Video Description

In 64 AD, as Rome burned for six devastating days, witnesses claimed Emperor Nero performed on his lyre while watching the flames consume the eternal city. But the Great Fire was just one chapter in the horrifying reign of history's most depraved ruler—a man who turned matricide into an art form and transformed the Roman Empire into his personal theater of cruelty. This is the complete story of Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, better known as Emperor Nero—the boy who ascended to absolute power at just 16 years old and descended into madness that shocked even the violence-hardened Roman world. From his suspicious rise to the throne following Emperor Claudius's alleged poisoning, to his final desperate suicide in a humble villa outside Rome, we'll uncover the dark psychology of a ruler who murdered his way through his own family tree. What You'll Discover: How Nero's manipulative mother Agrippina orchestrated his rise to power—only to become his first major victim The chilling details of Britannicus's poisoning at the imperial dining table Nero's elaborate assassination attempts, including the infamous collapsible boat designed to drown his mother The emperor's theatrical obsessions that scandalized Roman society The brutal persecution of Christians, who were burned alive as human torches to illuminate Nero's garden parties The Pisonian conspiracy that nearly ended his reign and led to the forced suicide of his former tutor, Seneca The true story behind the Great Fire of Rome and whether Nero actually "fiddled while Rome burned" Drawing from the accounts of Tacitus, Suetonius, and Cassius Dio, this documentary exposes how absolute power corrupted a young man into a monster who killed his stepbrother, mother, two wives, and countless others. Nero's reign became a masterclass in tyranny, paranoia, and the complete abandonment of moral restraint. From the poisoned wine that killed a 14-year-old prince to the theatrical performances that degraded the imperial office, from matricide that shocked the ancient world to the suicides of Rome's greatest philosophers—this is the unflinching story of the emperor who believed himself an artist while leaving a legacy written in blood and ash. "What an artist dies in me!" —Nero's final words, 68 AD