Was Otho a Pseudo-Nero?

[ASCLEPIADES]

Salve, guys!

 

Here comes Suetonius' "Vita Otho":

 

"7 Next, as the day was drawing to its close, he entered the senate and after giving a brief account of himself, alleging that he had been carried off in the streets and forced to undertake the rule,... When in the midst of the other adulations of those who congratulated and flattered him, he was hailed by the common herd as Nero, he made no sign of dissent; on the contrary, according to some writers, he even made use of that surname in his commissions and his first letters to some of the governors of the provinces. Certain it is that he suffered Nero's busts and statues to be set up again, and reinstated his procurators and freedmen in their former posts, while the first grant that he signed as emperor was one of fifty million sesterces for finishing the Golden House...

 

10 ... Then going to a retired place he wrote two notes, one of consolation to his sister, and one to Nero's widow Messalina, whom he had intended to marry, commending to her his corpse and his memory. Then he burned all his letters, to prevent them from bringing danger or harm to anyone at the hands of the victor..."

 

Was Nero so popular that the one who deposed Nero's deposer pretended to be his legitimate succesor?

 

What do you think about it?

 

Cheers & good luck!

[caldrail]

I sense a certain amount of spin by Otho, who probably couldn't have cared a fig about Nero. Nonetheless, Nero did retain some popularity amongst the masses - witness the near religious cult of a slave pretended to be him returning from the grave - and I'd say that Otho was hoping to gain from that by association. These days we call it a media event.

[Octavia]

Did Otho marry Statilia Messalina? I don't know much about him really. It sounds as if he was trying to be Nero and saying that he was Nero or it could be out of respect and love for him. Wern't they good friends until Nero took away Poppaea from him?