What an Artist Dies in Me — Nero: Artist on the Throne, Rome in Flames

March AD 68, Naples. Nero is watching athletic contests when word comes: in Gaul the governor Julius Vindex has rebelled. It is nine years to the day since Agrippina’s death. Suetonius records that the emperor receives the news with such indifference that people suspect joy: he will have a pretext to plunder a rich province. For eight days he does not write a single word in reply to anyone.

In the end it is not the revolt but an insult that forces him to react. Vindex proclaims in edicts that Nero is a poor lyre player and calls him Ahenobarbus instead of Nero. The emperor is more outraged than by treason: he asks one person after another whether they know a better artist.

Then Galba, governor of Hispania, rebels. Nero faints and lies a long time without a word. When he comes to, he tears his robes and cries that all is over: he will be the first emperor to lose power while still alive. An old nurse consoles him that other rulers met the same fate. It does not help. Dio records that when he learns of Galba, he plans to kill the senators, burn the city and flee to Alexandria.

But it is not the revolts that decide his fate. According to Dio, the Senate takes away his guard and declares him an enemy of the state. Nero no longer has legions. He still has the evening.

At night he wakes and sees that the palace guard has gone. He runs to his friends’ rooms and knocks. No one answers. He returns to his bedroom, and even the servants have vanished, taking the bedding. He calls for the gladiator Spiculus, for anyone who could help him depart with dignity. No one comes. “So I have neither friend nor foe?” he cries, and runs out of the palace.

The freedman Phaon offers a villa outside the city. Nero mounts a horse barefoot, in a tunic, with a cloak over his head. On the way he hears the shouts of soldiers in the camp, wishing him ruin and victory to Galba. Passersby say: they are chasing Nero. Dio adds that during the flight the earth trembles, as if all the ghosts of the slain were rising to attack.

At Phaon’s villa he refuses to crawl into the pit from which sand had been dug: “I will not go underground while alive.” He drinks water from a puddle and says: “This is Nero’s distilled water.” Friends urge him to save himself from disgrace. He has a grave dug to fit his body and orders water and wood brought. He weeps and repeats a single sentence. Then a letter arrives: the Senate has declared him an enemy of the state and is seeking him out to punish him in the ancient manner. When he learns what punishment awaits him, he takes his own life. His secretary Epaphroditus helps him.

It is June 9, AD 68. Nero is thirty. He had ruled for thirteen years and eight months. We know the line “What an artist dies in me!” in two versions. In Suetonius he repeats it in tears while the grave is being dug, and the last things he says are “Too late” and “Such is loyalty.” In Dio he says it just before the end. What do we really know?

In Rome people put on liberty caps and offer sacrifices. The Senate grants Galba imperial power. Dio records that Nero was the last of the descendants of Aeneas and Augustus, and that right after his death there was no one who could not hope to seize power. That sentence opens the next chapter of history.

It began with Augustus, who gave the state back in order to keep it. It ended with an artist who gave everything away in order to perform. From Actium to Phaon’s villa almost a hundred years passed, and the house of the Caesars is no more. The year 69 will go down in history as the Year of the Four Emperors. The first of them already has the purple: Galba. The second will be a man you know. Dio writes that Marcus Salvius Otho once said to Nero, in the days of their shared revels: “As surely as you will see me Caesar!” Nero replied: “I will not see you even consul.” Otho did become Caesar, but only a few months after Nero’s death.