The Short Story Collection

Emperor Nero

Agrippina screamed as she bore down, the pain like a bolt of lightning from Jupiter himself striking her very core. Her ladies tended to her, wiping her brow, lighting incense, and offering her blood in supplication. As the night of Nox enveloped the palace, a wail echoed through its muraled halls. Exhausted but triumphant, Agrippina held the newborn to her chest as her husband leaned over her.
'Well, what is it' he sniped.
‘A boy, we will call him Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus. Nero for short.'
16 years later…
Agrippina's red silk stola pooled elegantly on the cold marble floor of the Senate. Beside her, her son, the newly crowned Emperor Nero, sat draped in a deep plum tunic. As the soldiers' cheers echoed through the chamber, the stone vibrating beneath her sandals, Agrippina allowed herself a satisfied smile. She imagined the shouts were for her—after all, if she hadn't eliminated Nero's rivals, she wouldn't have been here today. "A splendid display of power and unity," Agrippina later remarked to the Senate and royal court. By the end of the day, even the fishermen at the docks recounted the tale of Nero's rise to power as they filleted salmon under the harsh sun.
Agrippina's ambition grew bolder as the days passed. She saw Nero's youth as both a vulnerability and an opportunity. 'you're the youngest Emperor there ever was, Nero. We must not give the people any room to doubt our authority. Let me accompany you to the Senate. I can ensure no one has any hidden agendas that threaten your rule'. Once eager for his mother's support, Nero grew more agitated by the day; his mother's support had shifted to dominance, gripping him like a noose.
5 years after the rise of emperor Nero…
'She wields too much power, Nero. Her image is on your coin; she holds court in the Senate, and she even tried to rule in your stead to meet with ambassadors from Greece," Burrus raged, holding up a coin and shaking it in frustration. The gold glinted in the sunlight, and there, on the coin, was the undeniable proof: Agrippina's image displayed, her hand resting above Nero's head.
Nero sat in silence, his gaze drifting to the contortionist performing in the corner of the room. Just last week, he had triumphed in the chariot races against the common folk. With a heavy sigh, he dismissed the gawking courtiers with a wave, leaving only his advisor, Burrus, standing before him.
"What do you suggest I do now?" Nero asked wearily. "I've already dealt with my stepbrother for his failed attempt to overthrow me. My mother understands her position. What's left to address?"
Poppea, Nero's new lover, sauntered in and draped her arms around his neck, planting a sweet kiss on his cheek. "My love, Your Majesty," she murmured, her tone laced with concern, "no other emperor would be controlled by his mother. It's humiliating. You're seen as a mummy's boy, still clinging to her."
Nero sprang to his feet, his face flushed with anger. "Silence, woman!" he roared, his hand striking out toward Poppea. "I will manage my mother myself!" His words came out in a fierce spray of spittle that landed at her feet.
Rumors of Agrippina's death spread through Antium like wildfire. In the communal toilets of the royal palace, the court gossiped fervently.
"I heard Poppea called him a mummy's boy, and Nero had Agrippina killed out of sheer humiliation," Lady Lea chuckled, her voice dripping with scandal.
Another woman scoffed dismissively. "That's nonsense. We all know how controlling his mother was. It's hardly surprising."
Murmurs of agreement rippled through the crowd. "I heard Nero tried to poison her three times. When that failed, he had her ship sunk, and when she survived that, he sent an assassin to stab her."
Lady Burrus, adjusting her stola, added with a grim tone, "I heard Agrippina told the assassin to stab her in the womb, cursing her own body for giving birth to such a monstrous son."
Her words prompted shocked gasps and whispers as the women trailed out the door, their curiosity piqued.
Freed from his mother's control, Nero threw himself into a whirlwind of pursuits. He was often seen hurtling through the Circus Maximus in his carriage, weaving dangerously between carts as his laughter echoed through the city. At the Olympic Games, he became the subject of gossip not for his skill but for his insistence on winning, regardless of the rules. His latest conquest was a villa, Domus Aurea, spanning fifty hectares. In the royal palace, his sister wife Claudia struggled to maintain composure. She forced a tight-lipped smile during court gatherings while fielding questions about Nero's latest exploits. Her eyes betrayed a mix of disdain as she overheard the gossiping courtiers and witnessed Nero's increasingly outrageous behaviour.
The palace grew tense as Poppea's pregnancy became a public affair. It was no secret she wanted to become the empress. One afternoon, she told him as much after she lay with Nero.
"Your Majesty," Poppea began, her voice smooth but resolute, "I am carrying your child, and it is time to make things right. Claudia has failed to bear you an heir, and our child deserves to be born into a legitimate union. You must divorce her and marry me."
Nero's eyes narrowed, a flicker of spite igniting in his gaze. The thought of finally breaking free from Claudia's presence and his mother's final shadow would be satisfying.
"Very well. I will divorce Claudia". His eyes hardened with resolve as he considered the prospect of severing the last ties to his mother's influence. Just twelve days later, after the divorce, Nero and Poppea were married amidst the whispered gossip of the court.
Nero seemed utterly abandoned by the gods. Self-absorbed and immature, he showed no concern for his people as a catastrophic fire engulfed the city. For six harrowing days and nights, the inferno raged unchecked, devouring everything in its path. Entire districts were swallowed by the flames and were reduced to smouldering ruins as ten of the city's fourteen districts turned to ash. The air was thick with smoke and despair, but Nero remained unmoved in the comfort of his seaside villa, far from the cries of the dying and the devastation unfolding in the city.
As Rome burned, he lounged, indifferent to the suffering beyond his walls. Only when word reached him that his grand palace, the Domus Aurea, had been consumed by the flames did his anger flare. Yet, even then, his concern was for his own loss. With cold detachment, he quickly assured those around him that no expense would be spared in rebuilding the palace, making it clear where his priorities lay as his empire lay in ruins.
Amidst the growing unrest and mounting fears of riots, Nero's court, eager to deflect blame and protect the old order, pressured the Emperor to find a scapegoat for the disaster. The tension between Rome's traditional paganism and the emerging Christian faith offered a convenient target. Seizing the moment, Nero channelled his fury toward the Christians, accusing them of arson and portraying them as a threat to the gods and the empire's stability. By framing the Christians as enemies of Rome's ancient traditions, he not only sought to quell public outrage but also to reaffirm the supremacy of paganism. Thus began a ruthless era of persecution, where faith became a battleground, and the Christians sacrificed to preserve the status quo.
Nero felt the weight of the gods' disdain even more acutely when Poppea gave birth to a daughter. Though he was deeply smitten with both his wife and their child, his desperation for a male heir drove him to pressure Poppea into becoming pregnant again. She assured him that this time, she carried a son.
The relentless buzz of social gossip gnawed at Nero's mind, each whispered rumour and sidelong glance deepening his paranoia. He became convinced that everyone around him had hidden agendas, and their every word was a potential threat. Once-trusted advisors now seemed like treacherous schemers, plotting in shadowed corners of the palace. His sleep grew restless, haunted by visions of betrayal and the looming spectre of his downfall. As his fears festered, Nero's temper became increasingly volatile, and his outbursts became more frequent and severe.
Then, amid this growing storm of suspicion, Poppea was announced dead—just weeks before she was due to give birth to the long-awaited heir. The timing was too precise, too convenient to be mere chance. Though the official story spoke of tragedy, whispers hinted at something darker. Nero's own actions, driven by fear and desperation, cast a long shadow over her untimely demise, leaving others to wonder if the Emperor himself had a hand in the cruel fate that befell his empress.
In the palace kitchens, servants gossiped. 'I heard they were arguing about him spending all his time at the races, and he kicked her in the stomach and killed the babe and her,' a young girl said, scrubbing a pot.
The cook shook his head. 'Nope, I heard from one of his man servants he kicked her about all the time; her death was from poison.'
The matron strode in, smacking the cook and girl round the back of the head. 'Get back to work. Anyway, her lady's maid told me the babe came too early and her labour too difficult. She told Nero of her undying love before she passed.' A housekeeper nodded. 'Yeah, and there is no way he would have had her embalmed and given divine honours if he didn't love her.'
The cook shrugged, seeming to accept the answer. 'Still weird that he had that poor slave boy sports castrated and married in public dressed as her, though.' The workers shared a grimace and shudder.
Amid smoke-filled murals and the shadows of ancient stone walls, a woman sat on a worn stool over a gaping hole, where noxious gases rose in thick, swirling waves. She mumbled incoherently, her eyes darting feverishly beneath half-closed lids as if chasing elusive visions. Chestnut hair clung to her sweat-drenched brow, adding to the eerie aura that permeated the chamber. Around her, the other acolytes, her sisters in service, moved silently, transcribing the priestess's cryptic words with meticulous care.
'He comes—the killer,' murmured the blonde sister, her hair cascading like streams of honey down her robe. Her voice trembled with a mixture of awe and dread.
'We should send word to stop him,' the auburn-haired sister replied, her deep frown carving lines of worry into her face.
The priestess slowly opened her eyes, blinking as if emerging from a deep trance. She stumbled off the stool, her legs weak and unsteady, and leaned heavily on her raven-haired sister as she collapsed onto a nearby chaise lounge. Her breath came in ragged gasps, but a dark smile played on her lips. 'No, let him come,' she rasped, her voice tinged with cruel anticipation. 'I will relish the moment when I turn him away.' Her low and sinister laughter quickly dissolved into a fit of hacking coughs that echoed through the chamber.
Nero had reached his limit. With his slave wife Sporus in tow, he set sail. The wind battered the ship in every direction, and the clap of thunder and crack of lightning made his ears ring. His head hung in a chamber pot for five days, a scene most un-emperor-like as Sporus tended to him like a wife should. Sporus murmured assurance of his love for Nero into his ears, stroking him to completion in the small windows of reprieve. Nero was to travel the sharp hills and white cliffs to the Delphi oracles. The all-female priestess was cared for by the likes of castrated men waving palm leaves in service of Apollo. They sat undisturbed by the daily churning of life instead, encompassed by fumes that said to dry your mouth to the bone and leave you delirious, with shadows screaming at you for days. Nero hated the idea; his mother once pushed him to see them when he first ascended to Emperor, but now he was left with no choice. He saw the looks in court and knew that they thought of him unhinged; he must know his future and secure his ruling.

Nero dismounted the mule, butt aching and legs tingling. He stomped his feet loudly outside the doors of the temple. His entourage glanced over as they attended their mounts, tying them to a nearby post. Nero observed his surroundings; the temple of Apollo sat in a dip of the cliff. Chalky white walls towered above them to their left, the forest at the top reaching to Olympus. To his right laid a slight stretch of neatly lined statues before violently dropping off, farmland all the way to the docks in the horizon. The journey from the boat had taken hours, and if he didn't feel so queasy, he was sure he would have killed someone by now with his raging tempers. As it was, he could feel his temper bubbling in his stomach when he faced the temple. Rectangular, the temple roof lay on towering columns of limestone and marble. Apollo looked on in his horse-drawn chariot from the courtyard; the only access to the building was from a ramp leading to green doors tall enough for a titan. Nero huffed at having to serve himself, making a pilgrimage like some commoner; he strode up the ramp and heaved open the green door, sweat dripping at the strain. Sweet-smelling fog draped over him as his steps echoed on the marble floor. The slam of the door sounded behind him, pitching him into blindness.
Nero's heart stuttered in his chest. 'Just some stupid women playing tricks,' he told himself. The fog weaved around the pillars, filling the room with a cloying sweetness that quickly dried his throat. Fleshy padding sounded to his left, bare-footed footsteps, yet when he looked, only fumes swirled lazily around a statue of a bare-breasted female. The fog deepened, and Nero coughed, batting a hand left and right as he moved further inwards.
'What is it you seek' A siren's voice called from the mist.
'Seek, seek, seek' female chorus echoed off the pillars, and Nero twirled and staggered around, and yet no one was there. Growling in rage, he stumbled his way to a pillar, hand reaching out only to hold nothing. 'whores'he snarled to the temple, his voice rising in the fog.
A deep chuckle kissed Nero's ear. He stopped, the hairs rising on his arms. The marble beneath his feet was freezing, and the sweet warmth of the noxious fumes now felt like an icy blizzard.
Apollo.
Nero's pain reached through his legs as he slammed down onto his knees in supplication.
The fog thinned, but the heavy, icy presence behind him did not. The high priestess Pythia sat above an open stool. Sweet-smelling gases rose from a large hole in the ground up through her legs, over her stomach, and curled around her hair in a halo. Her eyes were half-mast, and her hair flowed down like a river. Nero would have mistaken her for being in the throes of coupling ecstasy if he could not see her sitting on the stool himself. Her robe was nothing, white silken strips draped down from her shoulders past her breasts pinned at her navel. There, the fabric spilled down the stool, covering her sex from view as she sat wide, her legs bracing the sides of the stool as fumes drifted up.
'What is it you want' a black-haired woman called Frostily. Her hair was blacker than Nox's night, and her face paler than death.
'I am emp-'
'We know who you are.' A blonde siren called. If the chestnut-haired priestess was erotic, this woman was a siren, all heady eyes, and rose-tinted cheeks.
The woman looked at the mumbling Pythia sitting above her and frowned. 'You are not welcome here,' she said.
Nero jumped to his feet, temper flaring as the fog shifted in great plumes around him. 'I must know my destiny; you will tell me. I will not have some woman deny me. I am your Emperor.'
The siren said nothing, her eyes hardening into cobalt ice, and she turned again to the incoherent mumblings of the priestess. Nero felt weighed down physically, straining not to bend in supplication at the invisible weight looming in the icy fog behind him. The fumes from the crack Pythia sat above seemed to hiss and spue at his outburst. Deep male laughter echoed around the chamber, and the acolytes tilted their heads up, arms spread at their sides, a peaceful smile spreading over their faces as their eyes closed.
'Pain,' the pale one said.
'Dissent,' the blonde one giggled. Her hair blowing in an invisible breeze.
'Death,' An auburn-haired girl breathed.
Nero shook the wave of fear finally swallowing him. 'No,' he whispered to no one.
The acolytes still stood with their heads thrown back and eyes closed as the fumes rose and swirled and then shaped—impossibly tall, wide, and structured—like a man—a god. 'Yes,' a voice crooned next to his ear.
Pythia snaped up straight in her stool, eyes white and unseeing as they widened. 'Your presence here outrages the god you seek. Go back, matricide; the number 73 marks the hour of your downfall'.
Enraged by the temple's reception, Nero ordered it burned to the ground. He did not care about the woman keening and wailing in ropes tied to Apollo's chariot. They had already told him he would die at 73. It didn't matter what he did, for he would live a long reign.
The years passed, and Nero forgot about any of the prophecies past the numbers seventy and three. Nero lost all pretence of appeasing and debating, sentencing any rivals to death, and quelling rebellion with blood and iron. Driven by selfish wants to trapeze the Olympus games and involve himself with common wants, Nero often neglected, disagreed, and ignored the nobles, senates, and royals. He no longer cared for the whispers in his marble palaces and rarely deigned to show his face utterly blind to the grumbling dissent he brewed.
June AD 68
The rebellion had spread like spores of mould through the Senate. Alarmed at the rise in taxes, governor Vindex of Gallia rebelled, refusing to fund the Emperor's boyish galivanting and starving his people. Rufus, the governor of Germania, was dispatched to kill the rebellion quickly and with blood. Governor Vindex rallied impressive allies from the surrounding countries, including Governor Galba of Hispania. Vindex convinced Galba to declare himself Emperor in opposition to Nero. Still, Nero did not worry; he had dispatched Rufus to quell the rebellion and was assured he would live into old age by destiny. He did worry about losing his seat.
The Emperor's men battled in Vesontio, and Nero won due to Rufus' unwavering loyalty and Governor Vindex's suicide. Nero celebrated with whores and wine and chariot racing. He quickly declared the opposing governor turned emperor Galba as a public enemy. Nero did not understand when those in his very court turned like vipers, his personal army guards and spymasters, the patron guard defected, joining Galba. Nero fled from Rome, hoping to sail to one of the eastern provinces still tightly in his grip. Yet his guards refused to escort him. 'Is it so dreadful a thing then to die?' they said. He briefly toyed with the idea of going to Galba and asked him and his court for mercy but chose against it, leaving a note in the empty drawer of his villa. He would live to seventy-three, but not as an emperor; Nero slept on his last evening in the palace before waking to find the Senate had named him a public enemy and Galba as their Emperor. The imperial freedman Phaon offered his villa as sanctuary, and under the cover of darkness and in disguise as a woman Nero and his four most trusted, Epaphroditus, phaon, neophytus, and Sporus, reached the villa. The clopping of horses woke Nero from his sleep. At the sound of a horseman, Nero lost his nerve; he launched himself at Epaphroditus and ordered him to kill him.
Nero died on June 8, AD 68, and was overthrown by Servius sulpicius Galba, who declared himself Emperor at the age of seventy-three.