A history lesson on Roman Emperor Nero

right now. You ever thought about gouging out somebody's eye? What, Chris? It's part of this story we're about to tell is an eye gouging thing. I can't stop thinking about it. It was one of the parts of the Bible that used to fascinate me when I was a kid, because I was a big Samson fan, because you know, he and I have a lot in common. But Samson, when they Philistines got him, they gouged out his eyes or

burnt out his eyes. I don't know. I heard it a couple different ways, but I will tell you that occupied a lot of my thinking when I was a child. Why Chris, Because it's sick and it's gruesome, and I want to know how they did it, and I want to know how bad it hurt, and I want to do it to you. So no, I'm just kidding, but gouging out people's eyes is terrible, and it's part of our story. We talk about politics, the degradation of our politics.

We look at all the idiots and losers who run our country now and I'm not going to lie and say it's good, but I think every now and then maybe some perspective on real ugliness at the highest levels of power, how ugly it can get. You want to talk a little bit about Nero, You want to talk about Nero and branding. To stay with me here, Nero. I know you know who Nero was. You're probably going to learn a couple of things here, but I know you know who Nero was. He was a Roman emperor,

remember the Roman Empire. It's not how Rome began. Rome is mostly known today by people for its emperors, the Neros and Caligulas, and everyone knows who Julius Caesar is and those types. Even if you don't know anything about any of these people, that's what you know about. But Rome was originally a republic run by the Senate, and then through a long list of things that we've discussed many times on the show, Rome ended up well where we're going to be here in the time of Nero.

Rome ended up being run by one man, an emperor. Now, who is Nero? Where'd all this stuff come from? Okay, so let's do just a little bit of background on Nero. Something you know about Nero? I'm going to shoot a hole in today, should I should let you know right now? Yes? He was very very bad human being with there are some things about Nero that have been inaccurate anyway, So who was what's going on the time? This is about

the time of Jesus. It's after the time of Jesus, but I don't like to get specifics in nerd out on the dates. It's after fifty years after the time of Jesus. Okay, so that's roughly where we're at here. Jesus is gone, Chris's people killed him. It's over. Now we're in Rome, and there's another part of Rome. Honestly, Chris jokes aside, there's another part of Rome. You should understand the religious aspect of it. This is going to

come into play in Nero's life later on. Anyone who knows the history will understand a little bit of why. But the religious aspect of it. First Rome, you know what kind of religion they had, or at least I think you probably know what kind of religion they had. They had very similar to the Greeks. There's a god of the sun, and a god of war and a god of love, and you need a temple for this guy and a temple for this guy. So it's one

of those types of places. And we've had this talk before on the show, because it was a false religion was really its roots were created by the state to serve the state. That's a great way to test your religious beliefs. Do they serve the state? Do they serve the needs of the people in power? Miraculously, these societies so often had religions that really helped out the guys who were in charge, right, So it's a great way to test your belief system. Well, that was Rome's belief system,

you know, all the different all that crap. Well, then it comes to Jews in Christians Jews and Christians in Rome at this period of time, the Jews were a little bit more accepted, but not very much at all, for the exact same reason Jews in Christians, their belief system, their God, you know, the same God, Yahweh. He is outside of and above the Roman system. Initially, for the longest time Jews and Christians were persecuted in Rome. It wasn't specifically that they had an act to grind with

Chris or me or Yahweh himself. They had an ax to grind with any kind of a belief system that was above the Roman system, above and beyond the Roman emperor. You know, if you pin Chris down in the alleyway and you say, hey, you could choose Yahweh or Nero. They need here, They need him to say nero or that's a problem. Okay, you understand. So the Jews and the Christians were second class citizens is probably the most simplistic way I can put it at this time. But

separate is really what they were. This will come, This is going to come into play in a little while. Separate, separate meaning we have this whole Roman society, we have this whole Roman belief system. But then you have the Jews or the Christians. They live around each other, they prefer to work around each other. We know their God. They consider him above Nero, above the Senate, above Rome.

They had that. Okay, So remember they're not only fairly new as far as being introduced to the Romans go. They've set themselves apart from the Roman system. That was a problem. Right now, Back to the Nero thing. Nero was part of the Julius Caesar line. It's known as the Julio Claudian dynasty. Don't worry about that. That's nerding out on details. History nerds will nerd out on that. Don't worry about that. He was. He was part of the line of emperors. Back to Caesar Augustus. Who's Caesar

Augustus again, don't worry about memorizing all this. Caesar Augustus was the one who came after Julius Caesar, who actually did take over as the emperor and lived for so long and ruled Rome. He was still revered at this time. His mother, Nero's mother was actually the descendant of Augustus. All right, Now, it was a rough time, and it's it's crazy, it's funny, it's awful. There are a bunch of words I can use to describe ruling families throughout history.

We talk a lot about our Kennedys here in the United States of America, not just the fact that they've been in and around power forever. You know, we got Jack as a US ambassador, JFK himself obviously the president, our FK. You have all these different Kennedys. There's still Kennedy's today, our FK Junior just ran for president. All these Kennedys out there, we talk about the power they have and what else do we talk about? The tragedy and the and the scandal around them all the time.

Ted Kennedy's killing women with his car. JFK is getting shot in Dallas are. It's just been thing after thing after thing after thing, and that is a pretty consistent thing throughout history. When you get a family, you would think it'd be the opposite, at least I would if you were to say that Kelly family, we were about to become presidents. In fact, I was going to be elected president. Haha, that's a real joke. We all know

that's never happened here anyway. If I was about to be elected president, and my son James, he's going to be a United States Senator, and my son Luke after him is going to be a governor and their sons. Their sons are going to be presidents and senators and governors. Would you say that we would probably have a good life. You would probably say so. I would say so, Wow, that sounds pretty cool. Wow, presidents think of all. I bet you guys will make a lot of money. I

bet you it'll be great. Right. But the truth is, if you were to present me that opportunity right in front of me, right now, God comes down, He hands me a piece of paper and says, hey, Jesse, sign up for this life of royalty for yourself and your family. I don't think I would sign it unless he made me, because royal family are a disaster and this dynasty was no different. It was murder, intrigue, affairs, it was everything you can imagine in high level politics. Family member killing

family member, a complete disaster. And that brings us to Nero. That was not his name originally, but we're not going to nerd out on details. Nero. Nero's uncle was Caligula. There's only three names you need to learn in this whole story. Caligula was his uncle. You already know who that is, so that doesn't count. Caligula had a sister. Her name, and this one does matter. This is one of those women. She had to be a fascinating woman. Maybe an evil woman possibly, but had to be a

fascinating woman. I'd like to meet her, one of those people. You'd like to have dinner with her for an hour and just see what kind of person she is. Her name is Agrippina, and she is going to play a central role in the Nero story, a central role in our story today. Agrippina is the sister of Caligula. And you already know about Caligula and what a disaster he was. Eventually he gets displeased with Agrippina, and that's kind of where the Nero story begins. So we'll begin there in

a moment. Before we do that, let's do relief factor. I bet you all these people, I bet you there would have been less murder if they had relief factor. Think about it. What do you do for pain in the ancient Rome? Here You're gonna chew on some weird plant, go sacrifice a bull or something odd like that, when you could just be taking relief factor every single day, one hundred percent drug free. It's natural, developed by doctors.

What is it? It's a it's a daily supplement. You take it every day, and your body it's already fighting that inflammation that's making your back hurt, that makes your knee hurt, your your muscle's hurt. It's already trying to fight it. It needs help. That's what relief Factory is. It's the help. People talk about their pain disappearing completely.

Others talk about their pain being turned way down. But if you could just take a natural herbal supplement every morning and have that, wouldn't you Nineteen dollars and ninety five cents buys you three weeks of it. Go get some relief Factor dot com or call one eight hundred the number four Relief. We'll be back. What Chris, We can make jokes. It's fine, we get that right. The Jesse Kelly Show is the Jesse Kelly Show on a

or almost sad a Tuesday on a Wednesday. I remember, you can email the show Jesse at Jesse Kellyshow dot com. We're discussing some history now. In fact, we're discussing Nero. I kinda gave a little bit of backstory. His uncle was Caligula. Don't worry about that, but his mother. You do need to worry about. Her name was Agrippina, and you're gonna hear her name alive today. Agrippina was the

mother of Nero. Nero his father was and look, you never it's hard to psychologize somebody two thousand years later, But when you look at how Nero eventually turned out, you can really see how his childhood guided him. We'll get to the mother's side in a moment. His father was a senator, a very important man, but reportedly an angry drunk, had a terrible alcohol problem, and was violent to the point a fellow senator argued with him on the senate floor one day, and he tracked him down

later and gouged out his eye. Gosh, what's the worst you've ever held a grudge? So that was Nero's father. His father reportedly murdered some slave boy in traffic because there was some kind of a traffic incident or accident, and you just got mad and got out, just ed him and kept moving on his way. So we're talking about a violent, bad person. That's his father. Now his father dies, Caligula is in power doing all the horrible things Caligula did, most of which are not fit to

be talked about on a family radio show. So Caligula he decides he doesn't like his sister Agrippina anymore, and he banishes her her and her son, Nero, her young son. So Nero's father is dead, his mother and he have been banished to an island. Now remember this, you want to talk about how two different lives have well, the difference between the two different lives Nero has lived so far in Roman society, it was very much a caste system, where you would have the ruling elite, and there were

various levels of society. Nero was born into the Julian Claudian dynasty, meaning for however long he had lived, Nero would have lived royal life. A royal life so far. It would have been the finest foods, the finest horses, the comfiest beds. He would have had slaves and servants and tutors. He would have had things really, really good. And then boom, Uncle Caligila decides he doesn't like mom anymore. He banishes you to an island. You're not only banished

to an island, your tutor. His tutor was a dancer. Now that may not sound that extreme, but I need to pause Romans. In Roman society, they considered the arts theater actors dancers. They considered them to be equal or below ladies of the night. Everyone understands what I mean. I know there are kids listening. I'm trying to make this right. But women who sell things late at night,

they shouldn't be selling the dudes who are lonely. Roman society considered dancers beneath those people actors and that shit. This is going to come back in a plane a little while too. You have to know that about Roman society. The only tutor they gave young Nero was a dancer. And what else went into that I don't know. Now. Fast forward, Caligula is murdered. Caligula ends up getting murdered. It's a very famous story. Caligula had made himself the

bane of the existence of many, many powerful people. He was abusing senators, abusing their wives in front of the senators. He was signed up for an assassination. Caligula eventually gets assassinated and a guy takes over. His name's Claudius. You don't have to know that, it's not important for our story today, but Claudius takes over as the Roman emperor Claudius gets a hold of Agrippina, who's been banished, and he says, hey, come on back home. So now Nero

has grown up his royalty. He got banished to an island to live a really, really rough life, and then he's just been called back home, back into the arms of the new emperor, Claudius, and now he's royalty. Now they're not part of the actual you know, Claudius's home yet, but Agrippina seems to be working on that. You see, Agrippina is married for a while, and then her husband dies.

You'll notice a lot of people Agrippina, once dead in this story end up dying through sometimes mysterious, sometimes fairly obvious circumstances. Agrippina totally poisoned her husband. Agrippina's husband dies. Claudius he doesn't want to be left out. Remember when I told you it's rough light, it's a rough life for royal families. He murders his wife as well. Well, look at that, Agrippina. And this is a true story. Memory, This is not some book we're reading. Now you have Claudius,

the Emperor of Rome. You have Agrippina, the mother of Nero. Agrippina, I'm assuming was a charming woman at least that's like how that's how I like to imagine her in my mind. They decide they're a really good couple. Hey, look, you murdered your spouse and I murdered my spouse. Are we made for each other? And they decide to get together. But Claudius, Claudius already has a son. He has a son, and now he has this new wife, Agrippina. She's bringing

her son along. Well, this is an awkward situation when you are now in an empire where the next emperor is oftentimes the son or a relative of the current emperor. If you're Claudius, do you pick your biological son or this new boy Nero. Well that's where Agrippina again began to work her magic. Next is the Jesse Kelly Show on a Wednesday. Member. If you miss any part of the show, you can go download the podcast. It's free, iHeart, Spotify, iTunes.

All right, back to our story. We're talking about Nero. In case you're just now joining us, you're jumping in mid story. Don't worry, Oh, download a podcast if you miss the beginning of it. So Nero, Nero's mother, Agrippina, she manages to worm her way back into power in Rome, and she manages to marry the Emperor Claudius. Well, now you have Nero here. Claudius already had a biological son, Agrippina.

This is a woman who is ambitious, starts working her magic and working on Claudius, and she gets him to agree to adopt Nero as his official son. Now, let's pause really quickly and talk about Roman adoption. Adoption modern times one of the most blessed things you could ever do for somebody. It's freaking awesome. If you're listening to me and you adopt kids, you have so much respect from me. If you're a child who's been adopted, I know that can be difficult for sure. I have some

experience in this area. I know that can be difficult. Show some appreciation for your adoptive parents. It's really awesome thing in Roman high society back then. I don't want to sit and act like it was quite as as benevolent as adoption is today. Oftentimes these adoptions were for political reasons and other reasons. But there is something you need to know about Roman adoption back then, just like today, when a Roman adopted you, if you got adopted by

a Roman, one of these high society Romans. Then it was every bit as official as your biological son. It is as if the blood, the genes, the DNA, none of that stuff mattered at all. It was not kind of okay, we'll adopt them, and he can be kind of the side son, just like the adopted families handle it today. When you are adopted, you are mine, You are my flesh and blood. If that is how it was treated Claudius. Because the man I don't know whether

he just couldn't see straight around Agrippina. I have no idea what he was thinking. Claudius adopts Nero as his son. Well, now you have an emperor Claudius. He has a wife, Agrippina, who has a vested interest in one of the two sons. And the one of the two sons, Nero, happens to be the oldest son. And that matters a lot, you see, because there were rules in Roman society for how old you had to be in order to be emperor. And

actually I did some digging into this last night. When I thought about telling you this story, I decided I was going to figure out what the rules were. I'll be honest, I could never nail it down. I kept getting different rules from different sources. Here's what I do know this part. I know Nero. Fast forward a little bit. I'll come back and explain. But Nero does assume the throne at the age of sixteen. Okay, so he's sixteen

years old, all right. His brother, his stepbrother, I should say, did not get the throne because he wasn't considered to be old enough, which begs the question how old does one have to be to assume the throne? If sixteen is old enough and the other age is not old enough. Either way, Claudius adopts Nero, and now his mother is kind of in a race against time. And I can't believe Claudius didn't see this coming. Claudius preferred the other son. Obviously he's the son. He knew, he's the son he

had raised. But Agrippina understood the other son, whom Claudius preferred, was too young to be emperor. So she had a very slim window, a short time frame, if you will, to find a way for Claudius to abdicate the throne. If you will, Claudius sits down for dinner one night, he is not a stupid man by any stretch of the imagination. He is seeing Emperor after Emperor murdered Caliguila was just knifed about five minutes before this. He was well aware his life would be in danger as an emperor.

So Claudius had a food taster, well, Agrippina, once again the crafty devil she was. Agrippina found a way to buy off and manipulate the food taster, and they slipped a poisonous mushroom mushroom onto Claudius's table, onto his plate. Except they were so worried that everyone would knew he'd been poisoned, they chose a slow acting poison. Claudius sits down as emperor ingests some mushrooms. Whether it was on a pizza or not, I don't know. I like to

imagine it was. He eats a poisonous mushroom. He got drunk a lot, He got hammered that night, and so no one thought anything of it. When he got up. Oh, I can hardly stand slurring his words, complaining of a stomach ache. No big deer, no big deal. The emperor has a drinking problem, probably hangs out with Nancy Pelosi. Let's not stretch it. He goes off to his room, continues to get sick, but he's not dying. Agrippina's in the palace starting to get understandably concerned. Learned because he

is not dying. And if the emperor does survive, he is going to know he's been poisoned because those mushrooms, Ah, they did taste a little bit funny. So what does she do again? This woman must have been look, you don't want to make in your dinner, but she must have been an impressive human being. She scrambles. She gets to another person who she's manipulated and bought off. This person happens to be the palace freaking doctor. And what she do? She gets the palace doctor to take a feather.

The feather is dipped in a fast acting poison. This time the doctor brings it in too. Claudius says, oh, I heard you're sick. Here's a solution. Tickle the back of your throat with this feather. It'll make you throw up. You'll feel better. Claudius says, sounds good. Give me the feather, grabs the feather, Come on, is it down? Lays over dies right then and there and now you're Agrippina. You're looking around, and this all has worked out quite well

for you, hasn't it. You went from being the banished sister of Caligula, banished to a tiny, crappy island. Your emperor husband just keeled over dead, Your son freshly adopted by a miracle, Your son freshly adopted, appears to be the only one of the two boys who can take over the throne. And wow, look at how well things have worked out for you. Like I said, Agrippina was a woman to be reckoned with. There's no question about it. She was a woman to be reckoned with all right. Now,

after Claudius dies, this this stuff always gets ugly. There's all of fratricide and things going on. But Nero is eventually made emperor. Part of the reason Nero was made emperor is I know you're gonna find this shocking. Stop me if you've heard this one before. His mother managed to buy off the manipulate the right people, who were

the right people, well, the Praetorian Guard. We have to pause, actually everything in our story for a few minutes, and we have to discuss the Pretorian guard in Rome and what it was. You see you weren't allowed to carry arms in Rome. You weren't allowed to have a military in Rome. But they wanted some sort of a law enforcement really emperor protection unit, and they created one and

it was known as the Pretorian Guard. It ended up though, being a huge, huge problem because well, people back then, just as now, we didn't always understand power. So let's discuss the Petorium Guard and power in nero in more in just a moment. Before we do that, all this Roman history probably has your testosterone levels already going through

the roof. That's the good news. The bad news is that's going to fade away as soon as I stop talking about Rome, and we'll go back to drinking estrogen and we'll have no tea levels left and society will collapse, unless, of course, we start taking male vitality stacks from chalk. You see twenty percent increase in your testosterone in ninety days with natural herbal supplements. Ladies, they have a female vitality stack made special for you. Don't worry. Your testosterone

levels aren't going to go through the roof. They have chalk lit powder. I start out every day with chocltpowder. Again today, when I was walking out the door. I had to leave early for something. Ob had made me a smoothie chalk lit powder boom. I take off like a rocket, sh ready to go, and it's ch October. That means biggest discounts ever. Go. Get a subscription c hoq dot com. Promo code Jesse, or you can call them, text them five zero chuck three thousand. We'll be back this.

It is the Jesse Kelly Show on a Wednesday. Hope, Dave. Remember you can email the show Jesse at Jesse kellyshow dot com. Leave a voicemail eight seven seven three seven seven four three seven three. You're welcome to send love heye death threat. You're welcome to complain about history. We're just gonna delete all those because I'm gonna keep doing it whenever I feel like it. All right, back to back to our history. We're talking about Nero. We're setting

aside politics for a little while today. We're doing some Nero talk. Nero just took power. He's now the young Emperor. He's sixteen years old. He took power in large part, honestly one hundred percent because of his mother, Agrippina, who managed to poison and slither her way into power, gets yourself right next to the emperor, kills him too, allegedly, and now Nero takes over. Now let's pause on all that and talk about the Praetorian Guard quickly. We already

talked about the Petorian Guard. Roam didn't allow arms inside the city, no military units inside the city. So the Praetorian Guard was created to protect the Emperor and enforce some things inside the city. But this, of course, look, it goes to the mindset of the average American communists today. It's just a lack of understanding about power. I should say, you're liberal and peggy when she talks about guns, get the guns off the street. It's just a lack of

understanding about power. You see, you banished all the guns, you banished all the swords, and then you created a unit and they're the only ones that have swords and spears. Well, they're the only ones with power. Then instead of everyone having power, they're the ones with the true power. It's like that story I told you a little while ago about these uber rich guys who are creating bunkers for themselves,

apocalypse bunkers, and they're hiring a bunch of merks. Navy seals and these types to go work security for it. You don't have a bunker. The navy seal team you hired has a bunker, and they're just gonna shoot you in the face the second the apocalypse comes and throw your body in a ditch. And now they have all your supplies. That's how that works. That's how power actually works. Well.

The Praetorian Guard looked around one day and they figured out, wait a minute, we're the only ones with swords and shields and spears. We can do whatever we want. The Praetorian Guard wasn't some secret service style police force. They were the sword of the Roman elite now, and you had to buy them off. Agrippina's mother bought off the head of the Petorian Guard. Now you're young, Nero, sure, sixteen,

you're inexperienced. Sure, there's a lot of people who are angry about how you got to the throne, Did mom kill Claudius? What's going on there? But really the question is what you're gonna do about it? Because you have the Praetorian Guard with you. So Nero has the Praetorian Guard with him, he also has You don't have to memorize this name. I don't want to give you too many names. I don't like doing that, but maybe you're a detail in there. The name would matter. Seneca was

his name. Who was Seneca? Uh? A philosopher is the best way I could put it. But when I say philosopher, I didn't want to put it that way because that sounds so unimportant to us today. A philosopher, Oh, who gives a crap? Can you name me a single modern philosopher? That's just it doesn't It doesn't drive home for you or for me how important that was back then. Seneca was a really, really, really big deal back then he Uh, Oprah,

No Oprah. Obviously everyone knows who Oprah is. I don't like Oprah, She's a dirty COMI whatever, But everyone knows who Oprah is. And let's be honest. She may not matter to you or matter to me personally, but when Oprah says jump, there are a lot of people who say how high? Because of the level of influence she has. Seneca's endorsement was Oprah's endorsement. That's the best way I can describe it. It was a big deal that Nero had Seneca and Nero had the praetorian guard. What that

essentially gave Nero was control of power. He had the philosopher one that people loved, he had the praetorian guard. Now Nero begins to rule. How involved was Agrippina. Well, I'll put it to you this way. Emperor's had a habit of mincing their own coins with their own faces on it. That's awesome, Chris, we need to do that for the show. But the emperors had a habit of mincing their own coins with their own faces on them, and the Roman Republic was quite old by this point

in time. Up to this point, no woman had ever been pictured on the same side of the coin as a man. Certainly not the emperor, but ever, that had never happened in the history of Rome. You can go look him up right now. Agrippina Nero coins, they were the first ones they minted. Where she's sitting there, Her face is just as large as he is, on the same side of the new coins they minted. This is a woman. She didn't just saunter into power and then say, ah, I'm so proud of my boy. No, she was knee

deep involved, all right, So her end is magnificent. I should note. I'll get to that in a moment. Nero, what's he do right away? Well, he has Seneca in his corner. Seneca was reading You never know, it's two thousand years ago, a pretty solid human being who had really solid ideas of what needed to be done for Rome, what needed to be done for the people, how an emperor should act. And there are a lot of people who give him credit for what I'm about to say next.

But you want to hear something, something you never heard about Nero before the first five years of Nero's reign takes over at sixteen might be the best five years of any five year period in the history of the Roman Empire. He was that incredible, insanely popular. He gets in there immediately and he's doing things that He's cutting taxes. This is a sixteen year old boy. He just took over as emperor. He starts giving power back to the Senate. He starts giving up his power, giving power back to

the Senate. He walks in, he ends capital punishment. Oh, here's this one for Nero. Look, we all think he's the Antichrist, right, here's this one for Neiro. Slaves. You know what Roman slavery was like or what it could be like. We all talk about the salt mines and how too terrible it was, and that was part of it for sure. But you could also, as a slave in Rome, have a life of a rich person. Essentially, you'd be a tutor of a senator's son, probably live

a life of luxury, wonderful food, you know. So we could run the gamut. It could be the worst existence in the history of the world. Or slave doesn't even really count as what you are. You're practically a step brother in the house, you know. So we could run the gamut. But Nero, freaking Nero, you know, the guy who fiddled while Rome burned. Will come back to that. Nero expanded slaves rights, had a heart for slaves again. First five years went well, ah man it then it

kind of went sideways. This has been a podcast from Double U O R