I'm John Baster with Anthony Everett and Roddy Ashworth, the authors of the new book,

Nero, Matrocyde Music and Murder in Imperial Rome.

If you think it's over much so far, here we go.

The conspirators.

Pizzo is a man who has everything in life in first century A.D. Rome. He's a poet. He's a stoic.

He's wealth to do. He's married to a woman he loves, so she's not elite as he is. He knows Nero.

Nero spends time at his villa. And yet, Anthony, this conspiracy, it arises out of what?

Alienation from Nero, money, what drives it?

Well, you could say almost that Agrippina's disappearance drives it, because Agrippina understood the compromises of politics Nero didn't.

And Nero's unwillingness to compromise built up a well resentment among the senatorial class.

And it was that class where the members of the conspiracy were recruited.

The recruitment is lackadaisical as Anthony and Roddy Wright half-hearted and it takes

a long time and everybody knows about it.

Something seems to happen.

Yes.

Nothing seems to happen.

And so we come to the moment itself.

There's no drawn out. There's's no great plot there's not a lot

of thinking going on here one man is sharpening his dagger his freedman notices this and says

why are you sharpening a dagger all of a sudden for reasons we can't entirely understand this

freedman then takes it to nero via one of Nero's retainers.

He actually speaks to Nero that day. It's the day before the plan was to be executed.

...