EMPEROR NERO: TYRANT OF ROME
NOTORIOUS Nero preferred hedonism and depravity to ruling the empire
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Nero: a name that has come to embody the human capacity for cruelty, debauchery, even evil. The inauspicious honour of being Rome’s most notorious ruler – a hotly contested title – is often bestowed to the fifth emperor, Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, for killing his step-brother, mother and two of his wives. And that only takes care of his family life.