Nero

Life

Nero was born a descendant of the family of Augustus. When his mother, Agrippina the Younger, married the emperor Claudius, Nero became the emperor's adopted son. Upon Claudius's death in 54, he became emperor at the age of sixteen. In the early years of his reign, he was assisted by his tutor, the philosopher Seneca, and by Burrus, prefect of the Praetorian Guard, and he is generally regarded as having governed with relative stability during this period. In 59, however, he had his mother, Agrippina, murdered, and thereafter his rule increasingly gave way to extravagance and tyranny. In 68, after the governors of Gaul and Hispania rose in revolt and the Senate declared him a "public enemy," he took his own life on the outskirts of Rome. His death ended the line of emperors from the family of Augustus.

Role in Church History

In church history, Nero is associated above all with the persecution of Christians. According to the Annals of the Roman historian Tacitus, when a great fire broke out in Rome in 64, a rumor spread that Nero had started it. Nero shifted the blame onto the Christians and had them cruelly executed. This is regarded as the earliest recorded persecution of Christians by Roman authorities.

His reign also overlaps with the New Testament period. When Paul declared, "I appeal unto Caesar" (Acts 25:11), the emperor was Nero, although the Book of Acts does not name him. Church tradition holds that Peter and Paul were martyred in Rome during Nero's reign, but the exact dates and circumstances remain uncertain. In 66 a revolt against Rome broke out in Judea, and the resulting war culminated in the fall of Jerusalem in 70, after Nero's death.

Influence on the Korean Church

In sermons and Sunday school materials in the Korean church, Nero is frequently cited as the representative figure of the persecution endured by the early church. Henryk Sienkiewicz's novel Quo Vadis, set in the time of Nero, and the films based on it have also become widely known in Korea.

Interpretations of the Book of Revelation differ on Nero. Regarding the "number of the beast," 666, in Revelation 13:18, scholars who follow the preterist interpretation hold that it refers to Nero, on the grounds that when "Nero Caesar" is written in Hebrew, the numerical values of its letters total 666. By contrast, futurist interpretations, including dispensationalism, regard the beast as the Antichrist who will appear in the last days. In the Korean church, the futurist interpretation is widely held at the popular level. The interpretation one adopts also shapes how one reads Revelation 13:1–10.

Assessment

The ancient historians Tacitus, Suetonius, and Cassius Dio generally portrayed Nero as a tyrant, and this view carried over into church tradition. It is widely held that the story that he "fiddled while Rome burned" is a later legend; Tacitus himself recorded that Nero was away from Rome, at Antium, when the fire broke out. Some modern scholars argue that the records left by the senatorial class are excessively hostile to Nero, and they maintain that he enjoyed considerable popularity among the common people. Indeed, after his death several individuals appeared claiming to be "Nero returned to life." Scholars also debate how accurate Tacitus's account is regarding the scale and nature of the persecution.