Nero

And, uh, you could certainly imagine Donald Trump in a toga with a silver laurel wreath on his head.

Um, I often think that he's like Nero without the musical ability.

[laughs] Yes, indeed.

It's very male novel, isn't it? I mean, women-

In contrast to both, Epictetus was teaching Stoic philosophy as a doctrine and as a way of life.

the enchiridion is a summary of theoretical and applied stoicism epictetus was the son of a woman slave born between fifty and sixty a d at hierapolis in phrygia we do not know how he came to rome He was there as slave to one of Nero's distinguished freedmen who served as the emperor's secretary.

While still in service, Epictetus took courses with Musonius Rufus, the fashionable Stoic philosopher, who was impressed by the sincere and dynamic personality of the young slave and trained him to be a Stoic philosopher.

Epictetus became a free man and began teaching philosophy on street corners in the market, but he was not successful.

I mean, there are so many parallels with a Roman emperor.

He's like he reminds me of Nero without the musical talent.

Yeah.

He could read your book, by the way, because Octavius was clever to know that at times he didn't look good enough to be a statue.

Let's talk about the Christian persecution complex.

So how old is that? And were the Christians actually persecuted in Roman times? And the reason I'm asking that is, you know, we have this story about how Nero burned Christians on crosses in his garden and Christians being thrown to lions.

We have a lot of hagiographies.

But if you look at...

The Romans called it the Flavian Amphitheater, after the family of emperors who built it.

The building was constructed partly on the site of a huge artificial lake that had belonged to Emperor Nero.

Nero had built an enormous private palace complex called the Domus Aurea, or the Golden House.

After Nero's death, Vespasian wanted to distance himself from the unpopular emperor.

So the private lake was drained, and around 70-72 AD, work began on giant public amphitheatre.

Instead of it being luxury reserved just for an emperor, this enormous building would be used for the public.

Lots of people say it's the Battle of Actium.

Lots of people say, or maybe it's when Nero or maybe when Caligula murdered loads of the Senate.

Maybe it's when Vespasian took over as a military emperor.

So maybe it was, maybe you could say it's as late as, like, Diocletian and the end of the principate entirely and the end of a whole new type of government in the third century after the crisis of the third century that dominate some period as late as that.

who was your favourite heir of Tiberius? Or like the next Julio Claudians.

Is that what you mean?

So, what have you got? Caligula, Claudius, and then Nero.

Do you mean them? Claudius is...

Few have so gripped the interest of scholars and men of letters as has this scintillating miscellany known as the Satyricon.

Ascribed by tradition to that Petronius who, at the court of Nero, acted as arbiter of elegance and dictator of fashion.

The flashing wit, the masterly touches which bring out the characters with all the detail of a fine old copper etching, the marvelous use of realism by this, its first prophet, the sure knowledge of the perspective and background best adapted to each episode, the racy style, so smooth, so elegant, so simple when the educated are speaking, beguile the reader and blind him, at first, to the many discrepancies and incoherencies with which the text, as we have it, is marred.

The more one concentrates upon this author, the more apparent these faults become, and the more one regrets the lacunae in the text.

Not often, says Studer, Reniscus Museum, 1843, has there been so much dispute about the author, the times, the character, and the purpose of a writing of antiquity, as about the fragments of the Satyricon of Petronius.

The discovery and publication of the Trout manuscript brought about a literary controversy which has had few parallels, and which has not entirely died out to this day.

Although the best authorities ascribe the work to Caius Petronius, the arbiter elegantarium at the court of Nero.

The question as to the date of the narrative of the adventures of Encolpius and his boon companions must be regarded as settled, says Theodore Mommsen, Hermes, 1878.

The historical view puts all of the Revelation in an historical rearview mirror.

And basically they say things like the Antichrist was Nero and the suffering of Revelation in relation to the tribulation period was the suffering of the early church.

And so I hold to, and I'm not the only one, obviously, this is a position that a lot of people hold, which is, this is a literal book that we should understand literally.

Does it have symbolic language? Well, of course, because John's writing in the first century, looking down hundreds of years, if not millennium, and so he is trying to use language to describe things that he sees in the future, but this is a literal book, and especially beginning in chapter 4, verse 1, all the things that follow are really in the future.