Featured How Bad Was Nero?

If you are going to mention him, you need to show coins. Ala-ud-Din Muhammed Khalji suffers in the eyes of collectors compared to Nero because his coins lack his pretty face and types that show the history of his day. In this regard, Nero is a real leader. I have three coins of Ala-ud-Din Muhammed Khalji. They were selected carefully from a large group I saw in 2010 because the small part of the legend that made it on the flan included the year date (703, 698 and 700, I believe). Dies were considerably larger than flans so many coins lacked the date. I probably should have bought some others to illustrate the rest of the legend but I did not. What I know about these came from a book on jitals by some guy named Tye. The feature that attracted me to them was the unusual way the denominations were made. The first coin below was the same size and weight of the other two but was struck from an alloy three times as rich in silver as the other two making it a coin of six gani while the others were two gani. I have never been particularly interested in weight standards preferring to collect types and history but this seemed a novel way of avoiding having coins too large or too small for daily use.

Update: This rather reminds me of the way people in the US rejected dollar coins saying they looked too much like quarters. I believe the big difference was that the President of the United States could not tell people that the WILL!!! accept the coins and learn to use them OR ELSE! In this way Ala-ud-Din Muhammed Khalji was a leader.

 

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Those are firm words, too firm in my view.
Virtually nothing is known about Nero that was written during his reign. So it is difficult to get a good picture of him. In addition, the well-known history writers wrote at least forty years after his death, when his person had already become a kind of mythical figure.

For example, there were rumors after his death that he was not dead but fled to the Parthians to fetch an army. During his lifetime, rumors also spread that he set Rome on fire, killed his wife, and poisoned Britannicus. All events of which it is highly questionable whether they are correct. The historiography had to do with pro-Flavian and Pro-Adoptive emperors sources who had reasons to put Nero in a bad light.

In short, I think there are three reasons why it is difficult to get a correct picture of Nero. We are dealing with Anti-Neronian propaganda by the Flavians and Adoptive emperors, We are dealing with myth formation and rumors under the people, and we are dealing with a very closed court, which fueled the rumors.

Of course I'm not saying Nero was a "good" emperor, but I think it's at least understandable why modern scholars question the sources about him.

 

Questioning the sources is a must for good history - after all, I'm a huge supporter of modern scholarship's efforts to bust many of the myths that have traditionally been apart of ancient historical research for centuries.

Looking past the anti-Neronian propaganda there is still a lot we do know about him to give one pause for a positive revisionist spin of his reign.

 

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, "and what is the use of a book," thought Alice, "without pictures or conversations?"

Joking aside, - I spent thousands and thousands of hours making pictures of coins for collectors in my day job, I am retired, and already paid my dues on that score. And anyhow – this group is awash with people all too willing to put up coin pictures, but I see a lack in the department of explaining the role they played in past economies. So that is where I spend my time.

But to me that sadly says most about the limitations of the modern collector. There are people who struck more coins than Alauddin – Wang An Shih certainly, Alexander very probably - but really it can only be a handful. Possibly no Roman emperor. Anyone genuinely interested in the history of coinage really has to take notice of him.

Since you (very kindly) picture his dugani – let me say a little more about it. As I said before, he did what Diocletian could not do – he stopped inflation in its tracks. Even in his own day that was considered something of a miracle. But lets look more closely at how and why he did it. Firstly he had top tier coins – pure gold and silver tankas – for the use of the Afghan military ruling class – and primarily to fund their ability to put cavalry in the field. He specifically held prices down so that he could maintain his mounted soldiery at a cost the treasury could afford. He did this by promoting commerce amongst the Hindu subject population. All with jital weight coins, the better quality ones being over valued by just 64/60 against the pure silver tanka. The basic one, the dugani at 72/60 against the pure silver tanka. He surely got for himself more power than Diocletian – but it was exactly by using his power wisely – he never tried to over-value his billon coins by more than 20% (unlike a whole bunch of Romans).

Hmmmm. Shakespeare very probably had heard something of Alauddin – the Merchant of Venice very likely takes up his idea - that thieves should have the weight of any stolen merchandise cut from their bodies. No doubt he would be judged a psychopath by today’s standards. But does that make him a “Bad King”?

Lets take an unvarnished look at him. When the Mongols went against China they killed millions. When the Mongols went against Afghanistan they killed millions. Tamerlane took Delhi with just 15,000 horse and with great bloodshed – a century after his death. But when the Mongols sent 40,000 horse against Alauddin, he made a tower of their heads and wrote to the Khan - complaining about the insult - of sending just 40,000.

I never saw that he acted cruelly for its own sake. He was a kind of superman really – a ‘just psychopath’ maybe. I judge India was fortunate to get "a real leader" at that time, and was very lucky not to have had a Nero instead – they seem to be two a penny.

A hobby of mine is searching web groups worldwide to see if there is anyone at all with a good grasp of general numismatic metrology. Been doing it for 20 years. So far I found one guy.

Keynes seems to have decided round about 1926 that part of his plan for the political economy was to destroy people's understanding of historical metrology. Who would have thought he could pull it off so successfully! But I spose, gvts generally prefer that people have no grasp of what they are doing with the economy, even concerning rudimentary matters from long since.

Anyhow Doug – do you really not own a silver tanka of Alauddin?! If you send me a postal address off-group, I will send you one when I get round to visiting the post office again – a reward for being such a good sport, (despite your misguided views on Nero’s leadership qualities )

Rob T

 

Well, if nobody else is going to mention her, I will: Claudia Octavia (daughter of Claudius, sister of Britannicus), another of Nero's victims. For whatever reason, I feel extra-badly for her. She was married off to Nero at a very young age, unhappily for both of them, and once Nero became emperor her fate was sealed. Why he chose to have her executed, rather than just cutting her loose and being with Poppea, is beyond me. Octavia never had a chance, thanks to the spell Agrippina had over Claudius.

 

Agreed. It ends up with something similar to «but Stalin was worse than Hitler». That sure doesn’t white wash Hitler.
In a few hundred years, the coin talk threads will be about those two, with criticisms of the source material and the propaganda of the victors.

 

Thank you. Druther that type analysis.

Additionally, understanding when Humans have too much power, the apathy, becoming non-human.

We come into our lives buck-nekkid. We leave our lives buck-nekkid. The only thing that we can fill up and leave this life is our mind with experiences, our humanity, our knowledge, and who we were to other Souls...

Karma

 

That’s a bit extreme.

 

CLAUDIA OCTAVIA


RImp Claudia Octavia Augusta AE 27 7.6g 54-62 CE m Nero Thrace Perinthus Hera Samos RPC 1755


BRITANNICUS


Judaea Claudius w-Britannicus CE 41-54 Æ Prutah 17mm 2.8g Antonius Felix-procurator Dated RY 14 54 CE 2-crossed shields spears - Palm tree BPIT K AI L IΔ date Hendin 1348

 

I don't remember where I read this, but it was a book on Nero where in the last chapter, the one on Nero's death, the author cited an example of popular sentiment for Nero by more than one person in the city. According to the author flowers would occasionally be left on Nero's tomb for decades after his death. The implication was that Nero was not entirely disliked by some of the people in Rome. I don't make too much of it but for some reason this stuck with me and probably was the first time that I read anything that made me think I might not know as much about Nero as I ought.

 

Thanks. It is an As - rather common, struck at Lugdunum. I got it from Numismatica Ars Classica auction , April, 2019. I fell for the style and patina. I prefer Nero's coins from Lugdunum over Rome.

 

Dunno – maybe some more info on Alauddin might be relevant?

Alauddin was apparently completely without religious or racial prejudice - which would be viewed as weird by many at that the time. Also he saw that to keep a vast army in the field, he had to boost productivity, and to do that he had to give the Hindu peasant a fair deal in cash terms for his work. Which he did – and he saw also this would greatly annoy the Moslem aristocracy – as it would hit them in the pocket. So early on he put the entire Moslem Aristocracy under a kind of house arrest – none were allowed to meet up. As if sedition was a virus.

Of course eventually a bunch of guys - about 300 I think – did conspire to kill him. He was forewarned by spies and killed them all. And all their wives. And all their children. A few thousand probably. So lets coldly put that on the scales and see what is on the other side.

How many lives did he save amongst labouring Hindu classes – from child mortality etc etc? Surely tens of thousands. How many lives did he save in total from the Mongols. Surely hundreds of thousands. Did some favour him for it – yes. Did some hate him – yes.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Am I alone in finding it kind of strange how so much of Roman history resembles modern TV soaps? Like say “Coronation Street” or “Dallas”?

Rob T

 

........hehehe...i reckon i'm in that group

 

I guess I am in the minority, but I’m not that upset with the fact that Nero did in his mother. That old woman was rotten and evil has hell.

She more than likely killed her husband, Claudius, with poison mushrooms so that she could put her son, Nero, on the throne. She did it more to be “the power behind the throne” not because she had ambitions for her son, but for herself. When he didn’t fully cooperate, she was ready to push him aside. As I wrote in my Roman emperors “bullet book” which I use to learn the history, for her "what comes around goes around." Given more time, she might have poisoned him too.

As for Nero, I think that he was a person who was in the wrong place, similar to the much-criticized U.S. president, Warren G. Harding. Nero wanted to be an entertainer, not an emperor. His poetry probably was not any good, and he was probably a so-so musician. He probably got the attention of audiences because he was emperor. But maybe he had some talent.

As for Harding, he realized he was in the wrong place soon after he took office. He once said that he wished that was a book he could read that would give the answers to complex economic problems. As for race relations, he had the guts to tell an Alabama audience, during the Jim Crow period, that he was looking forward to the time when Whites and African-Americans could treat each other with respect. Whatever his many shortcomings were, that took guts. He also appointed strong secretaries of state and the treasury.

As he put it, his problems were with his “God damned friends.” He could deal with his enemies, but those were supposed to be on his side took advantage of the situation and took bribes. Harding would have been much happier if he could have spent his last years in the Senate or in retirement. He was, after all, a good drinking buddy who enjoyed a good night of cards with the boys. Nero was probably a good drinking buddy and party animal too.

 

I pretty much agree with you. I think in Nero's case it had come down to a her or me situation and Agrippina was as a good a spouse as a black widow. Interesting take on Harding. I, too, think he has not been much studied by US historians and that he would come off with more respect if he were.

 

No collection can be complete without at least one coin of Nero !
Sestertius , denarius & As

 

You neglected to mention that one of Nero's names was Ahenobarbus, which means "copper beard". Apparently he was a redhead. Most likenesses of him that I've seen show him bearded. That's unusual, because Roman men were clean shaven. If you wore a beard, you were considered a barbarian. In fact, the word "barbarian" and "barber" are both derived from Latin "barba", which means "beard". Also, it's agreed by most Biblical scholars that St. John references Nero in the book of Revelation where he mentions the four emperors. When Nero died, Rome was in great political turmoil, having 4 emperors in one year.

 

"Dynasty" by Tom Holland stated that Nero was hated by half the public and loved by half, and that many were distraught that Nero's death marked the end of the Julian-Claudian dynasty.

 

I think what it comes down to is that I am as bored by weight standards as EWC3 is of Roman history and art. I agree that it is better to collect the common coins that played a part in commerce but my main interest in coins is for what is engraved on the blanks rather than the blanks themselves. I suspect the reason I do not have a silver tanka of Alauddin is that I would not recognize one if I found it in a junk box and Frank Robinson was not selling off a pile cheaply at the end of one of his lists (those two being the source of most of my later coins. I feel I have a reasonable selection of later (all Islamic coins are later) coins but have never gotten up enough interest to buy things I did not find interesting in a language I do not read well enough to display right side up. I ID them by comparison with images but rarely know which parts name the mint as opposed to the ruler or the date. That is frustrating. Ten years ago, I tried to get interested and even bought things I only could ID because of Mitchiner, Deyell and two by Tye (EWC and Jitals). I failed and have not added any Islamic coins in the last decade unless they were in a junk box or group lot. We all collect what we find interesting. Nero was at least that to me but hardly a role model.

I do have this one labeled Al ud din Muhammed II but really have no idea if that is correct. It was from a Junk box in 2010. Like many Romans, similar names confuse beginners (and I am that!).