Nero: Occurs only in the superscription (which is probably spurious, and is
altogether omitted in the R.V.) to the Second Epistle to Timothy. He
became emperor of Rome when he was about seventeen years of age (A.D.
54 and soon began to exhibit the character of a cruel tyrant and
heathen debauchee. In May A.D. 64 a terrible conflagration broke
out in Rome, which raged for six days and seven nights, and totally
destroyed a great part of the city. The guilt of this fire was
attached to him at the time, and the general verdict of history
accuses him of the crime. "Hence, to suppress the rumour," says
Tacitus (Annals, xv. 44) "he falsely charged with the guilt, and
punished with the most exquisite tortures, the persons commonly
called Christians, who are hated for their enormities. Christus, the
founder of that name, was put to death as a criminal by Pontius
Pilate, procurator of Judea, in the reign of Tiberius; but the
pernicious superstition, repressed for a time, broke out again, not
only throughout Judea, where the mischief originated, but through the
city of Rome also, whither all things horrible and disgraceful flow,
from all quarters, as to a common receptacle, and where they are
encouraged. Accordingly, first three were seized, who confessed they
were Christians. Next, on their information, a vast multitude were
convicted, not so much on the charge of burning the city as of hating
the human race. And in their deaths they were also made the subjects
of sport; for they were covered with the hides of wild beasts and
worried to death by dogs, or nailed to crosses, or set fire to, and,
when day declined, burned to serve for nocturnal lights. Nero offered
his own gardens for that spectacle, and exhibited a Circensian game,
indiscriminately mingling with the common people in the habit of a
charioteer, or else standing in his chariot; whence a feeling of
compassion arose toward the sufferers, though guilty and deserving to
be made examples of by capital punishment, because they seemed not to
be cut off for the public good, but victims to the ferocity of one
man." Another Roman historian, Suetonius (Nero, xvi.), says of him:
"He likewise inflicted punishments on the Christians, a sort of
people who hold a new and impious superstition" (Forbes's Footsteps
of St. Paul, p. 60) Nero was the emperor before whom Paul was
brought on his first imprisonment at Rome, and the apostle is
supposed to have suffered martyrdom during this persecution. He is
repeatedly alluded to in Scripture
(Acts 25:11; Philippians 1:12,13; 4:22) He died
A.D. 68
