Titans of History by Simon Sebag Montefiore

fever, whereupon Caligula declared her to be a goddess.
    Caligula’s unbridled narcissism and ever greater appetite for brutality alienated every section of society. The Praetorian Guard resolved that his rule must be brought to an end, and in January AD 41 two of its number killed the emperor by ambushing him as he left the stadium in Rome. They went on to kill his wife and baby daughter, smashing the latter’s head against a wall.
    The life of Caligula demonstrated how much the imperial system created by Augustus, while preserving the trappings of the republic, had actually concentrated absolute power in the hands of one man. Caligula stripped away the veneer of constitutional restraint and flaunted his total authority over his subjects in the most capriciously horrific manner. Caligula personifies the immorality, bloodlust and insanity of absolute power.

NERO
    AD 37–68
    He showed neither discrimination nor moderation in putting to death whomsoever he pleased
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    Suetonius
    The emperor who “fiddled while Rome burned,” Nero was the last of the Julio-Claudian dynasty that took Rome from republic to one-man rule. Raised amidst violence and tyranny, he ruled withludicrous vanity, demented whimsy and inept despotism. Few mourned his abdication and death amidst the chaos that he himself had created.
    Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus was born in AD 37 in the town of Antium, not far from Rome, while the Emperor Caligula—Nero’s uncle—was on the throne. Like so many, he was to suffer at Caligula’s hands—forced with his mother Agrippina into exile when she lost favor with the emperor. Agrippina was Caligula’s sister. Their incestuous relationship supposedly ended when she plotted to overthrow him: Agrippina ranks as one of the most poisonous women in Roman history. Mother and son were allowed to return by Caligula’s successor, Claudius, who had recently executed his nymphomaniacal empress, Messalina. In AD 49 Agrippina became the emperor’s fourth wife. Claudius not only adopted Nero as his son but made him joint heir to the throne with his own son by Messalina, Britannicus.
    Agrippina, however, was unwilling to allow nature to take its course and in AD 54 she supposedly poisoned Claudius. Relations between mother and son were also flawed, and when, in the following year, Agrippina realized her hold over Nero was slipping, she conspired in a plot to replace him with Britannicus. On discovering the conspiracy, Nero promptly had his rival poisoned and banished Agrippina from the imperial palace on the pretext of having insulted his young wife, Octavia.
    Despite such intrigues, the early years of Nero’s reign were marked by wise governance, largely because much state business was handled by shrewd advisers such as the philosopher Seneca, the Praetorian prefect Burrus and reliable Greek freedmen. This relative calm was not destined to last. Increasingly assured, Nero sought to free himself from the control of others and exercise power in his own right.
    The first to feel the consequences of his new assertiveness was his mother, who had continued plotting behind his back. Tired ofher machinations, Nero resolved to do away with her in AD 59. When an initial attempt to drown her in the Bay of Naples proved unsuccessful, the emperor sent an assassin to complete the job. Legend has it that, realizing what was about to happen as the killer approached, Agrippina drew back her clothes and cried, in one final act of scorn for her matricidal son, “Here, smite my womb!”
    With his mother out of the way, Nero’s reign quickly sank into petty despotism. Burrus and Seneca were both brought to trial on trumped-up charges, and though eventually acquitted lost much of their influence. Yet, even as he gained greater control over the levers of power, so the emperor appeared increasingly to lose touch with reality. He became infatuated with Poppaea Sabina, wife of one of his friends,