Nero

Part of Life of Caesar

An hour and a half in the late reign, where the building, the games and the executions all run on the same money and the money runs out.

Part of Roman Emperors: Totalus Rankium

Eighty-nine minutes on the last Julio-Claudian, scored against his own reputation. The hosts keep asking which of the famous stories has a source close enough to the events to be worth anything.

Part of Greeced Lightning · Myths and movies with a doctor of classics; only the Roman episodes are indexed

Part of Life of Caesar

Nero on tour in Greece, competing in festivals that were rescheduled so he could win them all. Eighty minutes on an emperor who left the empire to go and perform.

Part of Life of Caesar

Seventy-three minutes on July 64 and the fire that burned for six days. Tacitus is the only near-contemporary and he was nine years old at the time, which the episode does not let you forget.

Part of Life of Caesar

The last year: Vindex, Galba, the senate's vote, and a suicide that needed help. Seventy-two minutes on the fall of the Julio-Claudians.

Part of Life of Caesar

Boudica burns three cities while Nero is in Rome, and the empire nearly loses Britain in a summer. Seventy minutes, with the Roman sources read against what archaeology found in the burnt layers.

Part of Life of Caesar

Octavia, Acte and Poppaea, and a court where marriage was policy and affection was a threat. Just over an hour on the domestic politics of a teenage emperor.

Part of The Ancients

With Conn Iggulden

Nero at seventeen, with Seneca writing his speeches and Burrus running the guard. Start here and the reign reads as a decline; start at the fire and it reads as a monster story.

Part of Life of Caesar

The year 61, when a city prefect is killed by one of his own slaves and the senate applies the old law: all four hundred slaves of the household die. Sixty-seven minutes on a rule everyone found monstrous and nobody dared repeal.

Part of Life of Caesar

The informers, the treason trials and the deaths of Seneca and Lucan. An hour on the years when the court learned what it could not say.

Part of Life of Caesar

Stephen Dando-Collins on the legions of the period and on how the army saw the reign. An hour with a military historian on a subject usually left to the gossip.

Part of Life of Caesar

An hour on the marriages of the late reign, including the freedman Sporus, and what Roman writers did with them afterwards.

Part of Life of Caesar

The Pisonian conspiracy, forty-one people implicated and nineteen dead including Seneca. An hour on the plot that turned suspicion into policy.

Part of Life of Caesar

The series opens with the family tree: Nero as the last of Augustus' blood, which is the whole reason a sixteen-year-old could be emperor. An hour.

Part of The Ancients

Shushma Malik on Nero the performer: the lyre, the poetry, the Greek tour he came home from with 1,808 victory crowns. Sixty-one minutes on why an emperor on a stage scandalised Rome more than an emperor in a war.

Part of Life of Caesar

An hour on the private life the sources dwell on, and on how much of it is standard invective aimed at a dead emperor with no heirs to defend him.

Part of Life of Caesar

Britannicus dead at dinner, the physician's excuse, and a court that agreed to believe it. An hour on the first killing.

Part of Life of Caesar

Sixty minutes on a sixteen-year-old becoming emperor and the senate deciding not to stop it. The episode asks what the senate thought it was getting, which explains the first five years.

Part of Life of Caesar

Fifty-nine minutes on Nero and the city crowd, who liked him considerably more than the senate did and said so after he died.

Part of Life of Caesar

Fifty-nine minutes working through the scandal material and asking what each story was for when it was written.

Part of Emperors of Rome

With Caillan Davenport

The fire of 64 taken apart live: what burned, how long, and where the story about the lyre comes from. Fifty-eight minutes, and the blame lands on the sources as much as on Nero.

Part of Life of Caesar

The Milvian Bridge in fifty-six minutes: how Maxentius came to fight outside his own walls with a river at his back, and lost an empire in an afternoon.

Part of The Ancients

Fifty-five minutes on whether the early Christians read Nero into the number of the Beast, and on what the persecution after the fire of 64 actually looked like.

Part of Life of Caesar

Fifty-three minutes on the games under Nero and on an emperor who wanted to compete in them himself.

Part of Life of Caesar

Fifty-one minutes on the reprisals after Boudica, where the governor was recalled for being too thorough.

Part of The Ancients

Lauren Ginsberg of Duke on Octavia, Poppaea and Statilia Messalina: the three women Nero married, and the two he is said to have killed. Forty-eight minutes given to their side of it.

Forty-six minutes inside the Domus Aurea, the palace Nero drove through a burnt quarter of Rome and, by the film's reckoning, the largest building standing anywhere at the time. The scale is the argument: it explains why the dynasty that followed drained his lake and put a public amphitheatre on it.

Part of Life of Caesar

Forty-five minutes on the plot of 65: forty-one people named, nineteen dead, and a court that stopped trusting anyone.

Part of Life of Caesar

With Michael Tremblay

Thirty-six minutes with a philosopher on Stoicism as it was practised, by Seneca among others, while serving an emperor who had him killed.

Part of The Rest Is History

Two halves in thirty-two minutes: Tom sets up the Year of the Four Emperors after Nero, Dominic takes a defeat that started the long Byzantine decline.

Part of Our Fake History

The Great Fire of 64 AD spawned its own truther conspiracy asking whether Emperor Nero started the blaze and fiddled as Rome burned, a legend later fed by so-called pseudo-Neros.

Part of Emperors of Rome

With Emma Southon

Agrippina married her uncle, buried him, and put her son on the throne, then found she could not control him. Twenty-seven minutes on a career that ended with a staged shipwreck.

Part of The Pax Romana Podcast

The tour of Greece, the neglected armies and the revolt of Vindex, ending with four emperors in one year. Twenty-three minutes on how a dynasty runs out.

Part of The Classics Podcast · The Classical Association: revision, myth and interviews; only the Roman episodes are indexed

With Sam Moorhead

Part of Emperors of Rome

The end, in twenty minutes: a senate that declared him an enemy, a flight to a freedman's villa, and a last line about the artist dying in him.

Part of The Classics Podcast · The Classical Association: revision, myth and interviews; only the Roman episodes are indexed

Part of The Classics Podcast · The Classical Association: revision, myth and interviews; only the Roman episodes are indexed

Part of The Pax Romana Podcast

How a competent early reign turned into the standard example of tyranny, and how much of that turn happened in the writing afterwards. Eighteen minutes.

Part of The Pax Romana Podcast

Matricide, the fire, and the persecution that followed it, in eighteen minutes. The pace is the point: the collapse was quick.

Part of The Classics Podcast · The Classical Association: revision, myth and interviews; only the Roman episodes are indexed

Part of Understanding Rome · Agnes Crawford, licensed guide in Rome

Part of Emperors of Rome

Sixteen years old and installed by his mother over a living stepbrother. Fourteen minutes on the first years, when Seneca and Burrus were running the empire in his name.

Part of The Classics Podcast · The Classical Association: revision, myth and interviews; only the Roman episodes are indexed

With Andrew Wallace-Hadrill

Part of Emperors of Rome

With Zachary Herz

At least three men claimed to be Nero after his death, and the eastern provinces kept believing one of them. Twenty-five minutes on what that says about how he was actually regarded.