Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. However, Nero’s second marriage wasn’t happy. But our most detailed images of homosexual marriages come from the descriptions of Roman emperors. His mother, Julia Agrippina, poisoned her second husband when Nero was 12. Agrippina was the daughter of Germanicus Caesar and Vipsania Agrippina, sister of the emperor Gaius, or Caligula (reigned 37–41), and wife of the emperor Claudius (41–54). The conflagration lasted … Following his divorce, Nero was quickly seduced by Sabina, who became his favorite mistress. Claudia did not live long. Oh, young Tiberius! Nero, a depraved first-century emperor, married at least two men. According to ancient texts, Nero killed his own mother. Nero reportedly kicked her during an argument when she was pregnant in 65 C.E., resulting in her death, possibly from the effects of the subsequent miscarriage. His next wife was Statilia Messalina, whose first husband Nero had executed. The great fire that ravaged Rome in 64 illustrates how low Nero’s reputation had sunk by this time. His new wife was Statilia Messallina. He put an end to the more odious features of the later years of Claudius’s reign, including secret trials before the emperor and the dominance of corrupt freedmen, and he accorded more independence to the Senate. Upon his death in A.D. 59, the officials appointed by Nero ignored it, seizing Iceni land. Three ancient writers, Tacitus, Suetonius, … Even still some argue that she died as a result of childbirth or miscarriage. This led the Christians to label him the Antichrist. She was born in early 40 at the latest, but perhaps a year or two earlier, because her younger brother Britannicus was born in February of 41. Sensitive and handsome, Nero (37 – 68 AD / reigned 54 – 68 AD) started out well as emperor. Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox. The opera was first performed in Venice in 1642. The last emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, he was notorious as a brutal, tyrannical, and ineffective leader. He was led to the murder of Agrippina by her insanity and her fury at seeing her son slip out of her control, to the murder of Octavia by his having fallen in love with Poppaea Sabina, the young wife of the senator (and later emperor) Otho, and by his fear that his repudiated wife was fomenting disaffection at court and among the populace. At the time she was still married to Otho (a future emperor! Tacitus, for instance, asserts that Poppaea engineered her marriage with Otho specifically to get closer to, and eventually marry, Nero. After his father’s death, his mother married his great uncle, Claudius, and persuaded him to name Nero his successor. The Senate condemned him to death by crucifixion, and his household guard abandoned him. Taking advantage of the fire’s destruction, Nero had the city reconstructed in the Greek style and began building a prodigious palace—the Golden House—which, had it been finished, would have covered a third of Rome. He was even said to have dressed one of his enslaved males as Poppaea so he could believe she had not died. The image of a crazed and capricious Emperor Nero is immortalised in popular culture: from fiddling while Rome burns to having a sexual relationship with his mother. This caused a rift with his mother, Agrippina the Younger. Her mother was executed in their childhood for committing adultery, and her father remarried Agrippinna. Agrippina immediately eliminated the powerful freedman Narcissus, who had always opposed her aims. Nero's death ended the almost 100-year rule of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. His father died when Nero was about three. In 53 AD, Nero married Claudia Octavia, his stepsister and daughter of Claudius with Messali… Nero was born in 37 A.D., the nephew of the emperor. Otho would go on after Nero's death to briefly become emperor. The puer delicatus generally was a child-slave chosen by his master for his beauty and sexual attractiveness. Nero married Poppaea, and Poppaea was given the title Augusta when they had a daughter, Claudia. The law of treason was dormant: Claudius had put 40 senators to death, but, between the murders instigated by Agrippina in 54 and the year 62, there were no like incidents in Nero’s reign. She dies in 65 AD as a result of being kicked to death while pregnant by Nero, some claim. Augustus forces you to marry his daug… She was the daughter of the Emperor Claudius and stepsister and first wife of Emperor Nero. It’s true that Nero out-did his predecessors when building his palace in Rome – but outdoing his predecessors was exactly what a Roman emperor was meant to do. Too bad! Seneca urged Nero to use his autocratic powers conscientiously, but he obviously failed to harness the boy’s more generous impulses to his responsibilities. Nero’s rule would have its share of bloodshed in places throughout the empire. The first time was to free priests; Josephus went to Rome to plead their case, meeting with Poppaea and then receiving many gifts from her. She then married her uncle, the emperor Claudius. He may have been a puer delicatus, who were sometimes castrated in an effort to preserve their youthful qualities. By now Seneca felt that he had lost all influence over Nero, and he retired after Burrus’s death in 62. To label him the Antichrist those who plotted against him and even those who plotted against him even... That the infamous same-sex marriage took place a childhood friend of Nero, Rome you. He subsequently killed himself for elementary and high school students inaugurated competitions in poetry, 49. 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