Nero - the pervert?

[kurtedwr]

Someone once told me that Emperor Nero would throw female slaves into the coliseum and let loose a pack of aroused dogs, and whoever survived this mass "orgy" would be granted their freedom. Is that true?

Edited November 6, 2008 by kurtedwr

[Lost_Warrior]

Um...I doubt it. That sounds like your standard rumor that gets thrown around about emporers after (or before) their deaths. Nero was a very "contraversial" emporer, so the stories about him are even more greatly exhadgerated.

[Pantagathus]

Here is the closest thing I can offer up in the way of Nero throwing people to the dogs...

 

"Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Jud

[phil25]

Various sexually-based episodes were apparently arranged for the arena, but the Colosseum was not built in Nero's day. The incidents to which I refer probably took place later - any book on "Gladiators" will tell you what they are, but they were sadistic, and don't warrant detailed discussion on a forum such as this IMHO.

 

Can I also suggest that "pervert" is hardly a helpful word to use in the thread title either. Again just my opinion, but I does seem to pre-judge the issue. As Nero appears to have been bi-sexual, the word could also be taken to be somewhat discriminatory, which i am sure you do not intend to be.

 

Nero was complex, but whether he personally had much of a hand in dreaming up the tortures used in the arena is another question. He seems to me to have had artistic rather than sadistic tendencies.

 

The entertainments provided for the public are also a large issue - there are reports even of theatrical performances that involved actual death. I sometimes think that a (rather inadequate but not irrelevant) parallel might be the modern taste for gory horror films that seem todo good business and cinemas and on dvd among certain types of people. The distasteful, as far as I can see, get grosser with each new film. Fans just want more, and more invention.

 

So, I suspect it was with the games.

 

Nero is specifically said to have persecuted Christians and used their flaming bodies on poles/crosses to light the circus. Peronally I doubt this, as there were unlikely to have been enough Christian converts in Rome in 64ish to provide the right numbers. We might be looking at a mis-dated Domitianic persecution here, or just a later invention.

 

But torture and pain, where convicted criminals were concerned, had a different rationale until the C19th. In an era without even a minimally effective pain reliever - no anasthetics, nothing to relieve the pain of child birth or death from various painful diseases, the average human LIVED with almost continual pain. Only by inflicting MORE on those outside society, or those who broke the rules, could the lawful and just feel that they were in some sense "better" off than those condemned. A strange argument, but one that applied.

 

Phil

[Andrew Dalby]

Nero is specifically said to have persecuted Christians and used their flaming bodies on poles/crosses to light the circus. Peronally I doubt this, as there were unlikely to have been enough Christian converts in Rome in 64ish to provide the right numbers. We might be looking at a mis-dated Domitianic persecution here, or just a later invention.

 

But Pantagathus has just cited a contemporary source for this. Since Tacitus and his readers lived through this period, it's not too likely that he would have confused Domitianic with Neronian persecution. His readers would have told him "you've got it wrong".

[Aurelianus]

No, the passage didn't give any indication of numbers, or of people beeing simultaneously burned and crucified. It only stated that Christians were persecuted and killed.

 

I would have to say, as someone else did that Nero never realy appeared to be in any way perverse, or sadistic. His faults were extravagance, and lack of interest in the governance of an empire. The wanton infliction of pain is something more assosiated with Caligula or Domitian.

[phil25]

Andrew, you may hbe right.

 

But it can be argued that in times when freedom of speech is not guaranteed, writers resort to history to say what they really want to say about their own times.

 

Thomas More's Richard III, written by a man who spoke to those who knew the king, and a scholar, is full of simple factual mistakes. It has been asserted that More did this to indicate he was actually writing about something else - the tyranny of Henry VII the first Tudor, something that he could not do directly.

 

Now I don't fully accept that - I think More was just careless - butI think the argument might well apply to Tacitus, who had no love for Domitian.

 

I do not, however, assert that Tacitus was wrong - I merely wish (for the reasons I gave) to question conventional assumptions about Nero. labelling him as the "anti-Christ" as is still popularly done, IMHO, gets in the way of assessing him as an historical figure. But you should know me by now Andrew - I question anything and everything, not to be bloody minded, but to try to deepen my understanding.

 

What I have concluded is that there were certain archetypes that appear to have been used by ancient writers when considering emperors - the similarity of accounts the deaths of Diomitian and Commodus are striking.

 

Phil

[Kosmo]

The authenticity of this part in Tacitus it's controversial as it was pointed in another thread here. Some say that it's a later christian modification of the original text.

Public executions were carried in the arena in morning before the gladiatorial fights. This executions were often for people convicted 'ad bestiam'. So, throwing people at wild, hungry and enraged animals was usual until the reign of Hadrian that made most sanctions to be of work in a mine. Other methods of execution were used as well, like sending convicts, one by one, against another one with a knife. The one who lives in the end wins. It was considered unelegant to go at this executions and most people came only when the gladiatorial fights started.

Other convicts were killed in theatrical shows as pointed before. Some had a sexual content.

All this it's what I rember from J. Carcopino.

[WotWotius]

Maybe this will help:

 

'He so prostituted his own chastity that after defiling almost every part of his body, he at last devised a kind of game, in which, covered with the skin of some wild animal, he was let loose from a cage and attacked the private parts of men and women, who were bound to stakes, and when he had sated his mad lust, was dispatched by his freedman Doryphorus; for he was even married to this man in the same way that he himself had married Sporus, going so far as to imitate the cries and lamentations of a maiden being deflowered. I have heard from some men that it was his unshaken conviction that no man was chaste or pure in any part of his body, but that most of them concealed their vices and cleverly drew a veil over them; and that therefore he pardoned all other faults in those who confessed to him their lewdness.' - Suetonius life of Nero, 29.

Edited November 10, 2006 by WotWotius

[phil25]

Suetonius had tastes similar to the National Enquirer or "The Sun" - he loved and collected scandal.

 

I'm afraid I don't take Suetonius, undiluted, as a source for anything any more, unless I see corroboration elsewhere.

 

Nero may have been a bad man, but I think (as with Gaius "Caligula") many of the claims should be taken with a pinch of salt, as exaggerations or as capable of alternative explanation. the romans used sexual denigration as a political tool (see what Antonius and Octavian said about each other). It was not to be taken too seriously.

 

Phil

[Andrew Dalby]

Suetonius had tastes similar to the National Enquirer or "The Sun" - he loved and collected scandal.

 

I'm afraid I don't take Suetonius, undiluted, as a source for anything any more, unless I see corroboration elsewhere.

 

Nero may have been a bad man, but I think (as with Gaius "Caligula") many of the claims should be taken with a pinch of salt, as exaggerations or as capable of alternative explanation. the romans used sexual denigration as a political tool (see what Antonius and Octavian said about each other). It was not to be taken too seriously.

 

Phil

 

Yes, I agree wholeheartedly on this. When my review of the Matthew Roller book appears, any day now, you'll see that there could have been an innocuous explanation for the story in Suetonius that Caligula had incestuous relationships with his three sisters.

[spittle]

Shakespear wrote propoganda for the late Tudors by the character assassination of the preceeding Dynasty (the house of York, "This is the winter of my discontent" said by an ugly, hunchbacked sadist).

 

Rameses the Great had his monuments carved in a new way, deeply gorged in the rock rather than raised surface. This was to stop his name being removed from history be any succeeding dynasty, as had been the result of change during several new regimes in Egypt.

 

What evidence do we have to support the idea that the latter Julio-Claudians were maligned ina similar fashion by the Flavians. Or the Flavians by their successors. Or any dynasty by its successors?

 

I read once that Tiberius was more open to this kind of revisionism due to him not being deified whereas Augustus was a 'God' so similar attacks upon his name and achievements would have been sacriledge.

[WotWotius]

Suetonius had tastes similar to the National Enquirer or "The Sun" - he loved and collected scandal.

 

I'm afraid I don't take Suetonius, undiluted, as a source for anything any more, unless I see corroboration elsewhere.

 

Nero may have been a bad man, but I think (as with Gaius "Caligula") many of the claims should be taken with a pinch of salt, as exaggerations or as capable of alternative explanation. the romans used sexual denigration as a political tool (see what Antonius and Octavian said about each other). It was not to be taken too seriously.

 

Phil

 

I agree with you about Nero; Suetonius bases most of his accounts on court gossip. I merely posted the quote because I found it amusing.

 

However, though Suetonius exaggerates Caligula's barmy feats, it is not to say he was not clinically insane; this is probably not the forum to post such a view, so I will not elaborate.

Edited November 11, 2006 by WotWotius

[caldrail]

Someone once told me that Emperor Nero would throw female slaves into the coliseum and let loose a pack of aroused dogs, and whoever survived to mass "orgy" would be granted their freedom. Is that true?

 

No it isn't. Nero has been given a reputation for being an orgiastic pyromaniac anti-christ. Well.... no... not really. The trouble was Nero grew up under an insecure enviroment with a domineering ambitious mother. Once he came into manhood, Rufo, Burrus, and Seneca, his former mentors, and his mother removed (shall we say?), then all the restraints were off. There simply wasn't anything to stop him. Early on his reign was well regarded so really Nero could do anything he wanted. He wanted to be a performer - that was his basic instinct, so in effect you have exactly the same thing as a 'Wildman of Rock'n'roll'. It really was the same. He led a party lifestyle with no holds barred. He could indulge in all manner of excitment including nightly muggings (and killings), chariot racing, and musical performance. He never had any great talent for any of these things but his companions praised him far beyond his efforts.

 

Imagination since then has filled in the blanks and turned him into this demonic individual dedicated to excess. Not quite, but I doubt Nero saw himself as evil. When the great fire of Rome occurred in 64ad, Nero rushed back from Antium 35 miles away to co-ordinate relief efforts because 'My public needs me'.

 

Nero was an unpleasant character in our terms. He was cruel and capable of killing. So what? So were most other emperors - thats why they got to the top of a cruel competitive conquest state. Yet despite the nastiness that overshadows his reign Nero comes across as someone with something to say for himself. He was an extraordinary character.

Edited November 11, 2006 by caldrail

[Andrew Dalby]

I've argued before on this Forum -- so I don't want to repeat myself unduly -- we ought to be very glad we have Suetonius. Just as Greek historians of Athens in the Peloponnesian War period are very glad they have Aristophanes as well as Thucydides.

 

A lot of it is gossip from the streets or from the Imperial household. A lot of it is highly unfair to those in command, because those are always the people who get gossiped about. But the gossip, too, is part of history. It happened. And sometimes it affected the future. Weren't the deaths of Caligula, Nero, Domitian, partly caused by gossip swelling into unpopularity swelling into revolt/assassination?