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Decadent and Depraved Roman Emperors Who Shocked their Subjects

Khalid Elhassan February 11, 2025 15 min

12. The Price of Depravity and Decadence

Nero had a freedman stab him to death. The Daily Telegraph

Nero dedicated himself to pleasure and spent lavishly to gratify his desires. In the meantime, he neglected the Roman Empire and entrusted its governance to corrupt subordinates, who wrecked it. Finally, in 68 AD, various generals and provincial governors rebelled, the Senate declared Nero a public enemy, and his Praetorian Guard abandoned him. Nero contemplated throwing himself upon the public’s mercy and begging forgiveness. He changed his mind when informed that he would probably be torn apart by the first mob that came across him. So he had a freedman stab him to death, and cried out with his last breath: “Oh, what an artist dies in me!“

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.