Nero’s Decline and Fallīy the final years of his Nero’s rule, the Roman Empire was under great strain. At its center he commissioned a 100-foot-tall bronze statue of himself, the Colossus Neronis. Nero exhausted the Roman treasury rebuilding the city around his 100-acre Domus Aurea (“Golden House”) palace complex. Upon Claudius’ sudden death in 54-classical sources suggest Agrippina fed him poisoned mushrooms-the 17-year-old Nero ascended the throne.

She arranged for Nero to wed Claudius’ daughter Octavia in 53, further sidelining the emperor’s son Britannicus.

Nero’s mother, Agrippina the Younger, had married Claudius after arranging the death of her second husband and was the driving force behind her son’s adoption. Nero’s Murderous Path to Powerīorn Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, Nero took his familiar name when he was adopted at age 13 by his great-uncle, the emperor Claudius (his father, Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus, had died when the future emperor was only 2). He is best known for his debaucheries, political murders, persecution of Christians and a passion for music that led to the probably apocryphal rumor that Nero “fiddled” while Rome burned during the great fire of 64 A.D. until his death by suicide 14 years later.

Perhaps the most infamous of Rome’s emperors, Nero Claudius Caesar (37-68 A.D.) ruled Rome from 54 A.D.

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