October 9, 2024 • 36 mins
Nero and Rome and an overly ambitious Agrippina. Born into royalty, banished, and returning to royalty. Adoption in Roman society. The emperor’s body guards. Nero’s incredible reforms for Rome.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is a Jesse Kelly Show.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
It is the Jesse Kelly Show. Another hour of The
Jesse Kelly Show on a Wednesday, a Hope Day, a
day where we will eventually get back to making fun
of Doug m Hoff. We are going to continue to
pray for Florida as Hurricane Milton bears down on them,
so please keep Florida in your prayers.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
We are going to read emails. We're going to do
many things still on the world famous Jesse Kelly Show,
but we're not doing any of those things right now.
You ever thought about gouging out somebody's eye? What, Chris,
It's part of this story we're about to tell is
an eye gouging thing. I can't stop thinking about it.
(00:57):
It was one of the parts of the Bible that
used to fay fascinate me when I was a kid,
because I was a big Samson fan, because you know,
he and I have a lot in common. But Samson,
when they Philistines got him, they gouged out his eyes
or burnt out his eyes. I don't know. I heard
it a couple different ways, but I will tell you
that occupied a lot of my thinking when I was
a child. Why Chris, because it's sick and it's gruesome,
(01:19):
and I want to know how they did it, and
I want to know how bad it hurt, and I
want to do it to you. So no, I'm just kidding,
but gouging out people's eyes is terrible, and it's part
of our story. We talk about politics, the degradation of
our politics. We look at all the idiots and losers
who run our country now and I'm not going to
(01:40):
lie and say it's good, but I think every now
and then maybe some perspective on real ugliness at the
highest levels of power, how ugly it can get. You
want to talk a little bit about Nero, You want
to talk about Nero and branding. To stay with me here, Nero.
I know you know who Nero was. You're probably going
(02:03):
to learn a couple of things here, but I know
you know who Nero was. He was a Roman emperor.
Remember the Roman Empire. It's not how Rome began. Rome
is mostly known today by people for its emperors, the
Neros and Caligulas, and everyone knows who Julius Caesar is
(02:24):
and those types. Even if you don't know anything about
any of these people, that's what you know about but
Rome was originally a republic run by the Senate, and
then through a long list of things that we've discussed
many times on the show, Rome ended up well, where
we're going to be here in the time of Nero.
(02:45):
Rome ended up being run by one man, an emperor. Now,
who is Nero? Where'd all this stuff come from? Okay,
so let's do just a little bit of background on Nero.
Something you know about Nero, I'm going to shoot a
hole in today. I should. I should let you know
right now. Yes, he was very very bad human being
(03:06):
with there there are some things about Nero that have
been inaccurate anyway, So who was what's going on at
the time? This is about the time of Jesus. It's
after the time of Jesus, but I don't like to
get specifics in nerd out on the dates. It's after
fifty years after the time of Jesus. Okay, so that's
roughly where we're at here. Jesus is gone, Chris's people
(03:26):
killed him. It's over. Now we're in Rome, and there's
there's another part of Rome. Honestly, Chris jokes aside, there's
another part of Rome. You should understand. The religious aspect
of it. This is going to come into play in
Nero's life later on. Anyone who knows the history will
understand a little bit of why. But the religious aspect
of it. First Rome, you know what kind of religion
(03:49):
they had, or at least I think you probably know
what kind of religion they had. They had very similar
to the Greeks. There's a god of the sun, and
a god of war and a god of love, and
you need a temple for this guy in a temple
for this guy. So it's one of those types of places.
And we've had this talk before on the show. Because
it was a false religion, it was really its roots
(04:13):
were created by the state to serve the state. That's
a great way to test your religious beliefs. Do they
serve the state? Do they serve the needs of the
people in power? Miraculously, these societies so often had religions
that really helped out the guys who were in charge, right,
(04:33):
So it's a great way to test your belief system. Well,
that was Rome's belief system, you know, all the different
all that crap. Well, then it comes to Jews in Christians.
Jews and Christians in Rome at this period of time,
the Jews were a little bit more accepted, but not
(04:54):
very much at all, for the exact same reason. Jews
and Christians their belief system, their God, you know, same God, Yahweh.
He is outside of and above the Roman system. That's
why initially, for the longest time Jews and Christians were
(05:16):
persecuted in Rome. It wasn't specifically that they had an
ax to grind with Chris or me or Yahweh himself.
They had an ax to grind with any kind of
a belief system that was above the Roman system, above
and beyond the Roman emperor. You know, if you pin
Chris down in the alleyway and you say, hey, you
(05:37):
could choose Yahweh or Nero, they need here, They need
him to say nero or that's a problem. Okay, you understand.
So the Jews and the Christians were second class citizens
is probably the most simplistic way I can put it
at this time. But separate is really what they were.
This will come, This is going to come into play
(05:58):
in a little while. Separate, separate meaning we have this
whole Roman society, we have this whole Roman belief system,
but then you have the Jews or the Christians they
live around each other. They prefer to work around each other.
We know their God. They consider him above Nero, above
the Senate, above Rome. They have that. Okay, So remember
(06:23):
they're not only fairly new as far as being introduced
to the Romans go. They've set themselves apart from the
Roman system. That was a problem. Right now, Back to
the Nero thing. Nero was part of the Julius Caesar line.
It's known as the Julio Claudian dynasty. Don't worry about that.
(06:44):
That's nerding out on details. History nerds will nerd out
on that. Don't worry about that. He was part of
the line of emperors. Back to Caesar Augustus. Who's Caesar
Augustus again, don't worry about memorizing all this. Caesar Augustus
was the one who came after Julie Caesar who actually
did take over as the emperor and lived for so
(07:05):
long and ruled Rome. He was still revered at this time.
His mother, Nero's mother was actually the descendant of Augustus.
All right, now, it was a rough time, and it's
it's crazy, it's funny, it's hawful. There are a bunch
of words I can use to describe ruling families throughout history.
(07:29):
We talk a lot about our Kennedys here in the
United States of America, not just the fact that they've
been in and around power forever. Yeah, we got Jack
as a US ambassador, JFK himself obviously the president RFK.
You have all these different Kennedys. There's still Kennedy's today.
R FK Junior just ran for president. All these Kennedys
(07:49):
out there, we talk about the power they have and
what else do we talk about the tragedy and the
scandal around them all the time? Ted Kennedy's killing women
with his JFK is getting shot in Dallas are. It's
just been thing after thing after thing after thing, and
that is a pretty consistent thing throughout history. When you
(08:14):
get a family, you would think it'd be the opposite,
At least I would if you were to say that
Kelly family, we were about to become presidents. In fact,
I was going to be elected president. Haha, that's a
real joke. We all know that's never happened here anyway.
If I was about to be elected president and my
son James, he's going to be a United States Senator,
(08:37):
and my son, Luke after him is going to be
a governor, and their sons, their sons are going to
be presidents and senators and governors. Would you say that
we would probably have a good life. You would probably
say so. I would say so, wow, that sounds pretty cool. Wow,
presidents think of all. I bet you guys will make
a lot of money. I bet you it'll be great.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Right.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
But the truth is, if you were to present me
that opportunity right in front of me, right now, God
comes down, He hands me a piece of paper and says, hey, Jesse,
sign up for this life of royalty for yourself and
your family. I don't think I would sign it unless
he made me, because royal families are a disaster and
this dynasty was no different. It was murder, intrigue, affairs,
(09:19):
it was everything you can imagine in high level politics.
Family member killing family member, a complete disaster. And that
brings us to Nero. That was not his name originally,
but we're not going to nerd out on details. Nero.
Nero's uncle was Caligula. There's only three names you need
(09:42):
to learn in this whole story. Caligula was his uncle.
You already know who that is, So that doesn't count.
Caligula had a sister her name, and this one does matter.
This is one of those women. She had to be
a fascinating woman. Maybe an evil woman possibly, but had
to be a fascinating woman. I'd like to meet her,
(10:03):
one of those people. You'd like to have dinner with
her for an hour and just see what kind of
person she is. Her name is Agrippina, and she is
going to play a central role in the Nero story,
a central role in our story today. Agrippina is the
sister of Caligula. And you already know about Caligula and
what a disaster he was. Eventually he gets displeased with Agrippina,
(10:28):
and that's kind of where the Nero story begins. So
we'll begin there in a moment. Before we do that,
let's do relief factor. I bet you all these people,
I bet you there would have been less murder if
they had relief factor. Think about what do you do
for pain in ancient Rome? Here you're gonna chew on
some weird plant, go sacrifice a bull or something odd
(10:52):
like that, when you could just be taking relief factor
every single day, one hundred percent drug free developed by doctors.
What is it. It's a it's a daily supplement. You
take it every day, and your body it's already fighting
that inflammation that's making your back hurt, that makes your
knee hurt, your your muscle's hurt. It's already trying to
(11:12):
fight it. It needs help. That's what relief Factory is.
It's the help. People talk about their pain disappearing completely.
Others talk about their pain being turned way down. But
if you could just take a natural herbal supplement every
morning and have that, wouldn't you Nineteen dollars and ninety
five cents buys you three weeks of it. Go get
(11:34):
some relief Factor dot com or call one eight hundred
the number four Relief. We'll be back. What Chris. We
can make jokes. It's fine, you get that right. The
Jesse Kelly Show.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
It is the Jesse Kelly Show on A or A.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
I almost sad a Tuesday on a Wednesday. I remember.
You can email the show Jesse at Jesse Kellyshow dot com.
We're discussing some history now, in fact, we're discussing Nero.
I kind of gave a little bit of backstory. His
uncle was Caligula. Don't worry about that. But his mother
you do need to worry about. Her name was Agrippina,
and you're going to hear her name a lot today.
(12:14):
Agrippina was the mother of Nero. Nero his father was
and look, you never it's hard to psychologize somebody two
thousand years later. But when you look at how Nero
eventually turned out, you can really see how his childhood
guided him. We'll get to the mother's side in a moment.
(12:35):
His father was a senator, a very important man, but
reportedly an angry drunk, had a terrible alcohol problem, and
was violent to the point a fellow senator argued with
him on the senate floor one day, and he tracked
(12:56):
him down later and gouged out his eye. What's the
worst you've ever held a grudge? So that was Nero's father.
His father reportedly murdered some slave boy in traffic because
there was some kind of a traffic incident or accident,
and you just got mad and got out and just
murdered him and kept moving on his way. So we're
talking about a violent, bad person. That's his father. Now
(13:19):
his father dies, Caligula is in power doing all the
horrible things. Caligula did most of which are not fit
to be talked about on a family radio show. So Caligula,
he decides he doesn't like his sister Agrippina anymore, and
he banishes her her and her son, Nero, her young son.
(13:42):
So Nero's father is dead. His mother and he have
been banished to an island. Now remember this, you want
to talk about how two different lives have, well, the
difference between the two different lives. Nero has lived so
far in Roman society, it was very much a caste system,
(14:03):
where you would have the ruling elite, and there were
various levels of society. Niro was born into the Julian
Claudian dynasty, meaning for however long he had lived, Niro
would have lived royal life. A royal life so far.
It would have been the finest foods, the finest horses,
the comfiest beds. He would have had slaves and servants
(14:26):
and tutors. He would have had things really, really good.
And then boom, Uncle Caligila decides he doesn't like mom anymore.
He banishes you to an island. You're not only banished
to an island, your tutor. His tutor was a dancer.
Now that may not sound that extreme, But I need
(14:48):
to pause Romans. In Roman society, they considered the arts
theater actors dancers. They considered them to be equal or
below ladies of the night. Everyone understands what I mean.
I know there are kids listening. I'm trying to make
(15:09):
this right. But women who sell things late at night,
they shouldn't be selling the dudes who were lonely. Roman
society considered dancers beneath those people actors and that shit.
This is going to come back in a plane a
little while too. You have to know that about Roman society.
The only tutor they gave young Nero was a dancer.
(15:32):
And what else went into that I don't know. Now.
Fast forward, Caligula is murdered. Caligula ends up getting murdered.
It's a very famous story. Caligula had made himself the
bane of the existence of many, many powerful people. He
was abusing senators, abusing their wives in front of the senators.
(15:55):
He was signed up for an assassination. Caligula eventually gets
assassinated and a guy takes over. His name's Claudius. You
don't have to know that, it's not important for our
story today. But Claudius takes over as the Roman emperor
Claudius gets a hold of Agrippina, who's been banished, and
he says, hey, come on back home. So now Nero
(16:18):
has grown up his royalty. He got banished to an
island to live a really, really rough life, and then
he's just been called back home, back into the arms
of the new emperor, Claudius, and now he's royalty. Now
they're not part of the actual you know, Claudius is
home yet, but Agrippina seems to be working on that.
(16:39):
You see, Agrippina is married for a while, and then
her husband dies. You'll notice a lot of people Agrippina,
once dead in this story end up dying through sometimes mysterious,
sometimes fairly obvious circumstances. Agrippina totally poisoned her hus. Agrippina's
(17:01):
husband dies, Claudius he doesn't want to be left out.
Remember when I told you it's rough flight, it's a
rough life for royal families. He murders his wife as well. Well,
look at that, Agrippina, And no, this is a true story.
Remember this is not some book we're reading. Now you
have Claudius, the Emperor of Rome. You have Agrippina, the
mother of Nero, Agrippina I'm assuming was a charming woman
(17:24):
at least that's like how I That's how I like
to imagine her in my mind. They decide they're a
really good couple. Hey, look, you murdered your spouse and
I murdered my spouse. Are we made for each other?
And they decide to get together. But Claudius, Claudius already
(17:45):
has a son. He has a son, and now he
has this new wife, Agrippina, she's bringing her son along. Well,
this is an awkward situation when you are now in
an empire where the next emperor is oftentimes the son
or a relative of the current emperor. If you're Claudius,
(18:06):
do you pick your biological son or this new boy Nero.
Well that's where Agrippina will again begin to work her magic.
Next what feeling a little stocky? Follow and subscribe on
social at Jesse Kelly DC.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
It is the Jesse Kelly Show on a Wednesday. Memory
of you miss any part of the show, you can
go download the podcast. It's free, iHeart Spotify iTunes. All right,
back to our story. We're talking about Nero.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
In case you're just now joining us, you're jumping in
mid story don't worry. Oh, download a podcast if you
miss the beginning of it. So Nero, Nero's mother, Agrippina,
she manages to worm her way back into power in Rome,
and she manages to marry the emperor Claudius. Well, now
you have Nero here, Claudius are but he had a
(19:00):
biological son, Agrippina. This is a woman who is ambitious,
starts working her magic and working on Claudius, and she
gets him to agree to adopt Nero as his official son. Now,
let's pause really quickly and talk about Roman adoption. Adoption
(19:26):
modern times one of the most blessed things you could
ever do for somebody. It's freaking awesome. If you're listening
to me and you adopt kids, you have so much
respect from me. If you're a child who's been adopted,
I know that can be difficult, for sure. I have
some experience in this area. I know that can be difficult.
(19:48):
Show some appreciation for your adoptive parents. It's a really
awesome thing in Roman high society back then. I don't
want to sit and act like it was quite as
as benevolent as adoption is today. Oftentimes these adoptions were
for political reasons and other reasons. But there is something
(20:09):
you need to know about Roman adoption back then, just
like today, would a Roman adopted you, if you got
adopted by a Roman, one of these high society Romans,
back then, it was every bit as official as your
biological sun. It is as if the blood, the genes,
(20:32):
the DNA, none of that stuff mattered at all. It
was not kind of okay, well, adopt them and he
can be kind of the side sun, just like the
adopted families handle it today. When you are adopted, you
are mine, You are my flesh and blood. That is
how it was treated Claudius. Because the man I don't
know whether he just couldn't see straight around Agrippina. I
(20:55):
have no idea what he was thinking. Claudius adopts Nero
as his son. Well, now you have an emperor Claudius.
He has a wife, Agrippina, who has a vested interest
in one of the two sons. And the one of
the two sons, Nero, happens to be the oldest son.
(21:17):
And that matters a lot, you see, because there were
rules in Roman society for how old you had to
be in order to be emperor. And actually I did
some digging into this last night. When I thought about
telling you this story, I decided I was going to
figure out what the rules were. I'll be honest, I
could never nail it down. I kept getting different rules
(21:37):
from different sources. Here's what I do know this part.
I know Nero. Fast forward a little bit. I'll come
back and explain. But Nero does assume the throne at
the age of sixteen. Okay, so he's sixteen years old,
all right. His brother, his stepbrother, I should say, did
(21:58):
not get the throne because he wasn't considered to be
old enough, which begs the question how old does one
have to be to assume the throne? If sixteen is
old enough and the other age is not old enough.
Either way, Claudius adopts Nero, and now his mother is
(22:19):
kind of in a race against time. And I can't
believe Claudius didn't see this coming. Claudius preferred the other son.
Obviously he's the son he knew, he's the son he
had raised. But Agrippina understood the other son, whom Claudius preferred,
(22:39):
was too young to be emperor. So she had a
very slim window, a short time frame, if you will,
to find a way for Claudius to abdicate the throne,
if you will. Claudius sits down for dinner one night.
He is not a st stupid man by any stretch
(23:01):
of the imagination. He is seeing emperor after emperor murdered.
Caligula was just knifed about five minutes before this. He
was well aware his life would be in danger as
an emperor. So Claudius had a food taster. Well Agrippina,
once again, the crafty devil she was. Agrippina found a
(23:24):
way to buy off and manipulate the food taster, and
they slipped a poisonous room mushroom onto Claudius's table, onto
his plate. Except they were so worried that everyone would
knew he'd been poisoned, they chose a slow acting poison.
Claudius sits down as emperor, ingest some mushrooms. Whether it
(23:48):
was on a pizza or not, I don't know. I
like to imagine it was. He eats a poisonous mushroom.
He got drunk a lot. He got hammered that night,
and so no one thought anything of it. When he
got up, Oh, I can hardly stand slurring his words,
complaining of a stomach ache. No big deer, No big deal.
The Emperor has a drinking problem, probably hangs out with
(24:10):
Nancy Pelosi. Let's not stretch it. He goes off to
his room, continues to get sick, but he's not dying.
Agrippina's in the palace starting to get understandably concerned because
he is not dying. And if the emperor does survive,
he is going to know he's been poisoned because those mushrooms, Ah,
(24:33):
they did taste a little bit funny. So what does
she do again? This woman must have been look, you
don't want to make in your dinner, but she must
have been an impressive human being. She scrambles. She gets
to another person who she's manipulated and bought off. This
person happens to be the palace freaking doctor. And what
(24:54):
she do? She gets the palace doctor to take a feather.
The feather is dipped in a fast acting poison. This
time the doctor brings it in too. Claudius says, oh,
I heard you're sick. Here's a solution. Tickle the back
of your throat with this feather. It'll make you throw up.
(25:16):
You'll feel better. Claudius says, sounds good. Give me the feather,
grabs the feather, Kamala is it down, lays over dies
right then and there, And now you're Agrippina. You're looking around,
and this all has worked out quite well for you,
hasn't it. You went from being the banished sister of Caligula,
(25:41):
banished to a tiny, crappy island. Your emperor husband just
keeled over dead, Your son freshly adopted by a miracle,
Your son freshly adopted, appears to be the only one
of the two boys who can take over the throne.
And wow, look at how well things have worked out
(26:03):
for you. Like I said, Agrippina was a woman to
be reckoned with. There's no question about it. She was
a woman to be reckoned with all right now, after
Claudius dies, this stuff always gets ugly. There's all kinds
of fratricide and things going on. But Nero is eventually
(26:26):
made emperor. Part of the reason Nero was made emperor
is I know you're going to find this shocking. Stop
me if you've heard this one before. His mother managed
to buy off and manipulate the right people, who were
the right people, well, the Praetorian Guard. We have to pause. Actually,
(26:47):
everything in our story for a few minutes, and we
have to discuss the Pretorian Guard in Rome and what
it was. You see, you weren't allowed to carry arms
in Rome. You we weren't allowed to have a military
in Rome. But they wanted some sort of a law
enforcement really emperor protection unit, and they created one and
(27:11):
it was known as the Praetorian Guard. It ended up though,
being a huge, huge problem because well, people back then,
just as now, didn't always understand power. So let's discuss
the Praetorian Guard and power and nero and more in
just a moment. Before we do that, all this Roman
(27:34):
history probably has your testosterone levels already going through the roof.
That's the good news. The bad news is that's going
to fade away as soon as I stopped talking about Rome,
and we'll go back to drinking estrogen and we'll have
no T levels left and society will collapse, unless, of course,
we start taking male vitality stacks from chalk. You see
(27:56):
twenty percent increase in your testosterone in ninety with natural
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to go through the roof. They have chalk litpowder. I
start out every day with chocklitpowder. Again today when I
was walking out the door, I had to leave early
(28:17):
for something. Ob had made me a smoothie choklt powder boom.
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(28:39):
We'll be back. This is the Jesse Kelly Show.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
It is the Jesse Kelly Show on a Wednesday.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
I hope Dave. Remember. You can email the show Jesse
at jessekellyshow dot com. Leave a voicemail eight seven seven
three seven four three seven three. You're welcome to send
love hey, death threats. You're welcome to complain about history.
We're just gonna delete all those because I'm gonna keep
doing it whenever I feel like it. All right back
(29:11):
to our history. We're talking about Nero. We're setting aside
politics for a little while. Today. We're doing some Nero talk.
Nero just took power. He's now the young Emperor. He's
sixteen years old. He took power in large part, honestly
one hundred percent because of his mother, Agrippina, who managed
to poison and slither her way into power, gets yourself
(29:34):
right next to the emperor, kills him too, allegedly, and
now Nero takes over. Now let's pause on all that
and talk about the Praetorian Guard quickly. We already talked
about the Petorian Guard. Roam didn't allow arms inside the city,
no military units inside the city. So the Praetorian Guard
was created to protect the emperor and enforce some things
(29:56):
inside the city. But this, of course, look, it goes
to the my and said of the average American communists today,
it's just a lack of understanding about power. I should say,
you're liberal and peggy when she talks about guns, get
the guns off the street. It's just a lack of
understanding about power. You see, you banished all the guns,
(30:17):
you banished all the swords, and then you created a unit,
and they're the only ones that have swords and spears. Well,
they're the only ones with power. Then instead of everyone
having power, they're the ones with the true power. It's
like that story I told you a little while ago
about these uber rich guys who are creating bunkers for themselves,
(30:41):
apocalypse bunkers, and they're hiring a bunch of merks, Navy
seals and these types to go work security for it.
You don't have a bunker. The Navy seal team you
hired has a bunker, and they're just gonna shoot you
in the face the second the apocalypse comes and throw
your body in a ditch. And now they have all
your supplies. That's how that works, that's how power actually works. Well,
the Petorian Guard looked around one day and they figured out,
(31:03):
wait a minute, we're the only ones with swords and
shields and spears. We can do whatever we want. The
Praetorian Guard wasn't some secret service style police force. They
were the sword of the Roman elite now, and you
had to buy them off. Agrippina's mother bought off the
head of the Petorian Guard. Now you're young, Nero, Sure
(31:26):
you're sixteen, you're inexperienced. Sure, there's a lot of people
who are angry about how you got to the throne,
Did mom kill Claudius? What's going on there? But really
the question is what you're gonna do about it? Because
you have the praetorian guard with you. So Nero has
the pretorian guard with him. He also has You don't
(31:47):
have to memorize this name. I don't want to give
you too many names. I don't like doing that. But
maybe you're a detail in there. The name would matter.
Seneca was his name. Who was Seneca? Uh? A philosopher
is the best way I could put it. But when
I say philosopher, I didn't want to put it that
way because that sounds so unimportant to us today. A
(32:08):
philosopher all who gives a crap? Can you name me
a single modern philosopher? That's just it doesn't It doesn't
drive home for you or for me how important that
was back then. Seneca was a really, really, really big
deal back then. A Uh Oprah, No Oprah. Obviously everyone
(32:30):
knows who Oprah is. I don't like Oprah, She's a
dirty comy whatever, but everyone knows who Oprah is. And
let's be honest. She may not matter to you or
matter to me personally, but when Oprah says jump, there
are a lot of people who say how high. Because
of the level of influence she has. Seneca's endorsement was
(32:52):
Oprah's endorsement. That's the best way I can describe it.
It was a big deal that Nero had Seneca and
Nero had the Praetorian Guard. What that essentially gave Nero
was control of power. He had the philosopher one that
people loved. He had the Praetorian Guard. Now Nero begins
to rule. How involved was Agrippina. Well, I'll put it
(33:14):
to you this way. Emperors had a habit of minting
their own coins with their own faces on it. That's awesome, Chris,
we need to do that for the show. But the
emperors had a habit of minting their own coins with
their own faces on them, and the Roman Republic was
quite old by this point in time. Up to this point,
no woman had ever been pictured on the same side
(33:38):
of the coin as a man, certainly not the emperor,
but ever, that had never happened in the history of Rome.
You can go look them up right now. Agrippina Nero coins.
They were the first ones they minted. Where she's sitting there,
Her face is just as large as he is, on
the same side of the new coins they minted. This
(34:01):
is a woman. She didn't just saunter into power and
then say, ah, I'm so proud of my boy. No,
she was knee deep involved, all right, so her end
is magnificent. I should note. I'll get to that in
a moment. Nero, what's he do right away? Well, he
(34:22):
has Seneca in his corner. Seneca was, by my reading,
you never know, it's two thousand years ago, a pretty
solid human being who had really solid ideas of what
needed to be done for Rome, what needed to be
done for the people, how an emperor should act. And
there are a lot of people who give him credit
(34:43):
for what I'm about to say next. But you want
to hear something, something you never heard about Nero before
the first five years of Nero's reign takes over at
sixteen might be the best five years of any five
year period in the history of the Roman emp He
was that incredible, insanely popular. He gets in there immediately
(35:06):
and he's doing things that He's cutting taxes. This is
a sixteen year old boy. He just took over as emperor.
He starts giving power back to the Senate. He starts
giving up his power, giving power back to the Senate.
He walks in, he ends capital punishment. Oh, here's this
(35:27):
one for Nero. Look, we all think he's the Antichrist, right,
here's this one for Nero slaves. You know what Roman
slavery was like or what it could be like. We
all talk about the salt mines and how to terrible
was and that was part of it for sure. But
you could also, as a slave in Rome, have a
life of a rich person. Essentially, you'd be a tutor
(35:49):
of a senator's son, probably live a life of luxury,
wonderful foods, you know. So we could run the gamut.
It could be the worst existence in the history of
the world, or doesn't even really count as what you are.
You're you're practically a stepbrother in the house, you know that.
So we could run the gamut. But Nero, freaking Nero,
you know, the guy who fiddled while Rome burned. Will
(36:10):
come back to that. Nero expanded slaves rights, had a
heart for slaves again. First five years went well, ah,
then it then it kind of went sideways. Hang on,
This is a Jesse Kelly Show.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
It is the Jesse Kelly Show. Another hour of The
Jesse Kelly Show on a Wednesday, a Hope Day, a
day where we will eventually get back to making fun
of Doug m Hoff. We are going to continue to
pray for Florida as Hurricane Milton bears down on them,
so please keep Florida in your prayers.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
We are going to read emails. We're going to do
many things still on the world famous Jesse Kelly Show,
but we're not doing any of those things right now.
You ever thought about gouging out somebody's eye? What, Chris,
It's part of this story we're about to tell is
an eye gouging thing. I can't stop thinking about it.
(00:57):
It was one of the parts of the Bible that
used to fay fascinate me when I was a kid,
because I was a big Samson fan, because you know,
he and I have a lot in common. But Samson,
when they Philistines got him, they gouged out his eyes
or burnt out his eyes. I don't know. I heard
it a couple different ways, but I will tell you
that occupied a lot of my thinking when I was
a child. Why Chris, because it's sick and it's gruesome,
(01:19):
and I want to know how they did it, and
I want to know how bad it hurt, and I
want to do it to you. So no, I'm just kidding,
but gouging out people's eyes is terrible, and it's part
of our story. We talk about politics, the degradation of
our politics. We look at all the idiots and losers
who run our country now and I'm not going to
(01:40):
lie and say it's good, but I think every now
and then maybe some perspective on real ugliness at the
highest levels of power, how ugly it can get. You
want to talk a little bit about Nero, You want
to talk about Nero and branding. To stay with me here, Nero.
I know you know who Nero was. You're probably going
(02:03):
to learn a couple of things here, but I know
you know who Nero was. He was a Roman emperor.
Remember the Roman Empire. It's not how Rome began. Rome
is mostly known today by people for its emperors, the
Neros and Caligulas, and everyone knows who Julius Caesar is
(02:24):
and those types. Even if you don't know anything about
any of these people, that's what you know about but
Rome was originally a republic run by the Senate, and
then through a long list of things that we've discussed
many times on the show, Rome ended up well, where
we're going to be here in the time of Nero.
(02:45):
Rome ended up being run by one man, an emperor. Now,
who is Nero? Where'd all this stuff come from? Okay,
so let's do just a little bit of background on Nero.
Something you know about Nero, I'm going to shoot a
hole in today. I should. I should let you know
right now. Yes, he was very very bad human being
(03:06):
with there there are some things about Nero that have
been inaccurate anyway, So who was what's going on at
the time? This is about the time of Jesus. It's
after the time of Jesus, but I don't like to
get specifics in nerd out on the dates. It's after
fifty years after the time of Jesus. Okay, so that's
roughly where we're at here. Jesus is gone, Chris's people
(03:26):
killed him. It's over. Now we're in Rome, and there's
there's another part of Rome. Honestly, Chris jokes aside, there's
another part of Rome. You should understand. The religious aspect
of it. This is going to come into play in
Nero's life later on. Anyone who knows the history will
understand a little bit of why. But the religious aspect
of it. First Rome, you know what kind of religion
(03:49):
they had, or at least I think you probably know
what kind of religion they had. They had very similar
to the Greeks. There's a god of the sun, and
a god of war and a god of love, and
you need a temple for this guy in a temple
for this guy. So it's one of those types of places.
And we've had this talk before on the show. Because
it was a false religion, it was really its roots
(04:13):
were created by the state to serve the state. That's
a great way to test your religious beliefs. Do they
serve the state? Do they serve the needs of the
people in power? Miraculously, these societies so often had religions
that really helped out the guys who were in charge, right,
(04:33):
So it's a great way to test your belief system. Well,
that was Rome's belief system, you know, all the different
all that crap. Well, then it comes to Jews in Christians.
Jews and Christians in Rome at this period of time,
the Jews were a little bit more accepted, but not
(04:54):
very much at all, for the exact same reason. Jews
and Christians their belief system, their God, you know, same God, Yahweh.
He is outside of and above the Roman system. That's
why initially, for the longest time Jews and Christians were
(05:16):
persecuted in Rome. It wasn't specifically that they had an
ax to grind with Chris or me or Yahweh himself.
They had an ax to grind with any kind of
a belief system that was above the Roman system, above
and beyond the Roman emperor. You know, if you pin
Chris down in the alleyway and you say, hey, you
(05:37):
could choose Yahweh or Nero, they need here, They need
him to say nero or that's a problem. Okay, you understand.
So the Jews and the Christians were second class citizens
is probably the most simplistic way I can put it
at this time. But separate is really what they were.
This will come, This is going to come into play
(05:58):
in a little while. Separate, separate meaning we have this
whole Roman society, we have this whole Roman belief system,
but then you have the Jews or the Christians they
live around each other. They prefer to work around each other.
We know their God. They consider him above Nero, above
the Senate, above Rome. They have that. Okay, So remember
(06:23):
they're not only fairly new as far as being introduced
to the Romans go. They've set themselves apart from the
Roman system. That was a problem. Right now, Back to
the Nero thing. Nero was part of the Julius Caesar line.
It's known as the Julio Claudian dynasty. Don't worry about that.
(06:44):
That's nerding out on details. History nerds will nerd out
on that. Don't worry about that. He was part of
the line of emperors. Back to Caesar Augustus. Who's Caesar
Augustus again, don't worry about memorizing all this. Caesar Augustus
was the one who came after Julie Caesar who actually
did take over as the emperor and lived for so
(07:05):
long and ruled Rome. He was still revered at this time.
His mother, Nero's mother was actually the descendant of Augustus.
All right, now, it was a rough time, and it's
it's crazy, it's funny, it's hawful. There are a bunch
of words I can use to describe ruling families throughout history.
(07:29):
We talk a lot about our Kennedys here in the
United States of America, not just the fact that they've
been in and around power forever. Yeah, we got Jack
as a US ambassador, JFK himself obviously the president RFK.
You have all these different Kennedys. There's still Kennedy's today.
R FK Junior just ran for president. All these Kennedys
(07:49):
out there, we talk about the power they have and
what else do we talk about the tragedy and the
scandal around them all the time? Ted Kennedy's killing women
with his JFK is getting shot in Dallas are. It's
just been thing after thing after thing after thing, and
that is a pretty consistent thing throughout history. When you
(08:14):
get a family, you would think it'd be the opposite,
At least I would if you were to say that
Kelly family, we were about to become presidents. In fact,
I was going to be elected president. Haha, that's a
real joke. We all know that's never happened here anyway.
If I was about to be elected president and my
son James, he's going to be a United States Senator,
(08:37):
and my son, Luke after him is going to be
a governor, and their sons, their sons are going to
be presidents and senators and governors. Would you say that
we would probably have a good life. You would probably
say so. I would say so, wow, that sounds pretty cool. Wow,
presidents think of all. I bet you guys will make
a lot of money. I bet you it'll be great.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Right.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
But the truth is, if you were to present me
that opportunity right in front of me, right now, God
comes down, He hands me a piece of paper and says, hey, Jesse,
sign up for this life of royalty for yourself and
your family. I don't think I would sign it unless
he made me, because royal families are a disaster and
this dynasty was no different. It was murder, intrigue, affairs,
(09:19):
it was everything you can imagine in high level politics.
Family member killing family member, a complete disaster. And that
brings us to Nero. That was not his name originally,
but we're not going to nerd out on details. Nero.
Nero's uncle was Caligula. There's only three names you need
(09:42):
to learn in this whole story. Caligula was his uncle.
You already know who that is, So that doesn't count.
Caligula had a sister her name, and this one does matter.
This is one of those women. She had to be
a fascinating woman. Maybe an evil woman possibly, but had
to be a fascinating woman. I'd like to meet her,
(10:03):
one of those people. You'd like to have dinner with
her for an hour and just see what kind of
person she is. Her name is Agrippina, and she is
going to play a central role in the Nero story,
a central role in our story today. Agrippina is the
sister of Caligula. And you already know about Caligula and
what a disaster he was. Eventually he gets displeased with Agrippina,
(10:28):
and that's kind of where the Nero story begins. So
we'll begin there in a moment. Before we do that,
let's do relief factor. I bet you all these people,
I bet you there would have been less murder if
they had relief factor. Think about what do you do
for pain in ancient Rome? Here you're gonna chew on
some weird plant, go sacrifice a bull or something odd
(10:52):
like that, when you could just be taking relief factor
every single day, one hundred percent drug free developed by doctors.
What is it. It's a it's a daily supplement. You
take it every day, and your body it's already fighting
that inflammation that's making your back hurt, that makes your
knee hurt, your your muscle's hurt. It's already trying to
(11:12):
fight it. It needs help. That's what relief Factory is.
It's the help. People talk about their pain disappearing completely.
Others talk about their pain being turned way down. But
if you could just take a natural herbal supplement every
morning and have that, wouldn't you Nineteen dollars and ninety
five cents buys you three weeks of it. Go get
(11:34):
some relief Factor dot com or call one eight hundred
the number four Relief. We'll be back. What Chris. We
can make jokes. It's fine, you get that right. The
Jesse Kelly Show.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
It is the Jesse Kelly Show on A or A.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
I almost sad a Tuesday on a Wednesday. I remember.
You can email the show Jesse at Jesse Kellyshow dot com.
We're discussing some history now, in fact, we're discussing Nero.
I kind of gave a little bit of backstory. His
uncle was Caligula. Don't worry about that. But his mother
you do need to worry about. Her name was Agrippina,
and you're going to hear her name a lot today.
(12:14):
Agrippina was the mother of Nero. Nero his father was
and look, you never it's hard to psychologize somebody two
thousand years later. But when you look at how Nero
eventually turned out, you can really see how his childhood
guided him. We'll get to the mother's side in a moment.
(12:35):
His father was a senator, a very important man, but
reportedly an angry drunk, had a terrible alcohol problem, and
was violent to the point a fellow senator argued with
him on the senate floor one day, and he tracked
(12:56):
him down later and gouged out his eye. What's the
worst you've ever held a grudge? So that was Nero's father.
His father reportedly murdered some slave boy in traffic because
there was some kind of a traffic incident or accident,
and you just got mad and got out and just
murdered him and kept moving on his way. So we're
talking about a violent, bad person. That's his father. Now
(13:19):
his father dies, Caligula is in power doing all the
horrible things. Caligula did most of which are not fit
to be talked about on a family radio show. So Caligula,
he decides he doesn't like his sister Agrippina anymore, and
he banishes her her and her son, Nero, her young son.
(13:42):
So Nero's father is dead. His mother and he have
been banished to an island. Now remember this, you want
to talk about how two different lives have, well, the
difference between the two different lives. Nero has lived so
far in Roman society, it was very much a caste system,
(14:03):
where you would have the ruling elite, and there were
various levels of society. Niro was born into the Julian
Claudian dynasty, meaning for however long he had lived, Niro
would have lived royal life. A royal life so far.
It would have been the finest foods, the finest horses,
the comfiest beds. He would have had slaves and servants
(14:26):
and tutors. He would have had things really, really good.
And then boom, Uncle Caligila decides he doesn't like mom anymore.
He banishes you to an island. You're not only banished
to an island, your tutor. His tutor was a dancer.
Now that may not sound that extreme, But I need
(14:48):
to pause Romans. In Roman society, they considered the arts
theater actors dancers. They considered them to be equal or
below ladies of the night. Everyone understands what I mean.
I know there are kids listening. I'm trying to make
(15:09):
this right. But women who sell things late at night,
they shouldn't be selling the dudes who were lonely. Roman
society considered dancers beneath those people actors and that shit.
This is going to come back in a plane a
little while too. You have to know that about Roman society.
The only tutor they gave young Nero was a dancer.
(15:32):
And what else went into that I don't know. Now.
Fast forward, Caligula is murdered. Caligula ends up getting murdered.
It's a very famous story. Caligula had made himself the
bane of the existence of many, many powerful people. He
was abusing senators, abusing their wives in front of the senators.
(15:55):
He was signed up for an assassination. Caligula eventually gets
assassinated and a guy takes over. His name's Claudius. You
don't have to know that, it's not important for our
story today. But Claudius takes over as the Roman emperor
Claudius gets a hold of Agrippina, who's been banished, and
he says, hey, come on back home. So now Nero
(16:18):
has grown up his royalty. He got banished to an
island to live a really, really rough life, and then
he's just been called back home, back into the arms
of the new emperor, Claudius, and now he's royalty. Now
they're not part of the actual you know, Claudius is
home yet, but Agrippina seems to be working on that.
(16:39):
You see, Agrippina is married for a while, and then
her husband dies. You'll notice a lot of people Agrippina,
once dead in this story end up dying through sometimes mysterious,
sometimes fairly obvious circumstances. Agrippina totally poisoned her hus. Agrippina's
(17:01):
husband dies, Claudius he doesn't want to be left out.
Remember when I told you it's rough flight, it's a
rough life for royal families. He murders his wife as well. Well,
look at that, Agrippina, And no, this is a true story.
Remember this is not some book we're reading. Now you
have Claudius, the Emperor of Rome. You have Agrippina, the
mother of Nero, Agrippina I'm assuming was a charming woman
(17:24):
at least that's like how I That's how I like
to imagine her in my mind. They decide they're a
really good couple. Hey, look, you murdered your spouse and
I murdered my spouse. Are we made for each other?
And they decide to get together. But Claudius, Claudius already
(17:45):
has a son. He has a son, and now he
has this new wife, Agrippina, she's bringing her son along. Well,
this is an awkward situation when you are now in
an empire where the next emperor is oftentimes the son
or a relative of the current emperor. If you're Claudius,
(18:06):
do you pick your biological son or this new boy Nero.
Well that's where Agrippina will again begin to work her magic.
Next what feeling a little stocky? Follow and subscribe on
social at Jesse Kelly DC.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
It is the Jesse Kelly Show on a Wednesday. Memory
of you miss any part of the show, you can
go download the podcast. It's free, iHeart Spotify iTunes. All right,
back to our story. We're talking about Nero.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
In case you're just now joining us, you're jumping in
mid story don't worry. Oh, download a podcast if you
miss the beginning of it. So Nero, Nero's mother, Agrippina,
she manages to worm her way back into power in Rome,
and she manages to marry the emperor Claudius. Well, now
you have Nero here, Claudius are but he had a
(19:00):
biological son, Agrippina. This is a woman who is ambitious,
starts working her magic and working on Claudius, and she
gets him to agree to adopt Nero as his official son. Now,
let's pause really quickly and talk about Roman adoption. Adoption
(19:26):
modern times one of the most blessed things you could
ever do for somebody. It's freaking awesome. If you're listening
to me and you adopt kids, you have so much
respect from me. If you're a child who's been adopted,
I know that can be difficult, for sure. I have
some experience in this area. I know that can be difficult.
(19:48):
Show some appreciation for your adoptive parents. It's a really
awesome thing in Roman high society back then. I don't
want to sit and act like it was quite as
as benevolent as adoption is today. Oftentimes these adoptions were
for political reasons and other reasons. But there is something
(20:09):
you need to know about Roman adoption back then, just
like today, would a Roman adopted you, if you got
adopted by a Roman, one of these high society Romans,
back then, it was every bit as official as your
biological sun. It is as if the blood, the genes,
(20:32):
the DNA, none of that stuff mattered at all. It
was not kind of okay, well, adopt them and he
can be kind of the side sun, just like the
adopted families handle it today. When you are adopted, you
are mine, You are my flesh and blood. That is
how it was treated Claudius. Because the man I don't
know whether he just couldn't see straight around Agrippina. I
(20:55):
have no idea what he was thinking. Claudius adopts Nero
as his son. Well, now you have an emperor Claudius.
He has a wife, Agrippina, who has a vested interest
in one of the two sons. And the one of
the two sons, Nero, happens to be the oldest son.
(21:17):
And that matters a lot, you see, because there were
rules in Roman society for how old you had to
be in order to be emperor. And actually I did
some digging into this last night. When I thought about
telling you this story, I decided I was going to
figure out what the rules were. I'll be honest, I
could never nail it down. I kept getting different rules
(21:37):
from different sources. Here's what I do know this part.
I know Nero. Fast forward a little bit. I'll come
back and explain. But Nero does assume the throne at
the age of sixteen. Okay, so he's sixteen years old,
all right. His brother, his stepbrother, I should say, did
(21:58):
not get the throne because he wasn't considered to be
old enough, which begs the question how old does one
have to be to assume the throne? If sixteen is
old enough and the other age is not old enough.
Either way, Claudius adopts Nero, and now his mother is
(22:19):
kind of in a race against time. And I can't
believe Claudius didn't see this coming. Claudius preferred the other son.
Obviously he's the son he knew, he's the son he
had raised. But Agrippina understood the other son, whom Claudius preferred,
(22:39):
was too young to be emperor. So she had a
very slim window, a short time frame, if you will,
to find a way for Claudius to abdicate the throne,
if you will. Claudius sits down for dinner one night.
He is not a st stupid man by any stretch
(23:01):
of the imagination. He is seeing emperor after emperor murdered.
Caligula was just knifed about five minutes before this. He
was well aware his life would be in danger as
an emperor. So Claudius had a food taster. Well Agrippina,
once again, the crafty devil she was. Agrippina found a
(23:24):
way to buy off and manipulate the food taster, and
they slipped a poisonous room mushroom onto Claudius's table, onto
his plate. Except they were so worried that everyone would
knew he'd been poisoned, they chose a slow acting poison.
Claudius sits down as emperor, ingest some mushrooms. Whether it
(23:48):
was on a pizza or not, I don't know. I
like to imagine it was. He eats a poisonous mushroom.
He got drunk a lot. He got hammered that night,
and so no one thought anything of it. When he
got up, Oh, I can hardly stand slurring his words,
complaining of a stomach ache. No big deer, No big deal.
The Emperor has a drinking problem, probably hangs out with
(24:10):
Nancy Pelosi. Let's not stretch it. He goes off to
his room, continues to get sick, but he's not dying.
Agrippina's in the palace starting to get understandably concerned because
he is not dying. And if the emperor does survive,
he is going to know he's been poisoned because those mushrooms, Ah,
(24:33):
they did taste a little bit funny. So what does
she do again? This woman must have been look, you
don't want to make in your dinner, but she must
have been an impressive human being. She scrambles. She gets
to another person who she's manipulated and bought off. This
person happens to be the palace freaking doctor. And what
(24:54):
she do? She gets the palace doctor to take a feather.
The feather is dipped in a fast acting poison. This
time the doctor brings it in too. Claudius says, oh,
I heard you're sick. Here's a solution. Tickle the back
of your throat with this feather. It'll make you throw up.
(25:16):
You'll feel better. Claudius says, sounds good. Give me the feather,
grabs the feather, Kamala is it down, lays over dies
right then and there, And now you're Agrippina. You're looking around,
and this all has worked out quite well for you,
hasn't it. You went from being the banished sister of Caligula,
(25:41):
banished to a tiny, crappy island. Your emperor husband just
keeled over dead, Your son freshly adopted by a miracle,
Your son freshly adopted, appears to be the only one
of the two boys who can take over the throne.
And wow, look at how well things have worked out
(26:03):
for you. Like I said, Agrippina was a woman to
be reckoned with. There's no question about it. She was
a woman to be reckoned with all right now, after
Claudius dies, this stuff always gets ugly. There's all kinds
of fratricide and things going on. But Nero is eventually
(26:26):
made emperor. Part of the reason Nero was made emperor
is I know you're going to find this shocking. Stop
me if you've heard this one before. His mother managed
to buy off and manipulate the right people, who were
the right people, well, the Praetorian Guard. We have to pause. Actually,
(26:47):
everything in our story for a few minutes, and we
have to discuss the Pretorian Guard in Rome and what
it was. You see, you weren't allowed to carry arms
in Rome. You we weren't allowed to have a military
in Rome. But they wanted some sort of a law
enforcement really emperor protection unit, and they created one and
(27:11):
it was known as the Praetorian Guard. It ended up though,
being a huge, huge problem because well, people back then,
just as now, didn't always understand power. So let's discuss
the Praetorian Guard and power and nero and more in
just a moment. Before we do that, all this Roman
(27:34):
history probably has your testosterone levels already going through the roof.
That's the good news. The bad news is that's going
to fade away as soon as I stopped talking about Rome,
and we'll go back to drinking estrogen and we'll have
no T levels left and society will collapse, unless, of course,
we start taking male vitality stacks from chalk. You see
(27:56):
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for something. Ob had made me a smoothie choklt powder boom.
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(28:39):
We'll be back. This is the Jesse Kelly Show.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
It is the Jesse Kelly Show on a Wednesday.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
I hope Dave. Remember. You can email the show Jesse
at jessekellyshow dot com. Leave a voicemail eight seven seven
three seven four three seven three. You're welcome to send
love hey, death threats. You're welcome to complain about history.
We're just gonna delete all those because I'm gonna keep
doing it whenever I feel like it. All right back
(29:11):
to our history. We're talking about Nero. We're setting aside
politics for a little while. Today. We're doing some Nero talk.
Nero just took power. He's now the young Emperor. He's
sixteen years old. He took power in large part, honestly
one hundred percent because of his mother, Agrippina, who managed
to poison and slither her way into power, gets yourself
(29:34):
right next to the emperor, kills him too, allegedly, and
now Nero takes over. Now let's pause on all that
and talk about the Praetorian Guard quickly. We already talked
about the Petorian Guard. Roam didn't allow arms inside the city,
no military units inside the city. So the Praetorian Guard
was created to protect the emperor and enforce some things
(29:56):
inside the city. But this, of course, look, it goes
to the my and said of the average American communists today,
it's just a lack of understanding about power. I should say,
you're liberal and peggy when she talks about guns, get
the guns off the street. It's just a lack of
understanding about power. You see, you banished all the guns,
(30:17):
you banished all the swords, and then you created a unit,
and they're the only ones that have swords and spears. Well,
they're the only ones with power. Then instead of everyone
having power, they're the ones with the true power. It's
like that story I told you a little while ago
about these uber rich guys who are creating bunkers for themselves,
(30:41):
apocalypse bunkers, and they're hiring a bunch of merks, Navy
seals and these types to go work security for it.
You don't have a bunker. The Navy seal team you
hired has a bunker, and they're just gonna shoot you
in the face the second the apocalypse comes and throw
your body in a ditch. And now they have all
your supplies. That's how that works, that's how power actually works. Well,
the Petorian Guard looked around one day and they figured out,
(31:03):
wait a minute, we're the only ones with swords and
shields and spears. We can do whatever we want. The
Praetorian Guard wasn't some secret service style police force. They
were the sword of the Roman elite now, and you
had to buy them off. Agrippina's mother bought off the
head of the Petorian Guard. Now you're young, Nero, Sure
(31:26):
you're sixteen, you're inexperienced. Sure, there's a lot of people
who are angry about how you got to the throne,
Did mom kill Claudius? What's going on there? But really
the question is what you're gonna do about it? Because
you have the praetorian guard with you. So Nero has
the pretorian guard with him. He also has You don't
(31:47):
have to memorize this name. I don't want to give
you too many names. I don't like doing that. But
maybe you're a detail in there. The name would matter.
Seneca was his name. Who was Seneca? Uh? A philosopher
is the best way I could put it. But when
I say philosopher, I didn't want to put it that
way because that sounds so unimportant to us today. A
(32:08):
philosopher all who gives a crap? Can you name me
a single modern philosopher? That's just it doesn't It doesn't
drive home for you or for me how important that
was back then. Seneca was a really, really, really big
deal back then. A Uh Oprah, No Oprah. Obviously everyone
(32:30):
knows who Oprah is. I don't like Oprah, She's a
dirty comy whatever, but everyone knows who Oprah is. And
let's be honest. She may not matter to you or
matter to me personally, but when Oprah says jump, there
are a lot of people who say how high. Because
of the level of influence she has. Seneca's endorsement was
(32:52):
Oprah's endorsement. That's the best way I can describe it.
It was a big deal that Nero had Seneca and
Nero had the Praetorian Guard. What that essentially gave Nero
was control of power. He had the philosopher one that
people loved. He had the Praetorian Guard. Now Nero begins
to rule. How involved was Agrippina. Well, I'll put it
(33:14):
to you this way. Emperors had a habit of minting
their own coins with their own faces on it. That's awesome, Chris,
we need to do that for the show. But the
emperors had a habit of minting their own coins with
their own faces on them, and the Roman Republic was
quite old by this point in time. Up to this point,
no woman had ever been pictured on the same side
(33:38):
of the coin as a man, certainly not the emperor,
but ever, that had never happened in the history of Rome.
You can go look them up right now. Agrippina Nero coins.
They were the first ones they minted. Where she's sitting there,
Her face is just as large as he is, on
the same side of the new coins they minted. This
(34:01):
is a woman. She didn't just saunter into power and
then say, ah, I'm so proud of my boy. No,
she was knee deep involved, all right, so her end
is magnificent. I should note. I'll get to that in
a moment. Nero, what's he do right away? Well, he
(34:22):
has Seneca in his corner. Seneca was, by my reading,
you never know, it's two thousand years ago, a pretty
solid human being who had really solid ideas of what
needed to be done for Rome, what needed to be
done for the people, how an emperor should act. And
there are a lot of people who give him credit
(34:43):
for what I'm about to say next. But you want
to hear something, something you never heard about Nero before
the first five years of Nero's reign takes over at
sixteen might be the best five years of any five
year period in the history of the Roman emp He
was that incredible, insanely popular. He gets in there immediately
(35:06):
and he's doing things that He's cutting taxes. This is
a sixteen year old boy. He just took over as emperor.
He starts giving power back to the Senate. He starts
giving up his power, giving power back to the Senate.
He walks in, he ends capital punishment. Oh, here's this
(35:27):
one for Nero. Look, we all think he's the Antichrist, right,
here's this one for Nero slaves. You know what Roman
slavery was like or what it could be like. We
all talk about the salt mines and how to terrible
was and that was part of it for sure. But
you could also, as a slave in Rome, have a
life of a rich person. Essentially, you'd be a tutor
(35:49):
of a senator's son, probably live a life of luxury,
wonderful foods, you know. So we could run the gamut.
It could be the worst existence in the history of
the world, or doesn't even really count as what you are.
You're you're practically a stepbrother in the house, you know that.
So we could run the gamut. But Nero, freaking Nero,
you know, the guy who fiddled while Rome burned. Will
(36:10):
come back to that. Nero expanded slaves rights, had a
heart for slaves again. First five years went well, ah,
then it then it kind of went sideways. Hang on,
Host
Jesse Kelly
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