Nero - the pervert?

[Primus Pilus]

Weren't the deaths of Caligula, Nero, Domitian, partly caused by gossip swelling into unpopularity swelling into revolt/assassination?

 

An interesting dynamic that I personally ignore too often. Indeed, the fear of emperors becoming like a Nero influenced later generation even if some of the stories were untrue.

[phil25]

I'm not sure how far one can take this.

 

Gaius was assassinated by a conspiracy led by the Praetorian Prefect (Chaerea) whom he had apparently personally humiliated and insulted - it might have had wider support and deeper motives, but rumour and wider unpopularity don't seem to have played much of a part.

 

Nero faced a revolt on the part of the legions which he failed to confront - had he done so he might have survivied for a while. But if the surviving accounts of his reign are to be trusted, Nero's grip on government had been slipping during his greek trip. He was certainly not so unpopular that pretenders using his name did not gain support in later years.

 

Domitian was paranoid and seemingly an open enough tyrant and arrogant enough to have built up considerable resentment, but I am unaware of any revolt or popular feeling against him.

 

In the cases of Gaius and Domitian, the numbers involved in the killing were comparatively small. In the case of Nero he committeed a panicky suicide while fleeing demons that were almost of his own making. (Though maybe he came to believe his own black myth!!)

 

I wouldn't want to deter anyone from assessing the role of rumour but for the reasons I have fgoven I personally don't see the cited examples as good ones.

 

Phil

[caldrail]

I don't think rumours are the cause, they are a symptom of popular perception. Ordinary people leave their children exposed at the palace gates because Nero murdered his mother. Nero burns christians at the stake for setting fire fire to Rome yet people decide he did it himself to create space for his palace - and that gave rise to the myth that he fiddled while Rome burned. People feign death or preganancy to escape his performances. Yet this is still the emperor who got the crowds cheering for entering a chariot race.

 

People were just as fickle then as now. A ruler can do things that make him popular but the effect lasts only until the next embarrasement. Notice how modern day rulers suffer when things don't go their way.

[Pantagathus]

Just as Greek historians of Athens in the Peloponnesian War period are very glad they have Aristophanes as well as Thucydides.

 

Indeed, so much detail about everyday life that you don't get in straight history... (And he was just plain HILARIOUS!!!)

 

Anyway, I think we are loosing sight of the original question of the thread; which is to either validate or invalidate (with evidence preferably) whether or not Nero threw condemned women to packs of libidinous canines in order to be ravaged by them so the spectacle could be perversely enjoyed like a Tijuana donkey show