Nero was a mixture of megalomania, evil, and cruelty according to Roman historians as well as Jews and Christians. His sin of matricide and his claims of deity were major elements in his infamous reputation. Though modern Historians have tried to whitewash Nero and say that certain groups in Rome and other parts of the empire supported him, his name has become a synonym for tyrant and, for many, Antichrist. Nero was born in AD 37 on December 15 to Agrippina and Gnaeus. Nero's father was said to have run his chariot over a boy deliberately and to have killed one of his freedman for drinking less than he was ordered. Agrippina was without a doubt the most successfully ambitious mother in history. She would stop at nothing to get her son on the throne. Anyone that was any threat to her son's chance of becoming Caesar was either framed for a crime or poisoned. She would have affairs with powerful people and use it as leverage. She even ended up marrying Claudius, the emperor of that time, and got him to adopt Nero before she poisoned him. Nero's biological dad was poisoned by his mom before he was born and his mom was in exile the first three years of his life. With parents like these Nero did not have a very moral up bringing as you can probably see. In AD fifty-four Claudius died and Nero became Caesar. Historian Charles Merivale wrote about Nero calling him "The last and most detestable of the Caesarean family." Nero was one of a select body of rulers including King Arthur, Frederick Barbarossa, Frederick II "Stupor Mundi" and Hitler - men cut off by sudden or mysterious deaths which people refused to believe had ever really happened, weaving return sagas round their memory. The circumstances surrounding Nero's suicide by sword blow in sixty - eight AD - let alone the more bizarre aspects of his reign - were so mysterious they gave rise to a host of stories and legends. Impostors pretending to be the returning Nero appear...
