Rough Day for Rome

I kid you not, these are the first 3 Wikipedia entries for today’s date in history:

53 AD: Roman Emperor Nero marries Claudia Octavia.
62 AD: Claudia Octavia commits suicide.
68 AD: Roman Emperor Nero commits suicide.

Bummer. Nine years of marriage and then Claudia Octavia ruins it all by doing herself in. Happy anniversary. I’m guessing Nero sort of got over this though, seeing as he waited another six years before kicking his own bucket.

But wait, this story isn’t over yet. It’s too awesome to pass up all the details. And yes, it is incredibly morbid of me to refer to this as “awesome”.

Nero had done some things that didn’t bode well with the Senate. Back in those days, that didn’t just mean that Senators grumbled about you behind your back. It meant that they declared him a public enemy and decided to beat him to death. This could have meant a meager stoning, but either way he wasn’t going to have a very honorable farewell address.

So he decided he would have to die. He first tried to get somebody “skilled” with a sword to come and do the job, but nobody showed up. So then he almost threw himself into the Tiber river. But he chickened out. So he fled to a villa 4 miles outside the city. He arrived with 4 servants and he promptly ordered them to dig a grave for him.

He tried to commit suicide but lost his nerve. So get this, he asked one of his servants to lead the way by example! Can you imagine what Nero would have been like if Band-Aids had been around back then? Just rip it off already!

He finally offed himself at the sound of approaching horsemen. Of course, he couldn’t do it alone. He asked his secretary to help him out. I bet that didn’t look too shiny on her résumé. Not only does she have to put down “Terminated employment due to the fact that I kind of killed my boss” but she doesn’t even have any references now!

The ironic thing is that the horsemen were coming to tell him that it had all just been a silly joke the Senators had decided to pull. They had forgiven all his little “whoopsies” (official Roman terminology) like all the people he had killed and made it look like an accident (“He had an epileptic seizure.” “She was in a ship wreck.” “I was juggling with my sword and it must have slipped and skewered him in the heart.”).

Now, I realize this whole episode has been fairly macabre, but I think history provides some good lessons here. The most important is obvious: Don’t cheese off a group of senators.

Can’t you picture a bunch of modern-day senators, in suits, riding Harley Davidson motorcycles and tattooing themselves with rusty Bic pens? The tattoos would say stuff like, “Lobby This, Sucka,” “Abstain From This, Sucka,” and “Nominate Me Or Face My Wrath.” Unfortunately, none of the tattoos would be very intimidating because they would be done by fellow Senators and have you ever seen a Senator that can draw even half decently?

Yeah, that’s a group you don’t want to mess with. Especially if they’re juggling Roman swords. One might accidentally “slip”, you know.

Actually, when I said don’t cheese off a group of senators, I really meant the Ottawa Senators, the professional ice hockey team. Even without juggling a single Roman sword, they are quite a formidable bunch. We’re talking about guys who don’t even have a full set of teeth between all 25 of them.

Pictures:
Nero
Tiber
Band-Aid
Kid’s Drawing
Ottawa Senators