The Ship — Nero: Artist on the Throne, Rome in Flames

AD 58. Nero is twenty and has two faces. By day Seneca and Burrus govern. By night, as for several years now, disguised as a slave he roams the streets of Rome with his companions: to taverns and brothels, overturning stalls, beating passersby. Tacitus says plainly that once he came home with a bruised face. A senator who hit him back, not knowing whom he was fighting, later asked his forgiveness. For apologizing, he had to take his own life.

That same year a woman appears at court who has no intention of being merely a mistress. Poppaea Sabina has everything but a good name: beauty, intelligence, wealth and a gift for conversation. She is the wife of Nero’s friend Otho. Soon Otho is given the honorable post of governor in distant Lusitania, in today’s Portugal. The honor looks very much like exile. Remember this Otho.

Poppaea wants to become empress. In her way stand Octavia and Agrippina, who will not let her son push aside Claudius’s daughter. According to Tacitus, Poppaea mocks Nero: he is a “ward,” a boy under guardianship, without power and even without freedom. For a young emperor who wants to be both ruler and artist, this strikes straight at his pride. Rome also whispers of worse things, which we will not repeat here. Tacitus cites two contradictory versions, and many historians consider them slander.

Nero decides to kill his mother. Poison is out: Agrippina has been taking antidotes for years, and after Britannicus’s death every dinner in the palace arouses suspicion. The solution comes from the commander of the fleet at Misenum, the freedman Anicetus, the emperor’s former tutor. He hates Agrippina, and she him. His idea is so simple it is almost brilliant. See how that night unfolds.

Agrippina lies in a dark room of her villa by Lake Lucrine. She has a wound on her shoulder and a few minutes to think. She already knows the roof did not fall by itself: it collapsed right by the shore, on a calm, starry night, like machinery that had nothing to do with the sea. She knows Acerronia was killed because she was taken for her. And she knows that her son’s affectionate letter was a trap. On the shore, people with torches who have heard of the “accident” are gathering to pray for her life. Now it is your turn.

Agrippina chooses caution. She sends her son the freedman Agermus with a message that she survived by the grace of the gods, and asks that he not visit her for now. She pretends to understand nothing. She also orders Acerronia’s estate sealed. That alone gives her away. Her messenger does not know he carries her death sentence.