha, that's a real joke. We all know
that's never happened here anyway. If I was about to
be elected president, and my son James, he's going to

(08:23):
be a United States Senator, and my son Luke after
him is going to be a governor and their sons.
Their sons are going to be presidents and senators and governors.
Would you say that we would probably have a good life.
You would probably say so. I would say so, Wow,
that sounds pretty cool. Wow, presidents think of all. I
bet you guys will make a lot of money. I

(08:43):
bet you it'll be great. Right. But the truth is,
if you were to present me that opportunity right in
front of me, right now, God comes down, He hands
me a piece of paper and says, hey, Jesse, sign
up for this life of royalty for yourself and your family.
I don't think I would sign it unless he made me,
because royal family are a disaster and this dynasty was
no different. It was murder, intrigue, affairs, it was everything

(09:08):
you can imagine in high level politics. Family member killing
family member, a complete disaster. And that brings us to Nero.
That was not his name originally, but we're not going
to nerd out on details. Nero. Nero's uncle was Caligula.

(09:29):
There's only three names you need to learn in this
whole story. Caligula was his uncle. You already know who
that is, so that doesn't count. Caligula had a sister.
Her name, and this one does matter. This is one
of those women. She had to be a fascinating woman.
Maybe an evil woman possibly, but had to be a

(09:49):
fascinating woman. I'd like to meet her, one of those people.
You'd like to have dinner with her for an hour
and just see what kind of person she is. Her
name is Agrippina, and she is going to play a
central role in the Nero story, a central role in
our story today. Agrippina is the sister of Caligula. And
you already know about Caligula and what a disaster he was.

(10:13):
Eventually he gets displeased with Agrippina, and that's kind of
where the Nero story begins. So we'll begin there in
a moment. Before we do that, let's do relief factor.
I bet you all these people, I bet you there
would have been less murder if they had relief factor.
Think about it. What do you do for pain in

(10:34):
the ancient Rome? Here You're gonna chew on some weird plant,
go sacrifice a bull or something odd like that, when
you could just be taking relief factor every single day,
one hundred percent drug free. It's natural, developed by doctors.
What is it? It's a it's a daily supplement. You
take it every day, and your body it's already fighting

(10:55):
that inflammation that's making your back hurt, that makes your
knee hurt, your your muscle's hurt. It's already trying to
fight it. It needs help. That's what relief Factory is.
It's the help. People talk about their pain disappearing completely.
Others talk about their pain being turned way down. But
if you could just take a natural herbal supplement every

(11:16):
morning and have that, wouldn't you Nineteen dollars and ninety
five cents buys you three weeks of it. Go get
some relief Factor dot com or call one eight hundred
the number four Relief. We'll be back. What Chris, We
can make jokes. It's fine, we get that right. The
Jesse Kelly Show is the Jesse Kelly Show on a

(11:39):
or almost sad a Tuesday on a Wednesday. I remember,
you can email the show Jesse at Jesse Kellyshow dot com.
We're discussing some history now. In fact, we're discussing Nero.
I kinda gave a little bit of backstory. His uncle
was Caligula. Don't worry about that, but his mother. You
do need to worry about. Her name was Agrippina, and
you're gonna hear her name alive today. Agrippina was the

(12:02):
mother of Nero. Nero his father was and look, you
never it's hard to psychologize somebody two thousand years later,
But when you look at how Nero eventually turned out,
you can really see how his childhood guided him. We'll
get to the mother's side in a moment. His father

(12:23):
was a senator, a very important man, but reportedly an
angry drunk, had a terrible alcohol problem, and was violent
to the point a fellow senator argued with him on
the senate floor one day, and he tracked him down
later and gouged out his eye. Gosh, what's the worst

(12:47):
you've ever held a grudge? So that was Nero's father.
His father reportedly murdered some slave boy in traffic because
there was some kind of a traffic incident or accident,
and you just got mad and got out, just ed
him and kept moving on his way. So we're talking
about a violent, bad person. That's his father. Now his
father dies, Caligula is in power doing all the horrible

(13:10):
things Caligula did, most of which are not fit to
be talked about on a family radio show. So Caligula
he decides he doesn't like his sister Agrippina anymore, and
he banishes her her and her son, Nero, her young son.
So Nero's father is dead, his mother and he have

(13:33):
been banished to an island. Now remember this, you want
to talk about how two different lives have well, the
difference between the two different lives Nero has lived so
far in Roman society, it was very much a caste system,
where you would have the ruling elite, and there were
various levels of society. Nero was born into the Julian

(13:56):
Claudian dynasty, meaning for however long he had lived, Nero
would have lived royal life. A royal life so far.
It would have been the finest foods, the finest horses,
the comfiest beds. He would have had slaves and servants
and tutors. He would have had things really, really good.
And then boom, Uncle Caligila decides he doesn't like mom anymore.

(14:21):
He banishes you to an island. You're not only banished
to an island, your tutor. His tutor was a dancer.
Now that may not sound that extreme, but I need
to pause Romans. In Roman society, they considered the arts

(14:41):
theater actors dancers. They considered them to be equal or
below ladies of the night. Everyone understands what I mean.
I know there are kids listening. I'm trying to make
this right. But women who sell things late at night,
they shouldn't be selling the dudes who are lonely. Roman

(15:05):
society considered dancers beneath those people actors and that shit.
This is going to come back in a plane a
little while too. You have to know that about Roman society.
The only tutor they gave young Nero was a dancer.
And what else went into that I don't know. Now.
Fast forward, Caligula is murdered. Caligula ends up getting murdered.

(15:28):
It's a very famous story. Caligula had made himself the
bane of the existence of many, many powerful people. He
was abusing senators, abusing their wives in front of the senators.
He was signed up for an assassination. Caligula eventually gets
assassinated and a guy takes over. His name's Claudius. You

(15:49):
don't have to know that, it's not important for our
story today, but Claudius takes over as the Roman emperor
Claudius gets a hold of Agrippina, who's been banished, and
he says, hey, come on back home. So now Nero
has grown up his royalty. He got banished to an
island to live a really, really rough life, and then

(16:11):
he's just been called back home, back into the arms
of the new emperor, Claudius, and now he's royalty. Now
they're not part of the actual you know, Claudius's home yet,
but Agrippina seems to be working on that. You see,
Agrippina is married for a while, and then her husband dies.

(16:33):
You'll notice a lot of people Agrippina, once dead in
this story end up dying through sometimes mysterious, sometimes fairly
obvious circumstances. Agrippina totally poisoned her husband. Agrippina's husband dies.
Claudius he doesn't want to be left out. Remember when
I told you it's rough light, it's a rough life

(16:54):
for royal families. He murders his wife as well. Well,
look at that, Agrippina. And this is a true story. Memory,
This is not some book we're reading. Now you have Claudius,
the Emperor of Rome. You have Agrippina, the mother of Nero. Agrippina,
I'm assuming was a charming woman at least that's like
how that's how I like to imagine her in my mind.

(17:15):
They decide they're a really good couple. Hey, look, you
murdered your spouse and I murdered my spouse. Are we
made for each other? And they decide to get together.
But Claudius, Claudius already has a son. He has a son,

(17:36):
and now he has this new wife, Agrippina. She's bringing
her son along. Well, this is an awkward situation when
you are now in an empire where the next emperor
is oftentimes the son or a relative of the current emperor.
If you're Claudius, do you pick your biological son or
this new boy Nero. Well that's where Agrippina again began

(18:00):
to work her magic. Next is the Jesse Kelly Show
on a Wednesday. Member. If you miss any part of
the show, you can go download the podcast. It's free, iHeart, Spotify, iTunes.
All right, back to our story. We're talking about Nero.
In case you're just now joining us, you're jumping in
mid story. Don't worry, Oh, download a podcast if you

(18:21):
miss the beginning of it. So Nero, Nero's mother, Agrippina,
she manages to worm her way back into power in Rome,
and she manages to marry the Emperor Claudius. Well, now
you have Nero here. Claudius already had a biological son, Agrippina.

(18:42):
This is a woman who is ambitious, starts working her
magic and working on Claudius, and she gets him to
agree to adopt Nero as his official son. Now, let's
pause really quickly and talk about Roman adoption. Adoption modern

(19:04):
times one of the most blessed things you could ever
do for somebody. It's freaking awesome. If you're listening to
me and you adopt kids, you have so much respect
from me. If you're a child who's been adopted, I
know that can be difficult for sure. I have some
experience in this area. I know that can be difficult.

(19:26):
Show some appreciation for your adoptive parents. It's really awesome
thing in Roman high society back then. I don't want
to sit and act like it was quite as as
benevolent as adoption is today. Oftentimes these adoptions were for
political reasons and other reasons. But there is something you

(19:47):
need to know about Roman adoption back then, just like today,
when a Roman adopted you, if you got adopted by
a Roman, one of these high society Romans. Then it
was every bit as official as your biological son. It

(20:07):
is as if the blood, the genes, the DNA, none
of that stuff mattered at all. It was not kind
of okay, we'll adopt them, and he can be kind
of the side son, just like the adopted families handle
it today. When you are adopted, you are mine, You
are my flesh and blood. If that is how it
was treated Claudius. Because the man I don't know whether

(20:30):
he just couldn't see straight around Agrippina. I have no
idea what he was thinking. Claudius adopts Nero as his son. Well,
now you have an emperor Claudius. He has a wife, Agrippina,
who has a vested interest in one of the two sons.
And the one of the two sons, Nero, happens to

(20:52):
be the oldest son. And that matters a lot, you see,
because there were rules in Roman society for how old
you had to be in order to be emperor. And
actually I did some digging into this last night. When
I thought about telling you this story, I decided I
was going to figure out what the rules were. I'll
be honest, I could never nail it down. I kept

(21:14):
getting different rules from different sources. Here's what I do
know this part. I know Nero. Fast forward a little bit.
I'll come back and explain. But Nero does assume the
throne at the age of sixteen. Okay, so he's sixteen
years old, all right. His brother, his stepbrother, I should say,

(21:36):
did not get the throne because he wasn't considered to
be old enough, which begs the question how old does
one have to be to assume the throne? If sixteen
is old enough and the other age is not old enough.
Either way, Claudius adopts Nero, and now his mother is

(21:57):
kind of in a race against time. And I can't
believe Claudius didn't see this coming. Claudius preferred the other son.
Obviously he's the son. He knew, he's the son he
had raised. But Agrippina understood the other son, whom Claudius preferred,

(22:17):
was too young to be emperor. So she had a
very slim window, a short time frame, if you will,
to find a way for Claudius to abdicate the throne.
If you will, Claudius sits down for dinner one night,
he is not a stupid man by any stretch of

(22:39):
the imagination. He is seeing Emperor after Emperor murdered Caliguila
was just knifed about five minutes before this. He was
well aware his life would be in danger as an emperor.
So Claudius had a food taster, well, Agrippina, once again

(22:59):
the crafty devil she was. Agrippina found a way to
buy off and manipulate the food taster, and they slipped
a poisonous mushroom mushroom onto Claudius's table, onto his plate.
Except they were so worried that everyone would knew he'd
been poisoned, they chose a slow acting poison. Claudius sits

(23:22):
down as emperor ingests some mushrooms. Whether it was on
a pizza or not, I don't know. I like to
imagine it was. He eats a poisonous mushroom. He got
drunk a lot, He got hammered that night, and so
no one thought anything of it. When he got up. Oh,
I can hardly stand slurring his words, complaining of a

(23:43):
stomach ache. No big deer, no big deal. The emperor
has a drinking problem, probably hangs out with Nancy Pelosi.
Let's not stretch it. He goes off to his room,
continues to get sick, but he's not dying. Agrippina's in
the palace starting to get understandably concerned. Learned because he
is not dying. And if the emperor does survive, he

(24:06):
is going to know he's been poisoned because those mushrooms, Ah,
they did taste a little bit funny. So what does
she do again? This woman must have been look, you
don't want to make in your dinner, but she must
have been an impressive human being. She scrambles. She gets
to another person who she's manipulated and bought off. This

(24:28):
person happens to be the palace freaking doctor. And what
she do? She gets the palace doctor to take a feather.
The feather is dipped in a fast acting poison. This
time the doctor brings it in too. Claudius says, oh,
I heard you're sick. Here's a solution. Tickle the back

(24:50):
of your throat with this feather. It'll make you throw up.
You'll feel better. Claudius says, sounds good. Give me the feather,
grabs the feather, Come on, is it down? Lays over
dies right then and there and now you're Agrippina. You're
looking around, and this all has worked out quite well

(25:12):
for you, hasn't it. You went from being the banished
sister of Caligula, banished to a tiny, crappy island. Your
emperor husband just keeled over dead, Your son freshly adopted
by a miracle, Your son freshly adopted, appears to be

(25:34):
the only one of the two boys who can take
over the throne. And wow, look at how well things
have worked out for you. Like I said, Agrippina was
a woman to be reckoned with. There's no question about it.
She was a woman to be reckoned with all right. Now,
after Claudius dies, this this stuff always gets ugly. There's

(25:59):
all of fratricide and things going on. But Nero is
eventually made emperor. Part of the reason Nero was made
emperor is I know you're gonna find this shocking. Stop
me if you've heard this one before. His mother managed
to buy off the manipulate the right people, who were
the right people, well, the Praetorian Guard. We have to pause,

(26:25):
actually everything in our story for a few minutes, and
we have to discuss the Pretorian guard in Rome and
what it was. You see you weren't allowed to carry
arms in Rome. You weren't allowed to have a military
in Rome. But they wanted some sort of a law
enforcement really emperor protection unit, and they created one and

(26:49):
it was known as the Pretorian Guard. It ended up though,
being a huge, huge problem because well, people back then,
just as now, we didn't always understand power. So let's
discuss the Petorium Guard and power in nero in more
in just a moment. Before we do that, all this

(27:11):
Roman history probably has your testosterone levels already going through
the roof. That's the good news. The bad news is
that's going to fade away as soon as I stop
talking about Rome, and we'll go back to drinking estrogen
and we'll have no tea levels left and society will collapse, unless,
of course, we start taking male vitality stacks from chalk.

(27:32):
You see twenty percent increase in your testosterone in ninety
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Again today, when I was walking out the door. I

(27:54):
had to leave early for something. Ob had made me
a smoothie chalk lit powder boom. I take off like
a rocket, sh ready to go, and it's ch October.
That means biggest discounts ever. Go. Get a subscription c
hoq dot com. Promo code Jesse, or you can call them,
text them five zero chuck three thousand. We'll be back this.

(28:20):
It is the Jesse Kelly Show on a Wednesday. Hope, Dave.
Remember you can email the show Jesse at Jesse kellyshow
dot com. Leave a voicemail eight seven seven three seven
seven four three seven three. You're welcome to send love
heye death threat. You're welcome to complain about history. We're
just gonna delete all those because I'm gonna keep doing

(28:41):
it whenever I feel like it. All right, back to
back to our history. We're talking about Nero. We're setting
aside politics for a little while today. We're doing some
Nero talk. Nero just took power. He's now the young Emperor.
He's sixteen years old. He took power in large part,
honestly one hundred percent because of his mother, Agrippina, who

(29:02):
managed to poison and slither her way into power, gets
yourself right next to the emperor, kills him too, allegedly,
and now Nero takes over. Now let's pause on all
that and talk about the Praetorian Guard quickly. We already
talked about the Petorian Guard. Roam didn't allow arms inside
the city, no military units inside the city. So the

(29:24):
Praetorian Guard was created to protect the Emperor and enforce
some things inside the city. But this, of course, look,
it goes to the mindset of the average American communists today.
It's just a lack of understanding about power. I should say,
you're liberal and peggy when she talks about guns, get
the guns off the street. It's just a lack of

(29:46):
understanding about power. You see, you banished all the guns,
you banished all the swords, and then you created a
unit and they're the only ones that have swords and spears. Well,
they're the only ones with power. Then instead of everyone
having power, they're the ones with the true power. It's

(30:09):
like that story I told you a little while ago
about these uber rich guys who are creating bunkers for themselves,
apocalypse bunkers, and they're hiring a bunch of merks. Navy
seals and these types to go work security for it.
You don't have a bunker. The navy seal team you
hired has a bunker, and they're just gonna shoot you
in the face the second the apocalypse comes and throw
your body in a ditch. And now they have all

(30:30):
your supplies. That's how that works. That's how power actually works. Well.
The Praetorian Guard looked around one day and they figured out,
wait a minute, we're the only ones with swords and
shields and spears. We can do whatever we want. The
Praetorian Guard wasn't some secret service style police force. They
were the sword of the Roman elite now, and you

(30:52):
had to buy them off. Agrippina's mother bought off the
head of the Petorian Guard. Now you're young, Nero, sure, sixteen,
you're inexperienced. Sure, there's a lot of people who are
angry about how you got to the throne, Did mom
kill Claudius? What's going on there? But really the question
is what you're gonna do about it? Because you have

(31:12):
the Praetorian Guard with you. So Nero has the Praetorian
Guard with him, he also has You don't have to
memorize this name. I don't want to give you too
many names. I don't like doing that, but maybe you're
a detail in there. The name would matter. Seneca was
his name. Who was Seneca? Uh? A philosopher is the

(31:35):
best way I could put it. But when I say philosopher,
I didn't want to put it that way because that
sounds so unimportant to us today. A philosopher, Oh, who
gives a crap? Can you name me a single modern philosopher?
That's just it doesn't It doesn't drive home for you
or for me how important that was back then. Seneca
was a really, really, really big deal back then he Uh, Oprah,

(32:03):
No Oprah. Obviously everyone knows who Oprah is. I don't
like Oprah, She's a dirty COMI whatever, But everyone knows
who Oprah is. And let's be honest. She may not
matter to you or matter to me personally, but when
Oprah says jump, there are a lot of people who
say how high? Because of the level of influence she has.

(32:24):
Seneca's endorsement was Oprah's endorsement. That's the best way I
can describe it. It was a big deal that Nero
had Seneca and Nero had the praetorian guard. What that
essentially gave Nero was control of power. He had the
philosopher one that people loved, he had the praetorian guard.
Now Nero begins to rule. How involved was Agrippina. Well,

(32:47):
I'll put it to you this way. Emperor's had a
habit of mincing their own coins with their own faces
on it. That's awesome, Chris, we need to do that
for the show. But the emperors had a habit of
mincing their own coins with their own faces on them,
and the Roman Republic was quite old by this point
in time. Up to this point, no woman had ever

(33:10):
been pictured on the same side of the coin as
a man. Certainly not the emperor, but ever, that had
never happened in the history of Rome. You can go
look him up right now. Agrippina Nero coins, they were
the first ones they minted. Where she's sitting there, Her
face is just as large as he is, on the

(33:31):
same side of the new coins they minted. This is
a woman. She didn't just saunter into power and then say, ah,
I'm so proud of my boy. No, she was knee
deep involved, all right, So her end is magnificent. I
should note. I'll get to that in a moment. Nero,

(33:53):
what's he do right away? Well, he has Seneca in
his corner. Seneca was reading You never know, it's two
thousand years ago, a pretty solid human being who had
really solid ideas of what needed to be done for Rome,
what needed to be done for the people, how an
emperor should act. And there are a lot of people

(34:16):
who give him credit for what I'm about to say next.
But you want to hear something, something you never heard
about Nero before the first five years of Nero's reign
takes over at sixteen might be the best five years
of any five year period in the history of the
Roman Empire. He was that incredible, insanely popular. He gets

(34:38):
in there immediately and he's doing things that He's cutting taxes.
This is a sixteen year old boy. He just took
over as emperor. He starts giving power back to the Senate.
He starts giving up his power, giving power back to
the Senate. He walks in, he ends capital punishment. Oh,

(35:00):
here's this one for Nero. Look, we all think he's
the Antichrist, right, here's this one for Neiro. Slaves. You
know what Roman slavery was like or what it could
be like. We all talk about the salt mines and
how too terrible it was, and that was part of
it for sure. But you could also, as a slave
in Rome, have a life of a rich person. Essentially,

(35:21):
you'd be a tutor of a senator's son, probably live
a life of luxury, wonderful food, you know. So we
could run the gamut. It could be the worst existence
in the history of the world. Or slave doesn't even
really count as what you are. You're practically a step
brother in the house, you know. So we could run
the gamut. But Nero, freaking Nero, you know, the guy

(35:42):
who fiddled while Rome burned. Will come back to that.
Nero expanded slaves rights, had a heart for slaves again.
First five years went well, ah man it then it
kind of went sideways. This has been a podcast from
Double U O R