In fact, Nero, most likely largely due to the
influence of his tutor Seneca, came across as a very humane ruler at first.
When the city prefect Lucius Pedanius Secundus was murdered by one of his
slaves, Nero was intensely upset that he was forced by law to have all four
hundred slaves of Pedanius' household put to death.
It was no doubt such
decisions which gradually lessened Nero's resolve for administrative duties and
caused him to withdraw more and more, devoting himself to such interests as
horse-racing, singing, acting, dancing, poetry and sexual exploits.
Nero had many mistresses where his mother did not approve of and neither did his wife. Nero angrily responded, according to the historian
Suetonius, with various attempts on his mother's life, three of which were by
poison and one by rigging the ceiling over her bed to collapse while she would
lay in bed. Therafter even a collapsible boat was built, which was meant to
sink in the Bay of Naples. But the plot only succeeded in sinking the boat, as
Agrippina managed to swim ashore. Exasperated, Nero sent an assassin who
clubbed and stabbed her to death (AD 59) only because she took his wife Octavia's side.
In AD 62 he divorced Octavia and then had her
executed on a trumped-up charge of adultery. All this to make way for Poppaea
Sabina (the mistress) whom he married. (But then Poppaea too was later killed. - Suetonius
says he kicked her to death when she complained at his coming home late from
the races.)
