a result they have come to question the integrity of many written accounts from antiquity. the apostle peter is martyrdom on the vatican hill is one of them. it marks the dramatic climax of a religious legend but as one of the most powerful stories in church tradition. some one and a half centuries later a magnificent basilica was erected on the vatican you know of the sign believed to be the very spot where peter was buried. peter's basilica is a monument to the apostle and one of the holiest catholic shrines. in the catacombs deep below the church is an ancient roman graves a veritable city of the dead in which according to legend jesus is first apostle simon peter was buried. peanuts a dope up oto one of rome's grand squares in middle the. ages it was believed to be haunted by demons and evil spirits because it harbored the remains of the most barbarous man who ever walked the earth nero. in the twelfth century anyone entering the eternal city from the via flat mean yeah would have caught sight of the family tomb of the domi de niro's family. and it was here that nero lived on in the imagination of the people of rome long after the fall of the empire the ravens roosting in a walnut tree on the side of his remains were said to be demon sin the surface of nero. out of fear that nero him self could rise as a demon from hell pope us god the second had the tree cut down the tomb opened and nero sarcophagus removed then a church was built over nero's family mausoleum. nero's remains lie beneath its altar. a church to seal off neuros grave to banish him to the depths of the earth for all eternity. strong christian symbolism designed to put an end to the superstitions that plague the locals. christian tactics to counter the magic of the demon nero. in medieval rome banishing nero's remains to eternal obscurity seemed like a good idea nevertheless the priest at the church of santa maria don't pop although knows where nero is he had. an ancient tunnel beneath the church leads to the place where nero sarcophagus was allegedly stored. but the chamber at the end of the cord are. these empty. how did the roman emperor come to be known as the anti. i just and the beast of the revelation. it all started here the circus maximus at the foot of the palatine hill the green oval of the ancient racetrack and survived to this day the marrows time an audience of possibly two hundred fifty thousand could pack into the stadium to share the emperor's delight in chariot racing. the circus maximus was the biggest entertainment complex in the ancient world. it was also the origin of the spark that ignited the great fire of rock. it's the evening of july nineteenth and the year sixty four the summer heat is stifling and the shops clustered around the circus maximus there are hundreds of bars shops and stalls almost all of them constructed from wood with open fires burning everywhere the blaze breaks out under the racecourses wooden bleachers at the edge of the killing and in palatine elves soon a firestorm sweeps through the narrow corridors of the complex. it that my. near always out of town relaxing it is summer residence in antioch a seaside resort on the west coast frequented by wealthy functionaries and politicians it's a day's journey from rome. and here he's built a monumental waterfront palace that includes its own amphitheater where he pursues his artistic ambitions. word of the catastrophe reaches in that night and he hurries back to rome. the city is a sea of flames. when the fire eventually dies three of the city's fourteen administrative regions ravaged city nero set fire to rome to build a new city but he will rename the after himself. and the biggest nero cliche of them all while a city was burning nero mounted his private stage and comparing modern disasters with ancient and some of the destruction of troy. was what is there. in the story appears to corroborate accounts of his expressive facilities as an artist and of the way he presented himself at other times it's one of the many scenes that one is tempted to regard as an exaggeration of the literary sources but i'm not so sure. consider. what tacitus noted as a rumor was recorded as a fund to tony's nero started the fire. and a century after so tony use casio's dio wrote nero said his heart on accomplishing what had doubtless all. he's been his desire namely to make an end of the whole city and realm during his lifetime. because usually the main problem with these accounts lies in the fact that nero's image was colored by bias and hatred in one class it was the type tacitus plays a low-z. trick with nero in the great fire because he suggests that nero was responsible for the fire without openly saying so if he had come right out and said it his claim could very easily have been identified as an anti nero representation and very quickly discredited as such but by portraying the whole thing as a rumor as something vague and repeatedly portraying nero with such ambivalence tacitus lends greater credence to the impression that nero actually did set fire to rome more than he would have if he'd just alleged it straight out it. was at the revenge of the roman elite and an emperor who rejected what they saw as decorum. nero's biographers began painting a negative picture of the emperor as soon as he died and his body is reputation and survived into the twenty first century. thing. i'm certain that all surviving texts in any way connected to the famous fire of rome were tainted by all teary and motives it is interesting that it escaped validas there is no valid primary source testimony from which one could deduce that nero actually set fire to rome and if you try to list the reasons why he may have done so after all the arguments appear very tenuous there really is no motive that one could assign to a dark and tif. critter. even if nero played no part in starting the fire the romans blamed him none the less as pontifex maximus he was the high priest of the empire a mediator between the people. and the gods and baby seemed angry. nero was also commander of the vigilance rome's force of police and fire fighters and office traditionally held by the emperor and one taken very seriously by his predecessors people expected the emperor to rush to the scene of the final. nero couldn't he was an anti and get details didn't interest the public which felt betrayed by nero. his efforts to oversee firefighting operations were praised but they came to live. under warms. or nero lost a great deal of his capital among the population because he was very very late arriving back in rome after hearing about the fire so look at the whole thing and though he then assumed control of the rescue and reconstruction efforts the people still felt that he had arrived too late. before and we know from the examples of other roman rulers and even arrested kratz of the republic that when it comes to catastrophes it's always key to show up as quickly as possible nero missed that opportunity as mukesh no presents to the office on. christian graves dating from the first century. early evidence of a new sect that would rise to become a world religion. x. and p. alpha and omega the first and last letters of the greek alphabet suggest the all encompassing nature of god. ancient writers repeatedly reference christians and christ in their accounts of the great fire. tacitus wrote nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations called christians by their property. this. rome's establishment was incensed by the egalitarian ism of the christian community where freed men sat a long aristocrats a no go in the hierarchical and class conscious society of ancient rome. and cuts from delaware the traditional roman would have looked at a christian community and sat i mean i did because their attacks that quote them and this is an outrageous gathering which permits fishmongers wise to speak about religion and he ordered press. and credits and so a traditional roman would have found the christian community pretty scandalous and because of the disconcerting way it removed hierarchical distinctions in the social stratification he finds he owned it was given as a trust of. the church of son giovanni a power on the kalian hill this was where the super rich lived in nero's day and age. three meters under the church's foundations a subterranean world allows a glimpse into the past. back in nero's day this was a light filled city palace. the owner presided over a network of twenty rooms magnificently appointed with frescos. as was typical in the homes of rome as well healed the walls and ceilings were painted with fantastical creatures and mythological scenes. but the owner of these rooms was christian. the proof lies in the press goes on the wall were the oldest surviving private chapel in rome dating from a time when support for the jewish sect was not dangerous because the citizens of rome enjoyed religious freedom. the world of roman guns. it was hard to navigate every aspect of life was governed by a different daddy. each god was no better than the person worshipping at its altar you could be equally cruel insidious evil or eventual the gods were immortal like super heroes but their world was as hierarchical as that of humans on earth. jupiter the supreme god wielding thunder and lightning to control the skies and striking fear into the hearts of more or less. for fear of offending an important day of the romans tended to adopt the gods of conquered lands getting them to their burgeoning pantheon. in nero's day dozens of sanctified for new followers but faith in the traditional collection of pagan gods dominated across the empire most romans unquestioningly followed the rights of their religion priests appeased the gods with sacrifices and as long as the empire prospered all was well. tombstones and inscriptions from the first century the romans to believed in an afterlife but their ideas of what it looked like differed. one thing all romans had in common was a fear of being forgotten. immortal glory was the highest achievable goal those are good afforded mark their grave with a tombstone. them in fact question it's the motivation behind the past occasion of christians through the roman authorities probably lay in the notion that this here was an unpredictable bunch of. who it was fit could start a revolution. and before the most. from your own or his advisors couldn't possibly have asked for a better scapegoat. with some three thousand members of the roman christian community was a minority that was viewed with suspicion reviled feared and hated by the population at large. and after the catastrophe of the fire nero new rome was clamoring for justice. like all emperors nero feared the fury of the masses so he went on the offensive. there were no public prosecutors under the roman legal system charges were filed on the basis of accusations brought by individuals it's not known how many christians were interrogated or arrested but it's clear only a small percentage of rome's christian community was targeted. justified or not the arsonists arrest was branded religious persecution at the end of the second century by the christian theologian to to india. in the fifth century christian monks produced copies of ancient texts and may well have intentionally falsified their accounts in the process. it's likely that tacitus is original works delivered a far less damning indictment of nero than the versions we know today. if they created the impression we have today that ever since the dawn of christianity there were violent waves that persecution in which christians was systematically and indiscriminately lined up for execution that is true of russia's persecution of christians in the twentieth century and that the current situation in the middle east but not in antiquity but that's just me and. on a late summer day in the year sixty four crowns a. towards the palatine you know. it's showtime at the imperial palace where emperor nero has opened the gates to his gardens the people of rome have been demanding revenge for the loss of loved ones and property in the fire. the emperor lights up the festivities with the perpetrators using their bodies as human torches. nero reportedly ordered tar pitch to be poured on christians who were crucified and set on fire to light up his garden death by fire was common punishment for arsonists so that was nothing unusual what is strange for us today is the juxtaposition of jovial festivities and a brutal mass murder. another indication of just how strange life could be in ancient rome. as god went on the evil kinds of this for there was no systematic religious persecution of christians under nero and. the so called persecution of christians must be viewed in the context of the great fire and it's rather a caution it's the. most honk and it's all it was designed to offer the romans who had experienced great suffering if a big spectacle before namely people who were on fire be nameless but enda mention . according to christian legend the apostle peter was also among those condemned to death. the story first surfaces in a second century collection of writings about peter's life. and others adopted the story as a motif. for most christians this legend has long since become historical fact. but the opulent tomb of the apostle in st peter's basilica is a senator and de grey. the whereabouts of st peter's bones is controversial and always ask me. if there is no valid historical evidence to support the theory that peter was ever an ironic our oldest source the late first century pistol of claimant only alludes generally to the fact that christianity is two leaders met their deaths in significant places and gives no further details. in fifteen forty five martin luther wrote i am content to be able to say since i have seen it and heard it at rome that it is unknown where in the city the bodies of st peter and paul are located or even whether they are there at all. even the pope in the cardinals know very well that they do not know. in one nine hundred forty pope pius the twelfth authorized the search for the bones of the apostle peter beneath the basilica. digging was conducted in secrecy and at night so no one would hear anything above in the basilica it wasn't long before workman made a significant discovery. soon the vatican archaeologist was overseeing the operations for the find was a christian tomb and ultimately a handful of clones was on earth it was only twenty five years later that pope paul the sixth announced the remains of st peter had been found below the vatican. after the great fire nero set about reconstructing the destroyed districts two thousand years later not much of his efforts has survived the ruins of an insulating a multistory department block. in nero's day such tenements were groundbreaking both in terms of architecture and city planning as a way of providing housing for the growing population of. nero made his mark on the city's design and proved to be a visionary and pragmatic planner with his advisors he set out to rid rome of its narrow streets and congested spaces unbearably confined in the hot summer months. instead he ordered wide avenues in colonnades to provide shade a mammoth project that nero helped finance from his own coffers tacitus praised nero's actions as wise and prudent. at last i'm going to be able to be housed like a human being that is house of tony is quote here on the completion of his new palace the domus aria or golden house. it's wall and ceiling frescoes were rediscovered at the height of the renaissance painters were abseiled down into the subterranean labyrinth of the palace to copy the works of their predecessors ferment degree dean. romo is no stranger to palaces but the sheer size of nero's new toiling was unprecedented. romans complained one house was taking over the entire city to tony as wrote parts of the house were overlaid with gold they were dining rooms with fretted ceilings of ivory whose panels could turn and showered down flowers and were fitted with pipes for sprinkling the guests with perfume as. the architectural highlight and heart of the palace was the octagonal hall of all to dome built on an octagonal basis one of the first known concrete vaults in the history of architecture. as atoning has remarked the hall constantly revolved day and night. like they haven't. the complex consumed eighty hectors in the center of rum the entire palace complex was laid out like a stage accessible to all it included a huge artificial lake it's own suter villas with fields of vineyards and woodlands teeming with all kinds of team down. even by imperial standards the golden house was nothing short of bombastic. nero commissioned a giant statue of his likeness golden thirty meters high for the entrance hall of his palace was all this a sign of megalomania proof of his madness. it would enable nish to buy its looked at side and if i wouldn't describe nero as crazy not because i rule out that he was crazy but because ultimately we just know too little about nero to classify him as such. as it's a car to the human and we need to keep in mind is that even if his contemporaries described him as crazy and they did his behavior doesn't necessarily have to have a pathological explanation wouldn't listen to your boy tick and so on dust they could simply be a label for his inappropriate inexplicable and surprising conduct which people simply lacks the means to describe them and i'm fucked under mukesh carden don't scheibel got a. chance or just concluded that it was nero's artistic streak can show mean shit they were most damaging to his reputation. the biographer contemptuously recounts nero's performance of a woman giving birth. the emperor on stage as a pregnant woman playing to a capacity audience. and taking gender role reversal to the point of absurdity. until flesh nero's sexual escapades were particularly open to attack because he demonstrative lay crossed the line when it came to gender and social norms and if a man doesn't it here to norms he simply can't be an adequate ruler in political terms like. in the year sixty five nero's enemies began plotting to assassinate him. his greek style arts festival the neuron i was coming up and many roman senators couldn't bear the prospect of their emperor once again making a fool of himself identifying roman tradition. for many of the emperor's appearance on a public stage was scandalous. but not all of rumsey lead condemned nero second career. as an oft with. reactions to his performances were very mixed we know of roman aristocrats who supported nero's performances and encouraged them others were deeply contemptuous of what he debt and it was tessa tests and particular who gave a voice to their view a horse for tots it was. a conspiracy was exposed and nero's police cracked down at least nineteen men and women were arrested going to go on their social status they were killed or forced to commit suicide neuros former tutor an advisor seneca was one of the. nero put his life on public display he gave guitar of performances and poetry recitals and increasingly he appeared on stage in roles that echoed his own personal history erasing the boundary between stay. i think. he was clearly identifying himself with the characters he played a part and he went so far as to specifically select roles that reflected episodes in his own life. that's most evident in the murder of pina. he repeatedly performs the role of arrest is the greatest epitome of matricide in antiquity and by doing so repeatedly reminded the public of his own mother's murder. as your. heroes first biographers describe using the scene like attacks and growing state of anxiety. it was at this time that nero made a fateful decision. he really didn't want to rule over the roman world as the princeps the emperor he wanted to recycle witchery he wanted to perform he wanted success as a chariot race or because he wanted to stand in front of a large audience naturally he tried to assert himself as emperor but probably only because it afforded him a heightened experience of the things that really matter to d.c. invocation of eyes also the. nero disregarded all the warnings in place to government in the hands of his trusted freedman. in august sixty six he took his show on the road to greece he was accompanied by an entourage of six thousand people with string instruments clothes and theatre masks crusade for the arts. bureau and ask the organizers of all four. games the name ian with the in this to be end and olympic games to reschedule their competitions within the same year so that he nero could take part . in the able for then we have accounts that reveal nero suffered from severe stage fright before these events but that he still put in spirited performances against his competitors and he has always tremendously surprised when as if by coincidence he won first place and very humbly accepted the prizes and the applause. even if he'd fallen off the chariot and nearly died during the race and this. as we hear so here again we have the phenomenon that we can observe in many other areas of nero's person he was living in his own world and shaping his own reality a shuffle hot. aside from athletic competitions like chariot raising the games also featured artistic contests nero took part in all of them organizers displayed ingenuity as they vied for the emperor's favor they hired veteran singers who still saying well but were no longer interested in accolades nurul was celebrated as the most successful competitor since the birth of the games. the venue of olympia served him as a stage and he won every competition. it will never be known whether nero was aware of this charade but he didn't just accept the trophies that came with his victories he also pocketed the cash prizes gold that he badly needed to restock use depleted travel fund where. is certain is that nero's popularity among his subjects reached its zenith during his tour of greece. could no longer stomach nero's act they viewed it as a mockery of the imperial comfort. the new conspiracy took shape. the leg it's been dicks and got joined forces in a rebellion. got a very good his legion declare him emperor. one last time nero mobilized his loyal generals and initially he even won the upper hand but then he sank into up. the ancient texts repeatedly note that in the final phase and made the first signs of apostasy nero would certainly have had the chance to turn back the tide in his favor has he shown more determination. reached out and taken the necessary steps and good but he didn't his response was hesitant at times he didn't respond at all and merely concentrated on his artistic interests and that served to solidify the opposition and facilitate iran's downfall and the or shameless. the new prefect of the praetorian guard in future use of venus informed nurul that his loyalists had all abandoned him. but this was a lie. as tacitus wrote nero was undone by rumors and vague intelligence not by force of arms. just as on which bits if you combine i think what was particular about nero was that he knew no boundaries he staged his life like a play his life was one big spectacle. what if and i believe he always planned his end accordingly. and so in scenario doesn't it didn't play out that way because of the particular circumstances and also because he panicked too soon but in the rose life there's virtually no way of differentiating between theater drama the stage and real life will go on forever he goes on. nero fled rome. the biographers of antiquity described his last hours as the death of a cowardly tyrant not man enough to voluntarily and his own life. bad p.r. until the very end. and yet this emperor did rack up victories even if they weren't on the battlefield. what we can determine is that under nero latin literature really flourished amid a burst of literary activity felt the pull the team aspect the positive side of nero's personality was certainly his enthusiasm his love of the arts and culture which had a formative influence on rome not just in the development of the arts but also in city planning and in entertainment where romans were familiar with greek culture but not so much with things like athletics so he was absolutely pioneering in these respects absolutely and who's in that house and he saw himself in the first place as an artist and only in second place as emperor that's why i always described nero as the emperor artist question. the ancient drama starring emperor nero ended with his words what an artist dies in me then he stabbed himself in the throat with a dagger. the script of nero's life needs a rewrite it remains unclear whether st peter was ever in rome to heighten the drama of his narrative christian historians later cast nero as the anti christ. nero was. no monster nor was he any more brutal than many so-called good emperors but the dead do not write their own history and nero's was tainted by the passage of time. the bishop of rome became the head of the church and rome the center of christianity. would get. earth home to millions of species a home worth saving. googling dia's tell stories of creative people and innovative projects around the world like to use the protect the climate boost green energy solutions and reforestation. using interactive content to inspire people to take action global audience the environment series of global three thousand on t.w. and online in may nine hundred sixty eight and zero crossing echoed around the world. young people rebelled against their parents generation to make up wasn't on salute and dusty full of stupidity until. they demanded nothing less than a home society the wanted maelstrom of concealed guns. how did those murder remember the. most and for the first time i had a feeling of being accomplish some of. the seeds of civil rights. peace movement. plan. nine hundred sixty eight. the global revolt starts september first on the double.