After a failed attempt to the suppress the rebellion of the province of Gallia Lugdunensis when the governor Gauis Julius Vindex over the emperor’s tax policies, trying to enlist the aid of of the governor of Hispania Tarraonensis, Servius Sulpicius Galba backfired with the Iberian province declaring its opposition and joining the uprising, declared a public enemy by the Roman Senate and abandoned by the Praetorian Guard, Nero fled the capital—but not to seek sanctuary in one of the still loyal eastern regions of the Empire as planned after an open mutiny from his military escort, refusing to grant safe passage. Returning to the palace in the evening, Nero awoke at midnight to find his personal bodyguards had abandoned him. Having quoted Virgil’s line from the Aeneid earlier that day in response to his commanders’ disobedience—“Is it so dreadful a thing then to die?,” calling for friend or foe to put him out his suffering but none came forward and then intimated that he would hurl himself in the Tiber. Theatrics failing, Nero once again resolved to leave the city on this day in 68 AD to have a place to reflect in quiet and his confidant Phaon, an imperial freedman, offered up his private villa in the suburbs, with the emperor making his way their with a retinue loyal emancipated servants, including a Greek slave boy called Sporus, whom Nero had castrated and subsequently married the year before whilst touring the region and had taken a liking for a remarkable resemblance to his recently departed wife, Poppaea Sabina who had died either in childbirth or due to a physical assault by Nero, dressing him as befitting an empress. Once at the villa, he ordered his companions to begin digging his grave and he paced back and forth to prepare for his suicide, muttering to himself the title, “What an artist the world is losing.” Unable to steel his nerves, Nero asked his friends to set an example by killing themselves first, but upon hearing approaching horsemen, he knew he had to face the end, forcing his private secretary to do the deed. The arriving senatorial guards tried to save Nero’s life, prescient of the chaos that would follow with the civil wars and Year of the Four Emperors, but were unsuccessful. Nero’s final words were from ibฤซdem, “Too late! This is fidelity!”
synchronoptica
one year ago: AI refuses to answer who won the 2020 US presidential election (with synchronoptica) plus terminal text effects
seven years ago: Trump leaves the G7 early, accusing partners of unfair trade practises
eight years ago: former FBI director’s public testimony plus UK calls snap elections to reinforce Brexit mandate
nine years ago: the last of the time-carriers of London plus new chemical elements named
ten years ago: paternoster elevators, divine handiworks plus seeing the pasternoster lifts in operation