“What if Nero wasn’t a monster? What if he was not an abomination, the destroyer of a once great civilization, but the epitome of what its culture sought to make? Maybe there is a point of declension from which a culture may never return or rise again. All movements need scapegoats, but what if it is the collective movement, and not a single man, that is to blame? Are weak-minded men not shaped by movement rather than the other way around?
With the resources to all his world at hand, might he not have been molded into the greatest form of what his world sought to form: profligacy, impulsivity, promiscuity—for both sexes—cruelty, avarice…
He began his reign speaking pretty words written for him by others, of amending the corruption and practices of prior reigns, and—after these pretty words were spoken—proceeded then in even crueler and more corrupt rule. He killed political opponents—false crimes and outright murders. He spent profligately in hollow promises to the masses who did not see that money spent led not to collective raising but to deeper destitution.
The masses did not mind. They celebrated. They took pride in a ruler that was as low in mind moral as themselves: who entertained jealousies, passions, and vindictiveness as petty as any plebian grievance. He was “their emperor.”
And when Rome burned, was it not a beautiful song; and did not, too, the people sing as he played his violin?
And a political lesson still today: never make waste of tragedy—even those we, ourselves, design. He opened his palace to displaced and found no shortage of scapegoats to blame and take the hatred of the many. It was the Christians whom were tried, convicted, and then murdered to the appeasement and entertainment of the people—crucifixions, burned alive, fed to beasts—whatever sated the public’s desire to see punishment and judgment on someone they could openly hate with encouragement from the State. Then after the fire…there laid a perfect clearance—exactly where he wished his project—was left for the creation of his Golden House—in tribute to himself.
Inflation came, in consequence of spending, and the rise of cost and consequence on commoners was championed as progress…proof of plenty, never minding it was shortage and hardship that the people lived…pretty lies readily permitted. Why should the people mind? They still had their their circus.
Maybe Nero was not a monster—at least not in his time. Maybe he was exactly what the people wanted…someone just as them.”