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- [00:00]
Tristan Hughes
Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes and if you would like the Ancients ad free, get early access and bonus episodes. Sign up to History Hit with the History Hit subscription. You can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabateans and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com subscribe.
- [00:26]
Ryan Seacrest
Now at Verizon we have some big news for your peace of mind for all our customers, existing and new. We're locking in low prices for three years guaranteed on my plan and my home. That's future. You peace of mind and everyone can save on a brand new phone on MyPlan. When you trade in any phone from one of our top brands, that's new phone peace of mind. Because at Verizon, whether you're already a customer or you're just joining us, we got you. Visit Verizon today. Price guarantee applies to then current base monthly rate. Additional terms and conditions apply for all offers.
- [00:56]
BetterHelp
BetterHelp Online Therapy bought this 30 second ad to remind you right now, wherever you are, to unclench your jaw, relax your shoulders, take a deep breath in and out. Feels better right? That's 15 seconds of self care. Imagine what you could do with more. Visit betterhelp.com randompodcast for 10% off your first month of therapy. No pressure, just help. But for now, just relax.
- [01:37]
Tristan Hughes
Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and Safeway.
- [01:40]
Ryan Seacrest
It's Oral Care Month which means you.
- [01:42]
Con Iggulden
Can earn four times points on all.
- [01:44]
Ryan Seacrest
Your favorite oral care brands now through July 15. Shop in store or online for items like Colgate Toothpaste, Listerine Mouthwash, Crest Mouthwash or Toothpaste Sensodyne Toothpaste, hello toothpaste or.
- [01:55]
Tristan Hughes
Gum flossers and earn four times points.
- [01:58]
Ryan Seacrest
Points can be redeemed for future discounts on gas or groceries. Offer ends July 15.
- [02:02]
Tristan Hughes
Restrictions apply.
- [02:03]
Ryan Seacrest
Offers may vary. Visit albertsons or safeway.com for more details.
- [02:10]
Tristan Hughes
Hey everyone, another ancient episode for you today on the rise of Nero. Nero of course one of the most infamous names from ancient history today. But exploring the rise. Really wanted to do this because it feels lesser talked about than the big events of Nero's reign such as the Great Fire of Rome or the persecution of Christian. So it will be interesting to hear in the comments whether you whether your thoughts about Nero have changed at all after listening to the story of his earlier years. Now our guest today, very excited about this one, is the acclaimed historical fiction author Con Iggulden. Now we were very excited to get Con on. I've been reading his books since I was very, very young. For instance, series on Genghis Khan. So it was a pleasure to meet him in person. We did this interview in person a couple of weeks back. He was delightful and as you're about to hear, he knows a lot about the Emperor Nero about early imperial Rome because his newest book is all about the rise and early reign of Nero. So without further ado, let's get into it. In 54 AD, a 16 year old Nero became the new ruler of Rome. The ailing Emperor Claudius, his stepfather, had died in suspicious circumstances, but the succession plan was clear. Rather than his own son, Britannicus, Claudius had decided that Nero, his adopted son, would be the next emperor. All thanks to the conviction of Nero's cunning mother, Agrippina the Younger. Having Agrippina by his side alongside high standing tutors like the famous philosopher Seneca, there was great hope for the teenage Nero. With family links stretching back to Augustus and Julius Caesar. Here was a young energetic emperor to rejuvenate the Julio Claudian dynasty after years of scandal and murder. But that's not what happened. Within 15 years of his accession, Nero was dead. The Julio Claudian dynasty ended, civil war erupted and Nero would forever be remembered as one of Rome's worst and most evil and emperors. From the Great Fire of Rome to his persecution of Christians, there are so many infamous episodes in Nero's story that have come down to us today. But what do we know about his earlier years? What was it like growing up as part of this dysfunctional imperial family where betrayal and murder was rife? And just how prominent a role did his mother play in his rise to the emperorship? This is a story of betrayals, of scandals and poisonings that have come to define the Julio Claudian dynasty. This is the rise of Nero. With today's guest, Con Iggulden Con, it is such a pleasure to have you on the podcast today.
- [05:28]
Con Iggulden
My pleasure.
- [05:29]
Tristan Hughes
At this period in Roman history, it feels almost like a soap opera. You've got the stories of poisonings, of backstabbings, of members of the imperial family falling left, right and center. It's another of those kind of Game of Thrones esque moments in ancient history, full of these incredible stories.
- [05:44]
Con Iggulden
It is, I mean, I think in some ways it's the origin of an awful lot of the family dispute quarrel fiction that has, you know, taken so many fantasy authors and historians, you know, to transports of delight in the 2000 years since. This is the original, this is the.
- [06:00]
Tristan Hughes
Mother lode and what makes the Julio Claudian dynasty of all Roman dynasties, what makes them so uniquely dysfunctional at this time?
- [06:09]
Con Iggulden
I mean, I don't think they were uniquely dysfunctional, it's just that because they influenced us in so many ways. I mean, right up to the Americans still having a Senate, for example. So we don't really take into account other dynasties that had similar levels of dysfunction. For example, the Egyptians with Cleopatra and married to her own brother and so on. Or you know, the Persian Achaemenid, you know, where one brother hired Spartans to come and fight for him against his other, you know, his brother who was going to be king and tried to kill him with a single blow on a single morning and failed. I mean, that kind of thing doesn't influence as many modern societies. So we don't sort of see it as our origin tales. And there is an element of that. And it's partly because, of course, unlike Genghis and to some extent unlike including Nero, the Romans wrote their own history. And so you can read the letters of Seneca, you can read the histories of the time and very, you know, personalized personal records. And that makes them real in a way that some other cultures are not as real to. They're as real, but they're not as personally important to us.
- [07:15]
Tristan Hughes
I did sort of regret saying uniquely dysfunctional as soon as you mentioned that, but I guess as I said, it's the. Is it the level, the detail, the depth of our surviving sources for this particular period and the richness in the stories that they have that makes this episode stand out a bit more compared to others?
- [07:31]
Con Iggulden
Well, I mean, first of all, the big first engine of it is Julius Caesar, because, you know, we know there's a Roman society for centuries before, but for some reason we're not as interested in that. And then you get Julius Caesar, Julius Caesar turning a republic into effectively a one man state and he becomes dictator for life and has the right to wear red shoes, which the last pope wouldn't do, by the way, even though he was Pontifex Maximus. And the new Pope is apparently going to wear the red shoes. I don't know, I love that because it's 2,000 years old. But that's the first big change when one man of extraordinary charisma and ability and let's face it, battle talent, because he never lost a battle, he turned a functioning society into something else. And the next few generations are echoes of him to a degree in the sense that they didn't do, they didn't achieve as great a change by Any means. But then they also have this extraordinary thing which we. We don't exactly admire, but we can be awed by the level of wealth that is accumulated by one man if he's sitting at the very top. When you hear of someone like Nero getting a statue 110 to 120ft high of Apollo, but it had Nero's face with gold rays and, you know, set in a garden where rose mist sprayed at you as you walk down the alleys. I mean, this sort of thing is awe inspiring and it might be appalling and irritating when you think of poverty at the same time and all the rest of it, but my goodness, it does make a good story.
- [08:56]
Tristan Hughes
Absolutely. And with the surviving sources that you have, I mean, what types of sources survive from the period of Nero and just before him that allow writers like yourself to go into such depth, so much colorful detail with the story of Nero?
- [09:10]
Con Iggulden
I mean, the first tragedy is what's missing, first of all, because there are entire key works missing. Nero's mother, Agrippina, wrote an autobiography that hasn't survived, it hasn't reached us. The end of Tacitus, Nero's death, that's missing as well. So when you're reading a historian like Tacitus, and he's very good, he's exactly the one I wanted. He was alive during Nero's life. His uncle, I think Agricola, was in Britain at the time.
- [09:35]
Tristan Hughes
Of Britain. Yep, yep.
- [09:36]
Con Iggulden
So he was a good source for the Boudicca, or Boadicea, however you want to pronounce it. And so you've got this one of almost first person accounts of some of the key issues. And then you've got a gap because the end of Nero's life is just missing. So suddenly I'm forced to go to Suetonius, who is a late. Well, I mean, he's most famous for being sort of the Sunday Sport version of history and loving every scurrilous nine in a bedroom sort of sexualized story. He loved all of that, and he loved that much more than the details. So he hardly mentions Boudicca, for example, but he will mention the fact that Tiberius scrubbed a man's face with a lobster. I mean, this is the kind of detail that he loved. So it was very irritating to have to go to Suetonius for that because his end of Nero had Nero running through, you know, nightfall, running through Rome, knocking on doors, trying to get anyone to help him in a Macbeth sense, having been abandoned by all of his friends and colleagues and no one answered the Knock. And you know with near certainty that that is a fictional made up scene, but it's a cracking sort of bit of drama. I just wish there were a couple of alternatives. And I like alternatives because then I can pick the best one.
- [10:42]
Tristan Hughes
Because you have a very interesting approach to this as a historical fiction writer, as you said, understanding the sources that have survived from this time, deciding what to trust, what information to embellish, what information to reinterpret as well. I guess all those things must go through your mind when looking at the likes of Tacitus and Suetonius, Seneca. You mentioned earlier surviving inscriptions and creating a story from it.
- [11:03]
Con Iggulden
Yeah, I mean there are. Bias is absolutely a key part of interpreting the sources. You get somebody, for example. Well, after the death of Nero, you got four people taking over the famous sort of year of four emperors that lasted about three years. And the first one is Galba, who had no right whatsoever to take over the power of Rome. He was about 70 odd or 78, I forget. And he was already dying and he was a placeholder, but he had legions, so he was someone that. He had physical force behind him. And then after him, Otho, Nero's childhood friend, who had again no right to sit the throne of Rome at all, but he had some support. And of course those two. When it came to writing Nero's story, when it came to revising the histories or seeing how what his legacy was going to be, I wouldn't trust Otho in charge of those records. Otho's wife was once seduced and then married by Nero, for example. So would you trust a man you cuckolded, you know, with the personal record of your life? I don't think you would. And that's the. You do get a sort of a split there because after Nero's death there were three fake Nero's who turned up claiming to be him and they were welcomed by crowds in Rome because he was a popular leader with the crowds. But the story was already diverging. And the further you get away, when you get to Josephus or Josephus, he was made a slave by Rome and then he was freed by Vespasian, who was the last in the year of the four emperors. So you're already into the narrative that has been established then he's a regime historian to some extent, as is Cassius Dio. And you get. The story has been set up that we all know how bad Tiberius was and he does appear to have been an absolute monster. And then of course you get Caligula, who was so Horrific that four years went by before they sort of his own people stabbed him to death with no plan. Which goes to show that it was an extraordinary act of sudden violence rather than something they planned for. And then you get Nero slotting into that sort of route fairly easily. And I think. I do believe that it's not completely an unfair portrayal. I think that would be wrong to say that. But I am more aware of him as a tragic figure because he was 16 when he became emperor, because his mother pushed him into being emperor at 16, and because his uncle was Caligula. His other uncles were. Two of them were murdered. His mother was married at 13 to a man of 30 and a brutal marriage. His grandmother was exiled, blinded, died in exile. His grandfather was murdered. Germanicus. I mean, he was surrounded. I mean, in terms of psychological damage. And I try not to get too wrapped up in this kind of thing because it's a different society with different rules and different ideas of damage, actually. But in terms of psychological damage, Nero had almost no chance at all at a normal life. And I think that's an important part of the story, and that should be the way I try and tell the story, because it's the only way to understand what happened to him.
- [13:58]
Tristan Hughes
And it's similar with Caligula before him as well, has also that very traumatic childhood.
- [14:02]
Con Iggulden
So Caligula, dear God. I mean, he obviously, he spent time. I've stood on Capri in the ruins of Tiberius's palaces, and I've looked down to where he threw people off and all the rest of it. And, you know, and some of the horrors that I won't repeat on radio because, honestly, they are unrepeatable. Horror. I think Tom Holland said in his recent translation, that was the worst sentence he'd ever sort of read in. You know, go and find it if you want to, but it's. Yeah, he was a sort of, let's say, a Jimmy Savile of ancient Rome with ultimate power. And he had in his power from the age of, I think about 18 to 24, something like that. This young man, Gaius Caesar, who was known as Caligula because he dressed in a set of armor, little boot. But his damage was profound, of course. It was what he saw, what he took part in, what happened to him. It's horrific. And the extraordinary thing about Caligula, also about Nero, and it applies, is that both of them tried very hard to walk the straight and narrow. Caligula was doing reasonably well. He got married, his wife got pregnant. He was showing no real sign of the dangerous psychopath he was about to become, until his wife died in childbirth and he lost the child and he lost his wife. And then one of his early stories is that he called her father in Solanus, the senator, and said, I want you to take a message to her, and cut the old man's throat so that he whispered the message and killed him, so that he would take the message across the veil to his daughter. And that's the Caligula we all know and fear. And the man who held Rome in abject terror for the next give or take, about three years before they went, his own praetorians, stabbed him to death. So these are appalling stories, but it's interesting that there is a story arc. They're not just men who started bad, stayed bad and died bad. That, to be honest, as a writer, would not be that interesting to me. There is always an interesting arc when someone tries very hard, like Macbeth. Again, he's not just a monster, he's a man who tries to do something and then get away with it. And his guilt destroys them both. That is true for Caligula and Nero as well as Macbeth.
- [16:06]
Tristan Hughes
And I feel this is the right topic to really explore that, covering the early story of Nero, where that becomes more clear to see even in the surviving sources, who are his mum and dad? Do we know much about their characters?
- [16:18]
Con Iggulden
We know fair bit. Some things are absent and missing, as I said, but I mean, you know, it depends which one I was going to start with. His mother, Agrippina. I mean, she had a fairly happy childhood. Her father was the General Germanicus. Her mother was also called Agrippina. And she and her, let's get it right, three brothers, two sisters and herself. So there's six of them. They had a sort of idyllic Roman childhood. Her mother was a descendant of Augustus sister, if I've got that right. So there was a bloodline, so. And Germanicus, I think, was adopted by Tiberius. There was a chance that they were the imperial family. In fact, they were too obviously the imperial family, because someone decided to take them out of the running. And so the violence began with the death of the father. And we know Germanicus was murdered not because it was obvious in any way, but because his wife, the Agrippina the Elder, believed he was murdered and unfortunately accused people of being involved in it and picked Tiberius as one of the people to name. And that was a really awful error. It would be the equivalent of naming Henry VIII publicly and expecting to get away with it. Of course, she was picked up. And the story is that she was beaten so badly, she was blinded in one eye and then exiled to an island, and she never came back. It's one of the first things that when her son Caligula became emperor, one of the first things he did was go with his sister Agrippina to that island and bring the ashes back, because this kind of thing mattered. But having lost. Having lost first Germanicus and then Agrippina the elder, the children were vulnerable, and they were still in the bloodline that could put one of them on the throne. So they were the most vulnerable children in creation. And two of them died in fairly horrific ways. The older brothers, you know, they were the most vulnerable. The daughters, less so. I mean, all three daughters survived, but the oldest two sons, one of them, I think was starved to death. And we know he was starved to death because although it was claimed as a natural death, when they opened his stomach, it had straw inside it, but he'd been trying to eat his mattress. So we know it wasn't a deliberate. You know, Romans have a funny attitude to suicide, as you, I'm sure, you know, it was much more acceptable. It's impossible to oppress a man. If you tell him to do something and he doesn't want to, he can step out and it's considered a completely honorable thing to do. And therefore it's extremely common. But the forced suicide, where you are effectively given the knife and or even have it held for you, is also a key part of politics at the time. And I try not to judge that kind of thing, by the way, because, I mean, I have pretty strong views on suicide and whether it's, you know, ever acceptable or not. And for me, it isn't. But I understand completely that I can't judge their society by my views. And I don't, you know, Seneca was forced to commit suicide. You know, Socrates and so on, you have. This is a common part of the stories of. It's amazing how many lives it ends. And for me, it's not my place to judge.
- [19:10]
Tristan Hughes
And in regards. So that's Agrippina the younger. So the mother of Nero, who has all of this heritage, this link to Augustus, and then I guess through that to Julius Caesar. So the real pedigree on that side of the family, Nero's father, Lucius Ahenobarbus, is he slightly different?
- [19:26]
Con Iggulden
I mean, it's funny in terms of the bloodline, he's descended from both. Mark Antony.
- [19:32]
Tristan Hughes
Oh, okay.
- [19:32]
Con Iggulden
And also another. I think he had the same name. Ahenobarbus means Bronze beard. So the chances are one of their relatives had a big, bushy red beard. Nero is still sometimes shown with red hair. And it is a possibility, you know, that the way these nicknames, I mean Plato, after all, means broad shouldered. It wasn't his name. We don't know what his name actually was. There are lots of little moments like that in Roman history where someone's given a name that has to do with their physical characteristics. But the Ahenobarbus that was his ancestor was the admiral for Mark Anthony during the wars with Octavian and Cleopatra and so on. So, you know, he came from sort of fairly good stock. He was, you know, of a fairly decent family. I don't think they had a lot of money. You know, to some extent he was marrying up when he married Agrippina. But it is worth pointing out that it was an unhappy marriage. He was. Ahenobarbus was 30 when he married Agrippina at 13. Wow. And I assume she was premenstrual because they didn't have children as presumably everyone hoped for. And I think Nero was certainly the only one born, but I think that happened about seven years into the marriage. So, you know, theirs was not a happy union and he died fairly early on. We don't know how. It's one of the. When I talk about historical fiction as crime fiction, there's an awful lot of deaths that you don't know exactly how. And it's partly because if it's an emperor, you never say, oh, I was in the room, I was involved in strangling Tiberius or something like that. You know, no one is stupid enough to ever put their name to that. But there's an awful lot of. It's also pre. Mostly pre post mortem sometimes, you know, a little rudimentary one goes on, but we don't know why someone died. And also in those days, people just died sometimes. So it's very difficult to know whether it was a wound that went septic or sudden septic shock or some disease that they couldn't handle, some viral load, goodness knows what. So Nero's father, Hina Barbara's, died when Nero was, I think about three. Wow, okay. Very early and very early. And it is one of those interesting things just again, to get onto modern psychological take. And I shouldn't, I should avoid it. But it's hard to. It's hard to ignore these patterns that when I look at, let's say, ruthless high achievers, usually they've lost their father at a key age. Usually, by the way, it's between 11 and 15, it's not as young as three. Young as three can leave you. You know, they have no concept of what a father is, whereas 11 to 15, they have a concept. And they can never again feel the pat on the shoulder that says well done, son. And they can never therefore feel approved of. And that means they often overachieve. It's a surprisingly common pattern throughout history. Now, whether this affected Nero or not, I don't know. He had a second father who also died. Was Agrippina involved in his death or not? It's very hard to say. Claudius was his third father. And Claudius died suddenly when it looked as if he was about to disinherit Nero as heir. So I would say that one is as near certain as humanly possible. And after all, Agrippina didn't muck about on the night Claudius died. Nero, as emperor the following morning, announced. The motive is so clear there that I'm pretty. I'm comfortable saying that she definitely did away with Claudius, but whether she did away with the others, I don't know. In terms of being a black widow, however, whose husbands kept dying, yes. But she was the sister of Caligula, for goodness sake, from that awful damaged family, how could she not be completely ruthless and a Roman operator at the highest level with no moral qualms whatsoever?
- [22:54]
Tristan Hughes
We've got a few years to cover before we get to the end of Claudius and the accession of Nero, but still very good taste of what's to come. You mentioned there how it was several years into the marriage of Ahenobarbus and Agrippina the Younger, before Nero is born. I mean, can you let us know a bit about when Nero is born and the political context, the world into which he is born into? I mean, what date are we talking about?
- [23:16]
Con Iggulden
When are we talking about AD 37, when he was born. By the way, I'm comfortable that we use AD&BC good, because the BCE CE business drives me up the wall.
- [23:27]
Tristan Hughes
I don't mind people using on the podcast, but I prefer I usually say.
- [23:30]
Con Iggulden
AD let's just get your own origin point. You know, it's unbelievable because I'm enough of a lover of history to know that the French Revolution had their own dating system. The Chinese obviously do today, the Russians did. Just pick your own origin point. You can't have the same origin point where BCE turns to CE and then just claim it's especially common era. I mean, dear God, that's so Orwellian. You know, just in language use, that offends me enormously. But yes. Okay, should we go back? Sorry, yes. Back to the 37 AD. Yeah. AD 37. And he's. Let me see now, he's. He's emperor at 16, which is what, 54. Yeah, because he was born very late in the year. So AD 37. Tiberius is still on the throne, but not an active participant. These are the years when he has gone to Capri. He's lost in his own perverse pleasures, perverse orgies, God knows what you would call that, the sickness at the end of his life. And he's left a friend, a man called Sejanus, in control in Rome. And it's funny, as an example of power corrupting, Sejanus obviously starts to assume airs and graces that Tiberius certainly didn't intend. So he has statues made to himself and he. As coins. Coins are an interesting record of the period, the way people's faces appear on them. Agrippina appears in the background of some, and then facing Nero on one of the coins. And it's a sort of rise in power and. And Sejanus really made himself too obvious in his new exciting authority. And eventually Tiberius heard about it and came back and he. Because he was still emperor, he was a vicious old spider at that point, but nonetheless he was still capable of giving the order. He had Sejana strangled and thrown down the Gamonian steps, if I remember rightly, where it was a fairly common sort of public, you know, the body would bounce down the steps and then the crowd would fall on them and, you know, beat them and tear them to pieces. And it was a pretty public way of disposing of an enemy and making it perfectly clear this one would not be coming back or have anyone claim to be them. This one was definitely dead. You know, then you get the problem of what to do with Tiberius's succession. But he didn't live very long after that. And we don't know exactly what happened to Tiberius. You know, he was. The rumor was. And these have to be rumors because no one is going to admit being in the same room as an emperor who went to sleep alive and doesn't wake up. So we think he was smothered in his bed. And we think the head of the Praetorians, I think it was called Macro.
- [26:01]
Tristan Hughes
Macro, yes.
- [26:02]
Con Iggulden
Was involved. And we think Caligula was either present or for all we know, he was jumping up and down on him. It's not the kind of thing that you would be. That he ever admitted to, but another violent event in his past, that would be something to Resurface and come back as trauma. Yeah, very possibly. Certainly he was the obvious one who benefits. And whenever you get one obvious person who benefits, then you say, well, you know, there's your motive. So Caligula becomes emperor, I think aged about 24. Odd. And as I say, started off, you know, very well, but that's the world into which Nero is born. Agrippina at this point is still married to Ahenobarbus. Yeah, first marriage.
- [26:39]
Tristan Hughes
And so infant Nero, I know Caligula doesn't last very long, but infant Nero, then his uncle, his uncle is on the throne, his uncle is Caligula. So he's close to the royal family when he's an infant. But things you mentioned already. Ahenobarbus dies when Nero is only three years old. And Agrippina as well, she doesn't fare so well.
- [26:57]
Con Iggulden
No, she doesn't. Well, she was banished and sent away by Tiberius. And then when Claudius, obviously her brother becomes emperor, he brings her back from banishment. And her mother was banished and sent away to an island and never came home. So the idea of her being banished, that would have been an incredibly dark period for her. She would not have expected to come home. And then the impossible happens.
- [27:25]
Ryan Seacrest
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- [27:55]
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- [29:59]
Tristan Hughes
So, Ahenobarbus, he dies when Nero's just 3 years old. And for Agrippina the younger as well, I mean, with Caligula, it's not all good news for her either.
- [30:07]
Con Iggulden
No, I mean, the point about this, at that point, Nero, her son, who was still then called Lucius, he hadn't had his sort of imperial name added. He was the only official blood heir of the Julian lion, and therefore Caligula, when he had his tragedy, when he gets married and has a child, I don't know if it was a son because it died in childbirth. I'm not sure whether that's recorded. But when he lost his child and he suffered through this appalling, bloody moment of savagery, then he was very uncomfortable with his sister having the only male blood heir of the line. And that's where he ends up banishing her to an island, which was a horrific thing to do because their mother had been banished and had never come back. So for Agrippina, it must have been the end of the world. She was separated from her son. He went to live with an aunt, I think it was called Domitia, and an aunt who lived in near poverty because she'd had the first thing Caligula did. He took the estates and money away, partly because he was a profligate spender, but partly as a punishment. So he sent his sister away to an island and he sent the little boy, who can only have been, let's say, three, three or four, to live with an aunt and a barber and a male ballet dancer. I mean, she had lodgers. This was, you know, Nero's years of poverty. And that should have been the end for Agrippina. That should have Been the end of the line. I suppose, in theory, Caligula could have married, you know, or had endless children at that point, and he would have established his line and like his own mother, Agrippina would have been a forgotten figure in history. But the extraordinary thing happened that only four years into Caligula's reign, his Praetorians panicked, murdered him on the spot on the Palatine Hill, and with no plan whatsoever. And then they had to look around for anyone, and they found Claudius, his uncle, the character who had survived Caligula's court by allowing himself to be a figure of mockery. He was a sort of baldric of the court, if you like, and in theory, a pathetic figure, but actually much brighter than he appeared. But he deliberately appeared unthreatening. And so they made him emperor. And one of the first things he did was forgive the Praetorians. Very sensible man. He gave them an amnesty. After all, they had murdered an emperor, they could do it again. So that was pretty sensible. And then one of the next things he did was to bring Agrippina, his niece, back from exile and she was restored to the bosom of her child. And you can only imagine how relieved she must have been.
- [32:33]
Tristan Hughes
Absolutely. And it's so interesting, that period with the killing of Caligula and then Claudius rising to the fore, and Agrippina, she's back from being exiled, and then how long is it before she then takes another step to then actually marry the Emperor Claudius?
- [32:46]
Con Iggulden
Well, I mean, she's around Claudius for some time. He's already married at this point, I think, to Messalina. Yes. And it. Who knows, it might not have come to anything, but there was this extraordinary moment where, again, Nero is still the only surviving blood heir of the line, and therefore he's both uniquely dangerous to those who would consider they want their own children to be, and also uniquely vulnerable, because he's still a very young child. And you get this extraordinary story of assassins sent to his home to kill him in his bed. And does this ring true? It obviously it reminds you of Hercules a little bit, the strangling snakes in the crib, because. And there is. That snake is on the COVID of Tyrant. The story goes that the assassins saw a snake on his bed, a large reptile, and they were so afraid that they didn't dare to approach, and they retreated, or were caught retreating, because obviously their presence was noticed. So the alarm went up and then they found, I think it was a snake's skin in the end, where a snake had shed its skin on the child's bed. So that skin was then incorporated into a resin bracelet which Nero wore for most of the rest of his life as a symbol of his extraordinary survival. But Agrippina appeared to believe that that was the assassins had been sent by Messalina, Claudius wife. And that was why from that moment on, I mean, Messalina had her card marked and, you know, their struggle for power involved Agrippina winning and Messalina dying. And that was, you know, part of her story. Because I think from the very beginning, Agrippina, after all, why wouldn't she look at the possibility of power? She wasn't too worried about a sexual relationship with her uncle. She hadn't grown up with him and I think was capable of manipulating any man, regardless of what the social worries at the time would have been. But it was pretty acceptable, as, you know, brother and sister know that would be the limit, as brother and sister was acceptable in Egypt, but not in ancient Rome. But back to Nero, he survived the snake and kept the skin on its wrist for the rest of his life. And Agrippina slowly got closer to Claudius and her ability to manipulate Claudius is one of the most extraordinary parts of this story. And it's. I say, when I started out writing, I said to my mother, I want to be a writer. And she said, you can't be a writer. She said, you don't know enough about people. And at the time I said, oh, rubbish, I'll write about dragons. But actually, she was obviously right. If it's something like Genghis Khan's wife is kidnapped and he goes after them and he murders the people who kidnap, you need to believe that that is actually possible. Historical fiction is hugely useful in this way because the things we know really happened, provide their own motive. You can say, well, that did happen, therefore it could happen. And it gives me. It's a sort of virtuous circle in that sense. When you get someone like Agrippina working with Claudius and he does things that are beyond belief, he allows her to adopt the title of Empress, for example, which is impressive, but not as impressive as allowing her to call herself Augusta, which is a phenomenally high level, high status title that's following in the footsteps.
- [35:45]
Tristan Hughes
Of people like Livia, you know, decades before.
- [35:47]
Con Iggulden
Exactly. And it establishes her as a major force in the empire. He allowed her to set up an awning in the Senate House on one of the side doors so that there was cloth. And that meant that she could be in there listening to any debate, but it also meant that they didn't know when she was in there and when she wasn't. So it meant she could overhear everything that went on in the most private sanctum of government in the whole empire. And that gave her an extraordinary power. Then you get this moment that is beyond belief. He had a son, Britannicus, named for the conquest of Britain, and he accepts reasoning by Agrippina that Lucius, her son, should be the official heir. And the moment he does that, poor Britannicus, his days are numbered. This was a man, remember, who was quivering behind a curtain while he heard Caligula being murdered. So why did he, a man who had grown up with all the same violence and understanding and witnessing it that Agrippina had, but he seemed completely oblivious to the danger he had just put himself in and his son Britannicus in, and that if it wasn't true, it would completely defy belief.
- [36:56]
Tristan Hughes
Do you think from the beginning, it's one of those kind of big questions that Agrippina, when she is getting closer to the Emperor Claudius, you know, she's won against Messalina. And Messalina's story is one for its own podcast episode in its own right. Do you think she has this idea from the start to secure her own position is to, as will ultimately happen, to move her son Lucius, who will be Nero, to become the heir of Claudius. Do you think she has that ambition from the off?
- [37:26]
Con Iggulden
My answer is yes. And I think that because of the fact that we know what we know about her, history shows that if you ever needed someone to learn the lessons of how power works, this is a woman who learned those lessons, and she understood that, first of all, it's a lot easier to push down than it is to push up. It is easier to be in a position of power. It is less stressful. It is more enjoyable. Life is, you know, is better if you are the one on top. But also you are the one who can choose to exile her mother or exile herself. You are the one who can choose to bring you back. And that is her understanding of that is, I think, perfect. And therefore it is her only possible solution is to get as much power as possible. And that means, yes, you know, they needed a male leader. That is sort of understood in those old, terribly sexist days of ancient Rome. She understood that, but she clearly intended to rule through her son with all of the titles that she had and the way she appears on coins, where she slowly becomes more and more prominent on those coins and the various titles and so on the household that she. That she runs, the way she Interferes with lawmaking, the way she manipulates Claudius. This is a woman who wanted power. Nero was a poor and he was 16 years old. It is worth. Any mother of a 16 year old boy will know that you are at that crux period where he's both a little sweetie on any given day and then he can be an absolute monster on the same afternoon and reduce you to tears. And my goodness, can you imagine if you gave that boy ultimate power over life and death, how badly that was going to go for Agrippina? I mean, when I was 16, from the age of 16 to 30, which is his reign, there were the normal checks and balances. Getting turned down by a girl is an obvious one. Getting turned down by a job. I had one of the worst job interviews I've ever had and at the end of it he said, that was one of the worst job interviews I have ever witnessed. Would you like me to tell you what you did wrong? And I said, well, yes, please. And then he was kind enough to do that and I got the next job interview. These are the experiences of a normal life. The checks and balances, the smack around the face, being punched in the face. I mean, you know, this sort of thing that all happened between 16 and 30. I won't mention his name.
- [39:34]
Tristan Hughes
Life lessons.
- [39:35]
Con Iggulden
Yeah, exactly. But Nero had none of these because at the end of the day he was both more protected than any 16 year old has any right to be with soldiers willing to step in and say, no, you won't be doing that. Also for the people who might have threatened him, but also he had access to wealth, power and an entire empire willing to do his bidding. And that is corrupting. Of course it is. It should be no surprise to us at all. But that it doesn't mean. Again, I go back to my defense of him. I think that that is seeing a very young man who could have walked a better path. Being corrupted is a tragedy rather than another monster like Tiberius.
- [40:16]
Tristan Hughes
So Colin, if we go a few years before Nero becomes the new emperor, let's say when he's around 13 years old, so 50 AD, which would be. That's the setting of, of this new book, or the beginning of it, at that time, Nero is a young teenager. Yes. Okay. He's had this very difficult, albeit kind of protected, upbringing, I guess you could say, right at the center of the imperial family. But do we know much about the education? If Agrippina has these big plans for Nero, does she also ensure that Nero receives the best possible education because of that?
- [40:48]
Con Iggulden
She went to great lengths to give him the correct sort of education. I mean, the funny thing is it did get away from her a bit because he ended up as, I think, what's the word? A philo helene.
- [40:59]
Tristan Hughes
Phil helene.
- [40:59]
Con Iggulden
Yeah, phil helene. A lover of Greek culture, for example, the plays and the poetry and so on. Much more than really they were completely comfortable with. You know, the Romans had an idea of the Greeks as slightly effete. They were very impressed by them. They certainly pinched all of their gods and architecture and an awful lot of their plays were performed in Rome. But on the whole, they saw themselves as a sort of more stoic, manlier version of the ancient world. And the Greeks poncing about, they didn't manage to keep that under control with Nero because he ended up an extraordinary lover of Greece. And that will no doubt be down to his tutors. There were a couple of Greeks chosen. Seneca was the main sort of architect of his education. He was the one put in charge and then he picked others. There was a librarian from Alexandria, I seem to remember, who was. And then to some extent, we know not so much the details of what was taught, but from his later life we know what he loved. And therefore that has to those. This is where the interests started. And he was given Seneca for the sort of classical education part, and Burrus, who was the head of the Praetorian Guard at the time, for moral education, physical education, you know, getting the kid fit. And the two of them together ran a sort of school for Nero and one or two of his close friends. Otho was there. I can't remember. The other one is. Oh, there was a third one who. Seneca used to write letters worrying about him. So this is, you know, we know a fair bit about what went on and the sort of things that were taught. And it's partly because we know they were taught rhetoric, for example, because every young Roman of a certain social class was taught how to speak in public because it was considered absolutely vital to be able to make an argument and to know their classics, to know their Horace and all the rest of it and their Homer, Greek and Latin ethics. Yeah, yes, well, exactly. I mean, this is part of the education. As I say, they went a bit far with Nero because he ended up loving acting probably more than anything else. I mean, well, actually to the exclusion of proper ruling. I mean, he was, at the end of the day, a bad ruler. Not because he was particularly monstrous, but because he was never interested. He never even wanted to be in Rome. I mean, he spent more years out of Rome, in Greece, than just about anybody. And he would take. I mean, he won literally thousands of prizes in Greece for competitions, for poetry, music. He was very good, as far as we can tell, a lyre player. I mean, other lyre players laid their lyres at his feet, including his own tutor. His lyre tutor, I think was called Terpnus. And they did that to show that he was the master. And they were no fools. You know, this was the most powerful young man of the age. They were flattering him beyond belief, but that's what he loved to do. And he went as far as employing large numbers of people to come and be his supporters in the theater. And they developed different types of clapping. I mean, famously they tried the hollow handed clap, which I won't demonstrate as I'm right next to a microphone, and then the flat handed clap, a different sound. And also the third one was a buzzing of bees. It is always interesting to me when you hear audiences clapping that if the buzzing of bees had taken off, we might be doing that to this day. But, you know, the, the clapping was what. And then, you know, he, because he was a. He was already a spoiled young man, he would look out for anyone not clapping with sufficient enthusiasm or anyone falling asleep. Vespasian, the later emperor, was one of those who, I think he drifted off or he yawned or he did something along those lines in a public performance and got really. Got strips torn off him. I think he was sent to Judea as a punishment. You know, that's what. The reason he was out there dealing with revolution out there is because he'd fallen asleep during one of Nero's recitals. But I mean, the results for the Greeks, it was fantastic. Nero started the canal between the Isthmus. Oh, that's a horrible word.
- [44:45]
Tristan Hughes
Yes, Corinth area.
- [44:46]
Con Iggulden
Yes, yes, that bit, you know, between mainland Greece and the Peloponnese. And he, I mean, a lot of people have started it before and failed. And he did it with the golden shovel, and it also failed because a philosopher at the time said he will never pass through it. And he was very annoyed by this, but in fact he didn't. He did die before it. So yet again it exists today, the Corinth Canal or whatever it's called. But he was not the one to do it. But the result of all of his Greek adventures. And he was there for years and attended the Olympics and race chariots and everything else. And yes, he fell off the chariot and had to finish the race on foot, but I believe that counted. They still Gave him the prize and he rewarded them with obscene amounts of money. And the result was eventually, just before he left, he said that he would excuse them from all future tax payments to Rome. They all of Greece. And he said, other men have freed cities, I have freed a nation. And that is. And it didn't last, unfortunately, because he was, I think he died a few years after that. It was about 60 or 63, 64, something like that. Ad and he died about 66. Yeah. So it was great for them. For a short while. He excused all of Greece from paying taxes. So he had some good, good motives.
- [45:57]
Tristan Hughes
You can imagine what Seneca would have been thinking at that time in his grave or. I don't know if he dies just after that or just before.
- [46:02]
Con Iggulden
I think it was before, just before.
- [46:04]
Tristan Hughes
I mean, forgive my complete ignorance around this. So Seneca, I know he's a philosopher and you mentioned his letters there. Do we know much else about his character and what he would have relayed to the young Nero?
- [46:13]
Con Iggulden
We know, we know because his letters exist. And again, these are extraordinarily intimate documents because Seneca was discussing various topics of the day and as I say, he worried about one of Nero's friends and whether he was growing up properly. And we know he was asthmatic. So as I'm asthmatic myself, I found him a, a character I cared about, I suppose. But he would, for example, discuss slavery, which I found interesting enough in fact did inspire me to write a second book on. It's set roughly in the same period, but it deals with a freed slave. Because Seneca's point was that if you can be freed from slavery, you can buy yourself out. If you can be put back into slavery for debt or a particular crime, then they are not a subclass, they are us. And therefore they should be treated with a certain respect for 2,000 years ago. That's an extraordinarily advanced comment on the social class of slaves in Rome. And I found him, yeah, as a result, an absolutely sort of fascinating man, way a polymath, way ahead of his time. He also had an affair with, I think, one of Agrippina's sisters. And that's why he was ganish for a short time. You know, I'm not saying he wasn't red blooded and all the rest of it, but he was an extraordinary, yeah, an extraordinary mind to be put in charge of someone like Nero. And I guess over time you have to say, well, he failed though, didn't he? Because you know, Nero didn't turn out to be the great hope of the New century and all the rest of it. But he did his very best. And as I say, I think power corrupts to a degree that not even a man like Seneca could stop.
- [47:40]
Tristan Hughes
But it brings us back to the point you were mentioning earlier, like with Caligula, the early stories of Caligula were actually, there's the good side of it more or the more kind of the looking, the trying to find the silver lining it always feels with Seneca and being one of the tutors and one of the biggest name tutors of Nero into the early years of Nero's reign. His name is almost something that becomes associated with Nero by people trying to say, well, actually there were these, you know, these early signs of potential promise on this figure before it all goes to pot.
- [48:09]
Con Iggulden
Absolutely. I mean, that is what makes it a tragedy. As I say, if they'd started, if Nero and Caligula had started bad and ended up bad, there'd be no story for me to tell. It would be uninteresting, not a topic I would have picked to tell. And for years I avoided Caligula, actually, in any sort of sense, because I thought it would be that. And that's what I think we all understand. Who's the greatest monster of ancient Rome? Oh, that's easy. That's Caligula. Therefore, there's no real story to tell because human beings need. It's a story arc and whether it ends in redemption or tragedy, you need change over time to be picked as an interesting story to tell. Luckily, and I've said this many times in public speeches, that for me, history is a collection of the stories that survive. And they are often the stories that teach us something, that have change inherent within them. And it's how human beings pass on our values, it's how we like to do it. So for me, the stories of Caligula and Nero are interesting because they had that potential and it was splendid keeping on his tutors.
- [49:04]
Tristan Hughes
If we go over to Burrus quickly, one of the heads of the Praetorian Guard, of course, seems to also have an influence on the teenage Nero before he becomes emperor. I mean, how do you portray Nero's relationship with Burroughs in the book? What did you think about Burris from the sources that survive and how he plays into this story?
- [49:23]
Con Iggulden
I mean, to some extent, and I'm not being funny now, you know, this is going to sound sort of silly or trivial, but whenever you portray a relationship of any kind in a book, it is of course influenced by my understanding of the world. So if I've Ever had male mentors, which I have, my father would be an obvious one. Then I know what was important to me and I know, you know, his approval of me and how it was important, how I was, you know, rude to him, and so on and so on. And like it or not, when you're dealing with history, you know, you have the bare bones of it laid out and you, you know, might say that Seneca was banished and came back, or the Burris was with him for these years and so on, and, you know, what, how Burris died and so on. But you are going to have to create scenes with conversations that are written nowhere and it's going to have to be a. Say, in this case, a mentor of an older male with a younger male who has power. And that's always dangerous. There's any number of variations through history where, you know, the. The mentor has not been able to rein in the young man because everyone knows that young man effectively is the final arbiter and has ultimate power. So the mentor fails. But it's an interesting relationship because it could go either way. So for me, when I'm reading about Burris and I'm reading about his, you know, the relationship with Agrippina and how she saw him and how he presumably took the role seriously and wanted Nero to be a noble, decent young man because. Which makes Burros a patriot, by the way, because therefore he cared about Rome. You know, I can draw conclusions from one aspect. And the fact that Burroughs took up the role in the first place makes him someone who cared about the future of Rome. And that instantly starts to inform the way I create these scenes, because I have therefore not a toxic relationship. I have a supportive relationship of an older man who, to be head of the Praetorians, a man, you know, given double pay for being an elite soldier. I mean, it's the equivalent of head of the sas, effectively. Some of the legions at the time would hate me to say that, but nonetheless, they thought the Praetorians were sort of, you know, ridiculously pompous forces, but nonetheless they were meant to be elite forces and he was the number one. So think of him as a special forces guy who was given this task of raising an important young man in the absence of normal father figures is. Yeah, the relationship is related by me in those terms. And then it has to be, I think, internally consistent. And if that sounds ridiculously silly and overwrought and too detailed, that's how I think when I'm creating these characters. It has to work. It has to be internally consistent. It has to be characters that you and I will recognize because they're as intelligent as us. They just happen to be 2,000 years ago, but they cared about very often the same things.
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- [53:28]
Tristan Hughes
And I guess another relationship that you'd have to tackle and I know that you, you must tackle is of course the one between the young, the teenage Nero and Britannicus. Before what you've already mentioned, Agrippina convinces Claudius to name her son Lucius, who will be Nero as heir rather than Britannicus. But for those years previously, you know, as these two young boys are growing up in the palace, I mean, do we actually have any information from the sources? Very, very little about actually their relationship?
- [53:55]
Con Iggulden
Very little. It's one of the things I did have to invent an entire scene for this in the book because you had a situation where Claudius has a son and heir, Britannicus, and Agrippina is trying to persuade him to make Lucius her son, the heir. And he does so. And we've talked about how extraordinary that moment is. But then all the history records is that Claudius was thinking about undoing that and making Britannicus the heir as well. Now we don't know why. So for that to happen, I had to manufacture a scene and I did it with Nero injuring Britannicus, causing him to be injured on a racetrack. And because I needed Claudius to lose patience with Nero and with Agrippina's protection of him, and I needed him to say, you know what, I'm not going to make him my heir anymore. I'm going to make Britannicus, my heir, because that's the night then where Claudius is, well, is killed and that's. And Nero becomes emperor. And I needed a sort of climactic scene to move those relationships on because the information isn't there. It's just one of the gaps I have to fill. There are always gaps and gaps to fill. I mean, I wrote a scene. Well, we all know that Claudius visited Britain in the invasion of Britain. He didn't go across with the first troops, but he went across, I think a few weeks later and he was.
- [55:11]
Tristan Hughes
There for about two weeks with his elephants.
- [55:12]
Con Iggulden
Yep, yep, yep, exactly. With the four wonderful elephants. So, and the point is he was there and there's no record of everyone else who was there with him. So I mean that we know the names of the legions that were there, but not, you know, the hangers on and all the rest of it, or how many of his praetorians he took or whether there are any members of the court whatsoever. So I thought, well, okay, I need to carry on conversations with Agrippina and the boy Nero here and if she goes, then he would go. So I'm going to put them in. And that's for me, perfectly acceptable because it doesn't change history. It's the kind of thing that might have happened but wouldn't have been recorded. And it allows me to move the plot on to the point where he asks her to marry him. And that's a key sort of plot point because you have to tell it in some way. I mean, this is the joy of historical fiction, but it's also occasionally the sort of thing that gets people writing emails to me.
- [55:58]
Tristan Hughes
And is chariot racing? Because of course that becomes big in the story of Nero, especially when he goes to Greece all those years later. But do we think chariot racing is a big part of Nero's story, even in these early years? I read somewhere that actually his dad, Lucius Ahenobarbus, was a chariot racer.
- [56:13]
Con Iggulden
Yes, I mean, I remember hearing that as well. And obviously it's a big part of Nero's life and he used to, he raced various ones from the sort of four horse chariots to the extraordinary ten horse chariot. But yes, in terms of the amount of weight 10 horses would feel, the answer is, well, none at all really. So it's the formula one of ancient Rome. Nothing would have moved faster than that. And genuinely, to race 10 horses on a tiny lightweight chariot was to put your life at risk, which is important because it's all right, it's a playboy sort of activity it's like racing Ferraris, but it is still physically testing himself in a way that frankly playing the lute does not. It's important because, you know, he was a young man taught by Burris and he was a young man who had a physical side to him. He wasn't an. Although he loved Greece, he wasn't an effete sort of scholar alone. He had this physical aspect to him. And, you know, from his father, it was a huge gambling thing in Rome. They had the four teams, the greens and the whites and so on. And it was, you know, the Circus Maximus was filled to capacity on certain days and it's a huge part of Roman life and he would have been part of that. So it explains perhaps one of the reasons why he was so popular, why he was missed after his death, because he wasn't just a distant scholar like Claudius would have been. He was a man who actually, you know, put himself at risk for fun. That's worth noticing.
- [57:35]
Tristan Hughes
I guess you could also imagine, though, with perhaps the more low sea kind of conservative senators, I know they don't have as much power as they used to. Wasn't there this idea that sometimes that the competers, the sportsmen, the celebrity sportsmen of the time, although they had a lot of following like the gladiators, they were still seen as actually being beneath them in a sort of way.
- [57:55]
Con Iggulden
So that's one of the things I remember from Burris, that this was their big problem with Nero because everything he liked to do was considered low class. And that doesn't come through in the modern world, particularly chariot racing is one of them. It was not considered. It was all very well to bet on it, that's fine and to own teams, that's perfectly fine. But not to race the blooming horses yourself. That's considered to be sort of a common man's pursuit and beneath, certainly beneath the airs and graces of an emperor. But oddly, the truth is, I say oddly, but I suppose we're not too surprised to hear acting is also considered a. A low pursuit, but also music, poetry, everything he loved to do was considered beneath him. And that meant that, you know, Burris was constantly struggling with the fact that everything Nero wanted to do and had the power to do and the influence and the people who would support him to do was, were not what he should be doing if he was to be a proper, decent, restrained, stoic Roman leader. So that was part of their sort of, you know, struggle between the two of them. So, yeah, there's a lot of low status stuff that Nero loved in regards to marriage.
- [58:57]
Tristan Hughes
When a young teenage Nero, you mentioned earlier in the chat how his mother is married when she's just 13 years old. Is it a similar age that Nero is first married?
- [59:08]
Con Iggulden
Well, the first marriage is to his. Technically his sister Octavia, who was not a blood relative. Well, she was, but, you know, she wasn't his actual sister. It wasn't. As I said, you don't marry brother and sister. And that was obviously a political thing arranged by Agrippina. She managed to break off the engagement with another Solanus son and damaging that family and setting off a sort of tricky chain of events. She had to then keep doing damage limitation for some time. But Nero didn't want to be married to Octavia, didn't love her, didn't want to be around her. And then he does act in a pretty awful, cowardly. I mean, it is one of the least likable aspects of his character that he wouldn't just do something. He would say if he wanted someone killed, for example, he would banish them first, always banish them first. And then out of sight, he would wait for a period of time and he would send someone to finish them off. And, you know, it's cowardly at the end of the day. It's not the way a leader is meant to be and it allows him a little bit of deniability. So he just did this over and over. I mean, Seneca was killed at a distance, Octavia was killed at a distance. It's very rare actually with Britannicus that Britannicus died in front of Nero. So it's. It makes me wonder whether that wasn't, you know, whether that was Nero because Britannicus suddenly choked. I mean, the story about Britannicus is that everyone knew about poisons and he had, you know, so therefore they had tasters. But he, he was given food that was extremely hot. I think it was soup or something. And then the poison was in the cold water.
- [60:39]
Tristan Hughes
That was it.
- [60:40]
Con Iggulden
Yes, but whether that was Nero or not, it would. If that was Nero, it would be a little bit surprising because usually he did things at one remove. He would move you away first. And he did that with Octavia. He sent her into exile and then had somebody to go and, you know, and finish her off. And if I remember rightly, her head was delivered back to Nero is pretty, pretty horrific.
- [60:59]
Ryan Seacrest
Especially.
- [60:59]
Tristan Hughes
Is he still a teenager at this point or.
- [61:01]
Con Iggulden
Yeah, well, I can't remember exactly when that was, but yes, I mean, it'd.
- [61:06]
Tristan Hughes
Be in the 50s, it would be in the 50s.
- [61:08]
Con Iggulden
I mean, he wanted to move on. He wanted, at that point, I think he wanted Otho's wife, Poppaea. He rather fancied her.
- [61:14]
Tristan Hughes
Well, shall we keep on this idea then of poisonings and get to when Nero actually does become the emperor? Because what are the stories, these extraordinary stories behind the death of Emperor Claudius?
- [61:27]
Con Iggulden
Well, again, you don't know how completely true some of this is, but there was a doctor called Lacusta, a woman, a Gaulish woman, if I remember rightly. The story is that, if I've got the details right, the Claudius was poisoned. It was something in his food. And as I said just before the interview started, people die in Italy every year from eating the wrong mushrooms. So there are some very powerful mushrooms out there and we've had Augustus die with his favorite mushrooms. It's a fairly common way of dispatching your enemy, but they have a good knowledge of poisons. You know, they would have been available to them, but the idea was that he was poisoned in his food and then began to sic it up. And Locusta, his doctor, was summoned and she gave him a feather to put down his throat to make him vomit, but there was more poison on the feather so that as she poked it down his throat, you know, he was dosed higher and higher and he had, therefore, I mean, he had no chance whatsoever. Burrus wasn't there, by the way, because he came later. This was very much Agrippina acting to secure her son. And that was because Claudius, you know, was saying, stuff it, I'm going to make Britannicus my heir. So he made himself a threat to Agrippina and a threat to Lucius in that moment, and therefore he had to go.
- [62:39]
Tristan Hughes
And that context, the fact that Claudius was dabbling according to the sources of renaming Britannicus, his actual son, as his heir, is that why you think that there is the most plausibility of all, like kind of the stories of doing away with people by Agrippina around this time, that her involvement in the death of Claudius could well have a strong historical reality.
- [63:01]
Con Iggulden
It's the one I believe more than any other. I mean, even Tiberius even was an old man and old men die, especially in Rome, when a single tooth abscess can, can carry you away. So, but this is the one. Claudius was not particularly old. He was in relatively good physical health. He was, you know, hadn't suffered in any way that we've had revealed to us. And yet he's suddenly dead at the most extraordinarily useful moment, where Nero is just 16 and can be announced that day as Rome wakes up at dawn the following morning as the new emperor. And you know, if I remember rightly, they didn't they get the Praetorians in as well to surround the. Or out on the streets because they didn't want any riots or any unrest or anyone saying, you know, the, the emperor's been murdered or anything like that. They, they got the clamp on to Rome very early on. And that suggests a fair element of planning and the fact that they were so successful. Yes, it's who benefits, is it? Cui bono? You always look for the person who benefits the most. And that was clearly Agrippina and Nero.
- [64:00]
Tristan Hughes
And Nero swiftly becomes the new emperor. Is it quite a straightforward succession? There's no Britannicus shouting from the rooftop saying, ah, you should be the next emperor instead.
- [64:09]
Con Iggulden
Britannicus. This is the tragedy of Britannicus. He doesn't seem to have been a threat at all. He may have been. He may have become a threat because so many. We've had so many families split down two lines. And again, you go back to the Persian kings. Was it Cyrus? I forget the other one. You know, brothers killing brothers is actually, it's the historical context that is important because it's like Richard III and the princes. Once you have seen, let's say a dozen of these stories, you realize it is so completely ordinary to do away with the people who might rise up and kill you that you need to almost establish a new moral sort of structure. So, okay, the son of Julius Caesar with Cleopatra, he was killed by. Was it Octavian? He was about 17 years old and he was called Ptolemy Caesarion. So he had Caesar and he had Ptolemy in his name. He could have grown to rule an empire that included Rome and Egypt and all the rest of it. But they clobbered him. Was it Augustus who got it? Yes, it was Octavian Augustus. You've got him. And that's the point. This was ordinary behavior. You do not allow someone called Ptolemy Caesarian, the incredibly dangerously named Ptolemy Caesarian, to survive. And that goes for all of Agrippina's brothers as well. They all had, if you look at their names, it's Caesar and Augustus. And they've all got names that frankly is shouting from the rooftops. This person is a potential danger to anyone else who might want to be rule in Rome. So I think, yes, it is ordinary behavior to do it. And Nero, in fact, if Britannicus had said anything, he would have been making himself extremely vulnerable. So I think at the very Beginning anyway, he's completely quiet and then he doesn't live too long. But we don't know. We don't know who is responsible for Britannicus killed. I think I won't say how I went for it in the book, but it was. Yeah, there are a few possible choices.
- [65:53]
Tristan Hughes
I don't want to give too much away from your book, of course, and we won't go any further in the story. But it's interesting when Nero becomes emperor and Britannicus dies soon after. As you've already highlighted earlier, as it's already shown, Even in the 40s, Nero is the clearest surviving male link to Augustus and thus Julius Caesar before him. So he is the one. You know, if you're looking at legitimacy in this still, it feels a bit experimental, kind of imperial, new imperial Roman world.
- [66:25]
Con Iggulden
He's the one experimental because, I mean, Julius Caesar never called himself an emperor. He couldn't have done. Neither did Augustus. He called himself. Was it princeps or, you know, the first.
- [66:34]
Tristan Hughes
Yes, first among equals.
- [66:35]
Con Iggulden
Yeah, first among equals. And I think Tiberius was the first who actually called himself an emperor. So this is a very new institution in the world and it isn't bedded in. And to some extent the bloodline is accepted that there can be adoptions, because, I mean, Tiberius was Augustus adopted son rather than his direct bloodline, but the bloodline is still important. And that's the extraordinary thing that happens after Nero and why I'm always interested in the historical reliability of sources, because once he's gone, the first person was Galba, the second person was Otho, the third person was Vitellius. None of those have any real right to rule in Rome. So they have a very strong reason to rewrite the history, much as the Tudors rewrote Richard III and made him into more of a monster than he was. And then you get Vespasian and the Flavians, who actually turned out to be a pretty good emperor and, you know, things are reset. But even he, he was the, you know, the sponsor of Josephus or Josephus, and therefore you still have the implication that history is rewritten. In fact, Claudius was told by one of his wives and it wasn't Agrippina. I'm trying to think it was at Messalina that he shouldn't go back and interfere with the Roman archives because there were too many hands on it already. And it's just a little reminder that the things that survive 2000 years to us are to some extent the things they want us to know, not the things that actually went on. And you are always slightly hamstrung by this difficulty that history has to be seen through filters.
- [67:58]
Tristan Hughes
A nice way to end this one con, is, and I think it links into what you mentioned to me before we started recording, which is some extraordinary coinage from this time. I mean, what, right at the beginning of Nero's reign, given how important and integral Agrippina has been to his rise, does it feel like right at the beginning you've got Seneca, you've got Burrus, and Nero's got his mother right there. Is it a mother son team at that time? Are they very much united? And is that shown in how they promote themselves?
- [68:28]
Con Iggulden
It is. I mean, I don't think it's really a world we can imagine. The fact that people didn't know what the emperor looked like except through coins, obviously. There were no images or very few paintings that anyone else would ever see. So you've got a sort of world where these people up on the Palatine Hill were distant and almost, you know, divine figures. So the best way to put that image out there was through coins. It's the one place where you could sit and stare at someone's face in profile. And Agrippina actually turns up on an early coin with two of her sisters, I think, during the reign of Caligula.
- [68:59]
Tristan Hughes
Yes, Caligula, yeah.
- [69:00]
Con Iggulden
And. But she's a sort of. They're all little spindly figures. I mean, they do the best they can, but there's no sense of the face. And then she turns up. It was behind Claudius. So she was on. It was one of the first coins that showed two people, so, you know, that their actual faces. So the Claudius was there and then she was behind him, almost like a shadow, I mean, you know, predicting the future in that way. And then when Nero becomes emperor, she is facing him as an equal, which is extraordinary. And I seem to remember that coin also had Augusta on it, you know, as proof of her extraordinary status in the empire. And that, of course, was the thing that was too much. You know, she pushed too much. She thought of herself as. She clearly thought of herself as the equal. The visual representation, I think, proves that. And that was too much for her son, who was actually, in name and reality, the emperor.
- [69:47]
Tristan Hughes
It's fascinating. Also, I didn't realize that Agrippina is actually on three generations of coinage of three different emperors. Well, there you go, Con. We'll leave it there. Because that is also a lovely cliffhanger to kind of tee up. What will happen over the next few years with Nero and his mother, Agrippina, which forms a big part of your new book. Tell us a little bit about Tyrant.
- [70:06]
Con Iggulden
I've had people say to me on the first book, you've called it Nero, but he's hardly in it, which is true to a degree, but to understand Nero, you had to understand his mother. So I sort of wrote the prequel first because as we've gone through in this, I mean, the background with Caligula and all the rest of it is vital to understanding the whole family, is vital to understanding the rule of Nero. But this is his actual story as he comes into being emperor and comes into, you know, the main part of his life, and then the third one, which is called Inferno. So you can probably guess there's certain elements of truth in that.
- [70:37]
Tristan Hughes
Oh, yes. Fire in there.
- [70:38]
Con Iggulden
There could be some fire in there. And that was one of the most joyous books I was able to write. This is honestly the best historical material I've ever come across in terms of sheer joy for me. And, for example, I mean, I don't know if we haven't got a lot of time, but, I mean, I'll just say I got to deal with St. Peter in one, and knowing that he was executed in Rome made me really think about the process of how people were accused of being Christian and how they were then taken out and executed and so on. And I suddenly realized that the most famous part of Peter's story is the fact that he denied Christ three times and he was executed for being a Christian, which means that they asked him, are you a Christian? And in an extraordinary redemptive moment, he must have said yes, because they executed him. And therefore we have a moment that is not canon, is not part of Christian, you know, beliefs across the world, but, my goodness, it must have happened. And that is the perfect joy of historical fiction, that sometimes you can see something that isn't common knowledge but is true.
- [71:41]
Tristan Hughes
Con, this has been such a fantastic chat. Tyrant is out now.
- [71:44]
Con Iggulden
I believe it is. Yes.
- [71:46]
Tristan Hughes
Brilliant. Fantastic. And I look forward to the next one in the To Inferno coming out. I'm sure in a year or two's time. Con, just listen to me say thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today.
- [71:57]
Con Iggulden
My pleasure. Thank you very much.
- [72:01]
Tristan Hughes
Well, there you go. That was Con Igalden talking through the rise of Nero. It was such a pleasure to interview him in person and to hear all about his upcoming historical fiction series, all about the rise and reign of Nero. I hope you enjoyed the episode. Please follow the ancients on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favor if you'd also be kind enough to leave us a rating as well, where we'd really appreciate it at that. Don't forget, you can also listen to us and all of History Hit's podcasts ad free and watch hundreds of TV documentaries when you subscribe@historyhit.com subscribe now. That's enough from me and I will see you in the next episode.
- [72:57]
Ryan Seacrest
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Tristan Hughes
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Ryan Seacrest
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- [73:52]
Tristan Hughes
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