TWO THOUSAND YEARS OF ACTORS AND EMPIRES: 3/8:: Nero: Matricide, Music, and Murder in Imperial Rome by Anthony Everitt (Author), Roddy Ashworth (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 23 June 2024
⏱️ 12 minutes
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Summary
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There are many infamous stories about the Roman emperor Nero: He set fire to Rome and thrummed his lyre as it burned. Cruel, vain, and incompetent, he then cleared the charred ruins and built a vast palace. He committed incest with his mother, who had schemed and killed to place him on the throne, and later murdered her. Nero has long been the very image of a bad ruler, a legacy left behind by the historians of his day, who despised him.
But there is a mystery. For a long time after his death, anonymous hands laid flowers on his grave. The monster was loved. In this nuanced biography, Anthony Everitt, the celebrated biographer of classical Greece and Rome, and investigative journalist Roddy Ashworth reveal the contradictions inherent in Nero and offer a reappraisal of his life. Contrary to popular memory, the empire was well managed during his reign. He presided over diplomatic triumphs and Rome’s epic conquest of Britain and British queen Boudica’s doomed revolt against Nero’s legions. He was also a champion of arts and culture who loved music, and he won the loyalty of the lower classes with fantastic spectacles. He did not set fire to Rome.
1899 ROME
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is |
| 0:14.6 | the authors of the new book Nero Matricide Music and Murder in Imperial Rome were spending time with Agrippina, Nero's mother because that... Well modern psychology |
| 0:20.7 | says that's everything. However at the same time Agropina deserves |
| 0:25.0 | attention because not only do we know that she's the daughter of three of the |
| 0:31.5 | very famous and celebrated Germanicus. The daughter of Agrippina, |
| 0:37.0 | Germanicus's wife, she is the granddaughter of, well, she descends from the Julian, Claudian dynasties. |
| 0:48.0 | They come together here at this time in the 30s and 40s. |
| 0:52.0 | But she also has ambition to be |
| 0:54.8 | princeps or near two princeps to rule through the princeps who's her son. But |
| 0:59.8 | in order to do that with Anna Barras, her husband gone, left the field, he's dead. |
| 1:06.2 | She needs to marry Claudius, the new emperor who rises, we believe, Anthony, again, this is a mystery to me did Claudius know that |
| 1:15.0 | Caligula was going to be assassinated was he part of the place I think it's quite |
| 1:19.5 | possible that he didn't know his the plot which involved him but if so it was very |
| 1:25.6 | well handled and we don't know and we have not been told in so many words. |
| 1:30.1 | By the way why I should just remind you is that the Claudius is Agropina's uncle. |
| 1:35.2 | Agropina's uncle yes but first he's married to Messelina and we need to spend some time |
| 1:40.1 | with Messelina just a moment because she moment because she's another force of nature in Rome. |
| 1:47.2 | Her force of nature seems to be to conquer men through sexuality, but at the same time she humiliates Claudius all the time |
| 1:55.2 | because of her many they're not really affairs they're Tris and Claudius accepts it what do we need to know about Claudius |
| 2:02.1 | was he a weak man, a strong man? He's |
| 2:04.5 | responsible for that second invasion of Britain, which is why... |
| 2:08.8 | Because he was disabled, he was kept out of public life and so he was given no training at all by Augustus and |
... |
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