Nero's abominations are fit for Titus Andronicus

Nero was one of the stranger emperors of Rome in the 1st century. The way he ruled Rome was like his own playground, becoming drunk off power. Nero was a ruthless ruler and went to every extent to solidify his ruling. He killed his own mother, anybody who may have been a threat to being an heir to the throne, and rid himself of his own advisers who he had grew up with. All of these acts committed with underhanded tactics like murder, poisoning, and framing. Nero was the youngest emperor taking throne at 17 years old. I considered him for this post because it was unlikely that he would be out of ruling because he made it impossible unless he was taken out by death. He literally terrorized his own town.

Since Nero was such a young ruler when first appointed to the throne, he was inexperienced and naive, so he relied greatly on two of his advisers, Seneca, who was his old tutor, and a man named Burrus. Seneca tried to instill in Nero good values and wanted him to be a generous virtuous ruler. The reason why he sought the advice of these people is that his mother took his ruling as kind of a joint ruling, Nero wanted to stray far away from that. This sequentially lead to Senecas great influence in Nero's reign, for the time being. Rome was prosperous during the early years of Nero's reign, though Nero wanted to pursue artistic endeavors like dancing and singing, which were activities deemed unfit for an emperor. Nero followed through with these ambitions and started to train his vocal cords, and learn dance, basically leaving Rome in the hands of his advisers while he pursued his artsy dreams. By the time he reached his 20's Nero decided to take his reign into his own hands, while at the same time he was indulging in acts of drinking and really became an extremist when it came to exploring his own personal desires. Nero realized he could do anything he wanted to do and decided to push the boundaries of his power. Nero had banquet dinners for himself which lasted hours, he had brothels set up for his personal use with married woman who offer themselves to him and even created a sick game where he was released from a cage wearing animal skins, and attacked the private parts of both men and women. At night time, Nero would run the streets of Rome with posse of his "friends" and put on a wig just to look for trouble. He enjoyed attacking innocent men on their way home, beat and or stab them, then leave their bodies in  a sewer.

At a family dinner, Nero poisoned his step brother and he broke out in seizure and Nero claimed it to be an epileptic fit, and promptly burnt his step brothers body, all of this because his mother was trying to gain back influence in his life through his step brother. Nero became convinced that he would kill his own mother, he set up a boat for his mother that would inevitably break down in the middle of sea to kill his mother, but somehow she had survived the ordeal. Impatiently, Nero was getting sick of his mothers presence and blatantly sent his guards to end her life in the middle of the night, he told Rome that his mother was plotting his death and that it was just for the guards to murder her. The way Nero rid himself of his advisers was through framing them for unthinkable acts. He tried to frame Seneca for having relations with his mother Agrippa and embezzlement, and he also tried to frame Burrus for conspiring against him, thought these plans didn't work as accurate as planned, it got the message across to the advisers, and they basically played the background to Nero as opposed to being right by his side. Eventually, Burrus died, and Seneca was forced into retirement.

Nero Created his own set of games, which boosted his popularity in Rome, things like chariot racing, poetry, dancing, athletics and things of the sort. Nero was glorifying himself as some sort of artistic genius.



Once Nero was bored of his marriage with a woman named Octavia, he was involved in a secret affair with a woman named Poppaea. Once Poppaea was impregnated, Nero wanted to rid himself of his wife who he was currently involved with, but it wasn't that easy. He tried to slander Octavia's name and image, but it didn't seem to work seeing as she was a clean, virtuous woman. Nero ordered for her to be banished to a far away island and ultimately murdered. With her out of the way he had the green light to marry Poppaea, only 12 days later. Once Nero's love child was born, he expected that his child would be the heir to his throne, but the baby died within the year. This event led Nero to paranoia and he embarked on a mission to murder all of his potential successors in his family.

Nero Began a massacre of Christians after deciding that they would be his scapegoat out of the blame of th great Roman fire that damaged much of Rome. The blame was on Nero because he built his own palace and town in area where the wreck had occurred. He crucified, and draped Christians in animal skin before burning them to death. Nero was becoming more and more unfavorable, especially when he started to perform publicly, acting and singing. No one was aloud to leave the theater while he was performing, it was even said that women would give birth in the audience, people jumping over the walls out of boredom just to escape his performances. Once a rebellion seemed to have been in the making, Nero started to massacre his own soldiers and senators, and even forced them to commit suicide. Suspicion upon his wife caused Nero to kick her to death, even with a baby in her stomach. After a 17 year reign, Nero was fled Rome secretly because a rebellion had risen because of his role in trying to kill a respected general of the Roman army, ultimately, once Nero was considered a public enemy, he commanded his servant to stab and kill him.


Nero's life was fit for a play like Titus Andronicus because of the ongoing violence, obscenity, and abstract events that happened in his life. Nero also took a role as a "Big Brother" the way that no body would defy him, or even speak any wrong words about him because they would fear for their life. A trail of blood was left within all of these stories and it really shows what can be derived out of real life happenings, and how it applies to our lives today.