Emperor Nero and his wife Poppaea had a wild ride that involved the entire city of Rome burning, join us for this week's re-release! Step into the tumultuous world of ancient Rome with our podcast 'Nero: The Fiddling Tyrant.' Join us as we unravel the captivating and controversial life of Emperor Nero, known for his extravagant excesses, artistic pursuits, and ruthless rule. Explore the scandals, conspiracies, and the great fire of Rome that have forever etched his name in history. Discover the enigmatic personality behind the myths and legends, and delve into the fascinating tale of Nero's rise and fall in this immersive historical journey. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: doomedtofailpod@gmail.com
Emperor Nero and his wife Poppaea had a wild ride that involved the entire city of Rome burning, join us for this week's re-release!
Step into the tumultuous world of ancient Rome with our podcast 'Nero: The Fiddling Tyrant.' Join us as we unravel the captivating and controversial life of Emperor Nero, known for his extravagant excesses, artistic pursuits, and ruthless rule. Explore the scandals, conspiracies, and the great fire of Rome that have forever etched his name in history. Discover the enigmatic personality behind the myths and legends, and delve into the fascinating tale of Nero's rise and fall in this immersive historical journey.
Orignial episode - https://doomed-to-fail.simplecast.com/episodes/ep-2-things-i-xiii
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Hi Friends! Our transcripts aren't perfect, but I wanted to make sure you had something - if you'd like an edited transcript, I'd be happy to prioritize one for you - please email doomedtofailpod@gmail.com - Thanks! - Taylor
everyone Taylor from Doom to fail today we're re-releasing episode 2 part 2
where I talk about Emperor Nero and his wife pompea I want to apologize again
for all the times that I have said South Korea when I met North Korea in this episode I 100 blame bars he knows better
he should have stopped me um also for the um I apologize for the um it was our second episode I'm trying
to get better every day but thank you for listening I hope you enjoy California versus
[Music]
okay well that was terrible thank you farz um happy to hear that terrible story so
I have like seven pages of notes um I've been working on um but today we're going to talk about
Emperor Nero and papaya Sabina who was his second wife and so a lot of these
word names are like a smidge Italian soundings I'm gonna do a terrible job um saying them um it's also a very
confusing timeline so just know that too people spend their whole life studying these stories and like writing books about them and I'm
trying my best um so Nero Nero was the fifth emperor of Rome from 54 to 68 A.D so we're going
way back in the past um about 2000 years ago we're a little bit past
um when Jesus lived and died um but at least we're going up because I'm really bad at BC timelines I like can't figure
it out like I'm bad at time zones and I'm bad at BC timeline so I'm glad we're in on the up and up so 54 to 68 Nero was
the emperor of Rome um so Pompeo is a second wife and
um are you saying Pompeo papaya p-o-p-p-a-e-a
okay I was thinking about the Mount Vesuvius thing it's different than that okay uh yes but that comes back comes
back we'll get back to that um so it's not it's not coincidence her name sounds like that got it got it got
it um so she's a second wife um having a first wife is not a red flag
you're talking about that's fine you can have a first wife you can even have a second wife it could be it could be like
have a divorce and it didn't work out and whatever that's no big deal um but so the idea of having a second
wife being a second wife is not the red flag um what happened to the first wife is the red flag but we'll get we'll get to
that in a minute it was bad um so to study and you know get uh prepared for this I watch some YouTube
videos some Wikipedia some other articles um and also a per usual could not
recommend enough um Dan Carlin he has a great um million part series called Death
throws of the Republic that talks about when Rome was a republic up to Julius Caesar um and that's when they started
to have Emperors so we're in the very beginning of the Empire The Republic is over so they get the background on the
Republic listen to that it takes like three days but it's totally worth it
um and uh so it's a direct you know next step in that story um so I want to talk about the
background cast of characters and then what led to their marriage and what happened after
um I also like to do the most exciting thing ever in my life and I can find it oh I got to reference my own Library
fires I was like I think I've seen this before so I can pull a book on my own library that gave me information that I
needed which is like this is
um a fatal Thing Happened on the weight of the Forum um it is a book about murder and death and Humanity in ancient Rome
um It Is by Dr Emma southin it is very funny it's like funny she's very
sarcastic um I feel like she's probably younger than me like I could talk to her she's awesome
um so she wrote this amazing book and it is um it talks about like just how much
violence there was in this time in the way that people saw other human beings so
if you were an enslaved person in this time you were not considered a human like at all and a lot of people who were
enslaved didn't look physically different than the people who weren't because it was like Spoils of War from
like another part of Italy you know it wasn't like um it wasn't like you know African people that you could like see and
really like make that a thing it was like just other people but they weren't seen as actual human beings so they died
a lot people died in like the arena and they died you know working a lot and
um like to death like working through death you know and like for spilling wine you know you get eaten by a lion and people didn't think that that was
wrong it was just sort of like par for the course so it's kind of like hard to understand because it was a long time
ago and we also have like very little actual details and information about
this like we have stories that we heard heard like passed on and like bits of
pottery and things like that but don't know exactly what happened but it seems like you know people like wives and children like they
weren't you know treated like people so if your wife dies um a sort of a you problem there's no like police force you're not gonna go to
jail you know it's like your family's decide what to do and if you your family decides that means that you die too
problem solved you know so it's a lot of like just there's a lot of murders so it's violent it's smelly it's sticky
there's blood everywhere like that's the world that we're in right now in ancient Rome and what did we learn last week if
you kill your spouse cremate the body before the autopsy a hundred percent yes
don't like kill them with a knife that has your name engraved in it absolutely not um so you know we see a lot of
Christians being burned for fun we see a lot of um people like taking some trees and on
spikes and a lot a lot a lot of death um in here but you just kind of feel you
get you get the impression that people felt a little bit differently and there's a lot of that is in this book a fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the
Forum that I totally recommend um but just kind of have that in your head that you have these like people
that you don't and murder isn't like you're not going to go to jail there isn't a jail and people get nobody cares
yeah nobody cares um so that's where we are right now we're in ancient Rome
um and some of our you know important characters um of course there's Nero the emperor
and uh to continue with our noodle analogy Nero is like the spoon that you
use to get noodles out of the pot like it's not even a noodle he's like that that like spoon with like the
Little Fangs on it that you used to pull out spaghetti can we can okay so you know what's funny
is my head went directly to the spoon you get when you get Ramen little boat tray thing
no that one's that one's lovely and gentle I'm talking about the one like the big one with like the spikes on it
that you use to like hand out the spaghetti so that's what really picture picture painted yes great
um no I feel like if we do find someone gentle and nice they can be like a Ramen spoon like this we can get when you get like miso soup
that seems like a kind spoon um but so Nero our emperor his mother
egrupina Claudius it's his uncle and his SEPTA and an emperor so there's a lot of
like there's a lot of family tree stuff very Game of Thrones that I do not understand
um but I will try to clarify it as best as I can um there's Octavia which was Nero's
first wife Pompeo is his second wife and then some supporting characters there's a witch
um there's actually a fourth wife and then there's a a man called sporis who we'll get to okay so Nero was married
four times yes got it okay yes um
kind of five the last two kind of go on top of each other we'll get to that um so most of History talks about Nero
as being just the worst Emperor ever being violent and selfish and some of the things he did are terrible like all
of the killing lots of sexual assaults um actually he's actually a model for the Antichrist in the Bible so some sex
believe that when the Antichrist comes back he'll look like Nero um which means that he will be chubby
and have a neck beard because that's what Nero looked like even the statues of Nero he's chubby with a neckbeard so you know that's like what he looked like
and what he wanted to look like so picture that um and
some things he did that are like bad but like I feel like they're par for the
course for an emperor in this time or like a supreme leader in any time so it reminds me of things like you know he's
not paying attention to things happening in the far reaches of the Empire right now the Roman Empire goes all the way up
to Britain so I mean how is he even gonna know what's happening over there it takes like months to get over the Alps to come back and tell him and he
just doesn't care about you know the Empire itself um he cares about you know himself and some of the things that he does involve
him like being the best Sportsman and being the best actor and being the best blah blah he's the Kim
Jong-un so that that's exactly is that what you thought that personality trait
seems to exist you like it's ubiquitous with like power it sounds absolutely absolutely that's it I wrote It's like
Kim jong-king being the best basketball player all of South Korea and like uh remember when Putin like went scuba
diving and attempting to the ocean and found those like ancient pieces yes it's like that so good
is like you know it's bad it's bad but I don't feel like that like makes him the worst but what I do think it is is it is a red flag for a lot of
[ __ ] happening underneath the surface you know so obviously like we know there's like so many terrible things
happening in Russia and South Korea and they have these leaders who were like hey but I'm the best and you're like people are serving you know so you're
not the best Kim Jones is also chubby but I don't think he has a nice beard no I don't know if he can grow a beard
yeah but it's a very similar idea you know someone being like Oh my gosh and then like when you watch like I don't
know I watched a documentary and of uh eye doctors going to South Korea and um
carrying people's glaucoma and after they would like remove the bandages and they could see they would go up to like
a picture of the supreme leader and be like thank you supreme leader I'm so grateful for you that you did this for me that you got me this Dr blah blah but
you're like this could have happened like 15 years ago if the supreme leader allowed doctors in you know like he what
so the amount of brainwashing is just yeah unbelievable yeah so there's a lot of that I think in this episode for for
both things but um so you know the stuff that he's done that is bad some of it's legitimately bad some of it's red flags for other
things that are happening um Nero himself was born in the year 37.
um his name was ready luces demetis inoibaris nope I can't do it that sounds
terrible but he's generally a member of the upper upper class that was his name his dad was kind of terrible he died
when he was two his mother was agrippina the younger and she was a very very power hungry like she was like distantly
related to the Julio claudians like Julius Caesar and Claudia is the first emperor um and uh the current Emperor at the
time when Euro was born um Caligula was afraid of agropina he was
afraid of her Ambitions so we had her banished and Nero got sent to live with an aunt and he got tutored um instead of
I like a normal tutor he got tutored by an actor so he has this like actor who like was his um tutor and also actors
are like the lowest of the low it's like it's like sheep slave actor in like a
thing you know like it's real bad so um so he's like you know brought up by this actor for a little bit
um and Caligula is obviously gets assassinated because there's a lot of assassination in this story and a lot of
murders awesome yeah yeah so the next in line is uh a man named Claudio
uh Claudio uh Claudius oh my God Claudius in the Claudio line so he is actually
agrippina's Uncle so he's Nero's great uncle um and agrippina and and Claudius get
married so she's married her uncle
so she so the there's a new the new emperor Caligula is is murdered the new
emperor is Claudius Claudius is agrippina's Uncle so he's Nero's great
uncle they're in the they're in this like Julia claudian line of the line of the original Emperors of Rome going back
you know a couple like 100 years or so um and that means that
um he adopts Nero so the new emperor is now Nero's stepdad and also his great uncle
it's gonna be so confusing especially when you're being taught by an actor like there's if we can't stream the
logic together some actor is probably not going to be able to stream The Logical that family lineage together either right totally it's like um it's
like a VC Andrews book I just like don't know what's going on but so now
um the Claudius is the Emperor agropina is empress um and also Claudius has a young son
named britannicus who's a little bit younger than Nero okay so now they're in this like incestuous family
um whatever and Claudius was right to be worried um you know about agropina she was
definitely um wants to be in power that's her whole thing she wants to be power but she can't be because she's a woman so she
needs to be you know just like you know related power so she's married to the emperor but she really wants her son to
be Emperor so she cooks up a plan to kill Claudius so agrippina Nero's mom
um gets this woman who is super fun her name is
lucosta best but she is a poisoner so
she is the kind of person where you would go to her and ask for poison to kill someone so you're like my husband's abusive
um I don't like the emperor like I might kill my rival like she would give you the poisons so she could do like all sorts of different kinds of poisonous
things um you know she could make it like a slow burn or immediate death or like
whatever she was like this like what she made poisons I say witch because like she feels witchy and fun yeah yeah I I
love I love the witchy back yeah but in this case given where the request is coming from she knows that she's doing
something to kill the emperor absolutely yeah okay yeah nobody cares again nobody cares nobody cares who knows she knows
um so she gets um so uh agrippina asks for like a slow
um poison that will kill him solely over a meal so not like drink it you die immediately but like start to get sick
and then die at the end of the meal so you could like attribute it to bad food or like something else um but I'm like playing out the whole
story about like Rasputin's assassination in my mind right now Wade's just sitting there like please when are you gonna kneel over when are
you gonna fall face first into your vat of wine is it's incredible exactly and
then what happens is Claudius doesn't die from this because he throws up because he throws up because he drank a
bunch of wine so if you drink like seven casks of wine and eat a bunch of food like you're probably gonna throw up um
so he does and so he doesn't the poison doesn't work stagger pain has to go back and get something that will kill him a little bit quicker which is a smidge
more suspicious but it has to be done so they do it and Claudius is um he dies
and Nero becomes emperor do we know what age in Europe is at this point he's 16
when he becomes Emperor oh my God yeah so that's actually that's a that's exactly what we're talking about so he
keeps uh Lacosta the witch she gets to live in the palace with him and just like be on hand from to make poison so I
picture her like um in Robin Hood Men in Tights like in the basement with like do you know what I'm talking about latrine
no and Robin Hood Men entites the witch his name is latrine and she lives in the Basin and like gives him like like
there's like the bones and stuff is really funny um it would be a fun thing to have in a basement just you have an in-house
switch to go to whenever you need some potions I love that I love it I love it um she probably also did like skincare
stuff I imagine like other fun things um so she lives in the in the in the palace with Nero um he's 16 years old so
I'm glad you asked that because I did watch a couple videos where they like talk about him being 16 and how that is
um you know a very young age to become emperor and like imagine yourself at 16 and that kind of thing
um one of the videos even like it was like a I can't remember I'll put it in the notes but a British documentarian
talking about it and they had like clips of like young British dudes at the pub I'm like
yes and no yes you're young when you're 16 but also I don't know what a ancient
Romans 16 is you know like being a teenager is new like do you remember learning that in school like you weren't
teenager became a word like after World War II like other 16 year olds were probably married and had jobs you know
is that like yeah like once you consider if you were like a single woman or girl at like 16 more she's like considered an
old man I mean the lifespan was so short back then I would assume yeah totally so like I don't know I don't know if I
don't know if I can compare him to a 16 year old now and say he was super immature like he was definitely like not
the best Statesman of all time but I don't know if his age is like as big of a thing as we can say it is but he's young
um but either way like he wasn't going to do all of the work his mom was so
even like a really kind of um crazy thing is that they're both on the coin from this time him and his
mother um so which is like super impressive they're staring at each other like they're both the same size so like
they're both like they know that like she is a big part of this um of ruling Rome as well
um So eventually she's like trying to get more and more power she's thinking of maybe siding with
britannicus who's her stepson I remember claudius's son so Nero has him killed so
he's out of the picture he gets poisoned um and then he's like his mom continues to try to
um you know get power from him so he has her kills um eventually he has his mom killed oh
yeah so that's a red flag you know if you're killing a lot of your family members for
power I imagine so no the red flag is like the witch in the basement who's like constantly creating poisons to kill
your relatives no that's definitely bad but he could you know he could kill you at any moment
in any number of ways the first time the first way he tries to kill his mom is he stages like a boat crash so he like puts
her on a boat gets another boat to hit it and accepts her a drown but she doesn't and then mostly elaborate I know
because you want to make it look like an accident but he was like forget it he ended up ordering assassins to
um to kill her and make it look like a suicide but okay so Jake gave the basement gave to the basement which uh
night off basically exactly exactly so his mom is uh his mom is dead
um he's now like the sole leader of of Rome um and now um let's talk about his wives I think
this timing overlaps a little bit like he's married when um it doesn't happen to his mom but we'll just talk about his
his wives in general so his first wife Octavia was a stepsister
so I mean they're not related they're they're step siblings
um but I so she fits into this family I mean it kind of makes sense because it's
not like you can like if you're that high up in royalty like your network is
probably very insular yeah the people that you interact with on a daily basis probably like it's just like everybody
that lives in this Castle because you're not going to go down to the market and buy fish right so yeah I guess I guess
the tracks the tracks I mean Queen Elizabeth married her cousin so is that true you know that's right Charles
Charles is her cousin no Charles is the her son but um Philip was her cousin Philip yeah
yeah wow okay like like maybe a second cousin but like not a great number of cousin um don't get mad at me England but
that's it's they're related um so he's very talktavia she's a step sister she's also quite a good wife she
really wants to be subservient to him she wants to help Rome Sheila loves Rome she loves like you know being a wife all
the things um and he hated that so we tried to kill her several times by strangling her um because the people loved her and like
that was annoying and like she just like didn't she wasn't super exciting um they didn't have any children so we kind of
use that as a weapon over her because they've been a couple years and they haven't had kids so um during this time he obviously like
has girlfriends and and things like that and he's trying to you know he's doing other things
um so he meets uh papaya during this while he's still married to Octavia
um so papaya is from Pompeii so that's where I like brought that up they actually think that they have her
house in Pompeii excavated so you can like go into where she might have lived she wasn't like there during the I don't
know when Mount vesufius erupted but she wasn't there during that time but they think that they have her house
um I've been there it's awesome it's really fun to like walk around Pompeii I don't recommend climbing Mount Vesuvius
because it costs like 10 euro and it takes forever or you get up there and it's just sand it's ever exciting
um but so she's from Pompeii she's been married two times before actually
there's actually a fair amount of divorce in in ancient Rome and it seems to be fine if there's no no one has like
any qualms about it um her first husband was actually executed by agropina Nora's mom because
she didn't trust him so he was like in like the guards and she didn't trust him so she had him killed now she marries her second husband
um and they got divorced so um whatever so she has one son from her first marriage and she meets um meets
Nero and it seems like this is the this is the the thing like they really like each other they really want the same
things the shoes from like a noble family she wants to get um you know a head so it is he um it
seems like this is like this is their love they really really like each other um so he gets her pregnant
um and he banishes Octavia his first wife which I was reading it and I was like well that's great he banishes her
I'm like banish me to an island with something like it's not gonna end that way though like it's
it's bad isn't it it does and he kills her almost immediately so he he banishes
her and people are sad because they liked her and they miss her so he's like oh my God I don't want to bring her back here so he has her felt as well
um so we fought for her maybe he didn't but like no he did so um but also Taylor if if you get
banished you're probably not getting banished like Hawaii right like you're probably getting banished like
somewhere awful I would assume I kind of think I don't I don't remember where she's been this year but I kind of think
it's okay I think you get banished like the seaside actually Italy yeah there's not really that many basketballs in
Italy yeah I think it's like like in Napoleon like on Alba I'm like what are you crying about dude you know but like
you still like want a lot of power so people loved her wanted her back so he had her had her killed
um so he marries his pregnant um papaya in 62 A.D
um and you know they generally like each other chose to get married um she helped him with his Reign the Roman people didn't love her because
they were like Octavia and they're obviously like this is suspicious um she also had a child from her first
marriage that neroed round on a fishing trip that's about that so bad I keep being I keep seeing things
that were like new new historians are like maybe he wasn't that bad but I'm like maybe he was like that sounds real
bad should be the role kill your mother some
shopping yeah talk about a family Annihilator okay for real so he kills he kills that that kid because he wants
like the only kids of of papaya to be his um but unfortunately the first baby that they have um she only lives to be
four months old which is kind of like par for the course I feel like for most of all time so
um but now you know Nero is only 26. he's not like it's been 10 years he's
had he's like killed his mother he's has two wives like you know a lot of stuff has happened um but he's still only only
26 and then something crazy happens um Rome burns down
in 64. I've heard yes zero in the fiddle right exactly exactly except fiddles
were invented until a lot later and he wasn't there so that's not true I was like too
um so he was actually at his beach house you know like 30 or so miles away on the coast um and he did come to Rome immediately
once he heard that it happened um and Rome burned for almost nine days so what we see now of Rome and like
Pompeii and ruins now you know you see stone and you see like that whatever
like the stuff that could survive you know 2000 years and survive fires and earthquakes and all of that thing um but there's also like tons of wooden
houses you know there's wooden houses there's fabric there's people there's livestocks there's hey there's so much
stuff that can burn so a lot of Rome kind of Burns To The Ground um the same thing happened you know in
the Great Fire of Chicago where a lot of Chicago was burned down the same thing happened to Moscow um and I think like the 1800s Moscow
burned down because it was all wood you know so a lot of it what we see is the kind of what is left
um so he did return to Rome um and one thing he did that was good he did open his Palace to let people in
which he wanted to note that Joel Osteen did not do remember that guy he's like kind of the mega church
somewhere and then like there was a disaster in Houston and he didn't let anybody in the church to like standard
he was trying to preserve the carpet which yes I mean right and all the money
yeah the worst so I mean he's worse than emperor Nero of that in that case which
is I think is pretty bad um so one thing that people are suspicious
about in history is that um after the great fire Nero built a huge
castle um on some of the empty land so some people think he might have done it to clear the space for his castle
I mean it's fitting with everything else you said I mean I like those happy out there saying yes look at him he opened
his castle up to let the people come in he murdered like half his family in
they killed his wife the step kid this sounds more in line with his
character than he's just a normal Emperor totally totally and he like
um he also like stuff like that like it's I'm
also I'm saying like it's 2000 years ago we don't know what life was like then all those things but also 6 000 people
died making the stadiums and Qatar for the World Cup this year you know I did not know that that's insane they would
like they brought people in from other countries took away their paperwork and worked them to death and that happened this year you know so like there's still
so many bad things that happen in the world that are very similar it has to do with power um
so after the burning of Rome while those Palace is being made Nero does most hilarious thing and he goes to Greece
because the Greece is part of the Roman Empire and he goes on like the artistic tour because he wants to be like a
singer and an actor and he like wants to put all the instruments and wants to like perform um he actually he brought a lot of like
performance to like the Gladiators and the you know the arena like he had like
you know if you're gonna kill kill Havoc a slave killed like have him dressed like Hercules you know so you can like
make it more of like a story so he really liked that like Showmanship part of it so he goes to Greece where they're having this like annual
um Festival where every town and every place has like a um a competition like who's the best
singer in town who's the best blah blah blah in town um there's about 1800 competitions throughout Greece and guess
how many Nero wins wins yeah well given his pedigree and
that he was raised by an actor to teach her he probably did pretty good I'm going to say
1800 I'm going to say 800. he won 1800. no
[Laughter] Pure Heart I know it's good for you good
for you no like he definitely he won every single one of them so he goes to Gracie comes back
um and people are just mad they're like did you kill all these women in your life did you burn down Rome where have
you been you know all that um and during this time him and um
papaya get in a fight and it could have been normal I'm sure that he was like not a gentle
man um but she was pregnant and the story is that he kicked her to death while she was pregnant
which is terrible um the like the newer there's like other
things people are like maybe she just died in childbirth and the people who wrote the story hated Nero but either way it's not like he was kind to her at
this point in her life you know yeah yeah so it wasn't great before this so it's definitely it's definitely abusive
and she died he probably kicked her to death um which is absolutely terrible um so now things are crazy like now
things are crazy he's actually devastated that she's dead um and he like instead of having her
cremated per usual he has her like mummified and he has like all of these
um he spends all this money on like a huge Memorial to her and all these things like he's very very sad that
she's gone even though he probably had a lot to do with it um and the Empire's crumbling people are
really upset with him he hasn't been paying attention he's been a jerk he spent all the money on palaces and these like competitions that he was in and
he's never around so people are like this guy has got to go um so before that happens I'm gonna tell
you the worst thing that he did it's subjective because he's done a lot of bad things but like
clear your mind you never you never could have imagined this
so I'm I'm nervous
so he's sad that his wife is dead and he marries a woman named staletia messalina
in 60 Seconds and she actually turns out fine she leaves us end of the story marry someone
else and has a life but she's not what he wants he wants his wife back so what does he do he gets a young man who has
an uncanny resemblance to his wife hasn't castrated and marries him oh my
God that is buried in a lot of the stories
and I'm like that feels like the worst thing like I know people died but like could you imagine if like you had a
friend whose wife died and then later they were like oh here is this like person that kind of looks like her I
imagine him like wearing a veil and being like I'm papaya you know like they just slap a dress on me and shave my
beard and they're like this is my new books in life it's just incredible it's
terrible so he made he married he married him um and maybe maybe he wanted to live
that you know maybe he was like some poor beggar kid and he was like well I get to
sleep in the castle and I get to eat and have clean water and wine and I gotta just I don't know well there is no clean
water oh well um but maybe but I feel like
it's just I feel like your situation has to be like pretty dire to where this is
an upgrade yes yes so it probably wasn't an upgrade no probably not because I'm
sure that he was also very abusive towards him like he was and then he would like this is all I'm making this
up but I imagine he would like beat him up and then cry and be like I miss you like it's not great you know so
um who's married to this dude um and now people start like trying to kill him all over the people start um
you know having all these revolts all over the Empire so he starts kind of running around trying to hide
um he's like in his Palace and he's like trying to find his guards and they're not there like people are abandoning him and he knows that he's kind of in danger
now um so he decides that the best thing to do is to kill himself so Nero he plans to kill himself but he
can't do it um he doesn't have the guts um so he tried to be like he's 30 years
old and he tried to say my last words are what an artist dies with me that's
what he wanted his last or his last words to be um but he couldn't do it so he had his private secretary
um hyperoticus kill him um instead and he ended up actually getting executed for murdering the emperor which is super unfair because
Emperor asked him to do it um and then um the others tried to save him
um and Nero his words were actually um too late this is Fidelity so I stopped trying to save me I want to die
so you know how he was killed um I think this I think he was established it was like a lot of like
very bloody I think in the neck so he only lived to be 30 um and that was actually the end of the
Julio claudian line that his mom um was from um and then the next year in 69 there
were four Emperors so it was called the year of four Embers so things were kind of crazy they didn't really get their [ __ ] together
um until a little bit later um and yeah that's I mean after after Nero died
Rome went to some time trying to figure out like what it was and what they wanted to do but he definitely left like this a lot of Devastation and a lot of
death in his wake and I feel like his relationship with Papaya was
so violent he killed her he killed her son she you know he killed ended up killing her and then he felt so bad
about it and like had a fake her maid and all that stuff which I think is crazy that's it so one thing that I
thought of when you first started telling the story about how violent and awful
it was during this time period and I'm and I'm I'm thinking on like what life
is like today is I wonder which is the natural state of humanity and and then you said
something else that I think solidified it for me you mentioned how
he probably beat that kid who he had castrated but then when you cry
afterwards he probably killed Pompeo and would cry afterwards and just remind me
of like every abusive relationship that I see a story of on yeah investigation discovery of like this kind of dynamic
and I was like well I mean those that still holds true today as it did back
then so maybe that is the natural state of people is just being just crazy and
we just put rules in place to prevent that from happening yeah but I don't know it's it's kind of a wild story yeah
totally yeah it definitely was like yeah you're right because I'm like you
want to say like we're less violent than you know ancient times but maybe it's
just more hidden there's still like you said 6 000 people died in Qatar I didn't know that I think there's like 40
million people in slavery in the world right now um so there's like a lot going on we just like we choose to
not have it as part of our like daily life I feel like so yeah because I've always been things have always been kind
of awful at least for the most part in America you can't murder your wife and get away with it
and your mom and your step kid and your Stepbrother but maybe people have I don't know yeah
yeah yeah what's your takeaway what's your red fire takeaway I think that like
there's definitely like a takeaway of like you know if everyone around you dies suspiciously I'm suspicious of you
um is a big one and also that like quest for power and control of the empire being more important than family and
relationships and people um I think is is is wild that you would just be like I will kill anyone and I
will um you know betray and poison and stab and do all these things just because I
have to be in control um I think that's crazy [Music]
extrapolate one where beyond that to
I think that Okay so
everybody who got involved in this story obviously this guy was the emperor and and obviously look there had to be some
inkling that he was a nut job who was telling people constantly and doing crazy [ __ ]
um and they still went for it and so there's something around if you are drawn to
personalities of power or to institutions of power
it can have an effect on you where you subjugate your own logic of like this
could end badly for me because look at all the other facts in the in the story you might abandon that in the interest
of being closer to that power or that personality um and so I guess check yourself if you
start being drawn to that like why am I drawn to that and what are my boundaries
that you know I'm not gonna oversub totally I think that's that's good for the turpins too like if someone is
controlling you and you're doing things that are that are objectively bad
um when like yeah how do you when do you check yourself because it should have been earlier
yeah exactly and if you have a cell phone in your trapped inside please use
it to call somebody um so yeah I know I know for everyone that too for
everyone um well that was our stories for this
week on Doom to fail plenty of red flags and thank you Taylor for your story and
we'll do this again next week awesome thank you far as I feel like I'm getting my stride and try I don't know I was
what existic is but I'm working on it but I like these stories they're fun and I'm like like the involved relationships
and just like crazy crazy [ __ ] that happened um in the past which I think is really fun because it's like we're all people
are always the same and times are different and it's just it's interesting which is why I
like started becoming a history nerd at my old age so why I became a true crime nerd in my
old age and the through line between the historic and the modern is kind of remarkable yeah absolutely we'll keep
pursuing it cool well I will see you next week
hey everyone thanks for listening I hope you enjoyed episode 2 part 2 on Emperor
Nero if you have any questions or any ideas or feedback we'd love to hear it we are at doomed to failpod gmail.com
find us at all your social media Doom to fail and our episodes are up anywhere you listen to podcasts and I