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Ancient Background
The Roman Empire sequence in Mel Brooks’ History of the World, Part I is
set in the city of Rome during the scandal-plagued final years of the reign
of Nero, thus it focuses on the same period and some of the same historical
characters as the film Quo Vadis (1951). After the death of the emperor
Claudius in ad 54, his adopted son Nero succeeded him as Caesar. Only a
teenager when he took the throne, Nero was greatly influenced by his
ambitious mother Agrippina, who effectively ruled the empire for some
time. The first five years of Nero’s reign were appreciated for peace and
prosperity at home and military victories on the frontiers, but Nero soon
lost interest in government affairs and turned his attention to more pleasurable
activities, such as games, musical competitions, and extravagant
parties (Grant, 283–5). In ad 59 Nero had his mother assassinated, and he
promoted to chief advisor Tigellinus, a malevolent figure who encouraged
the emperor’s bad habits. By ad 62, Nero divorced (and later executed)
his popular wife, Octavia, daughter of Claudius, and married his longtime
mistress, Poppaea Sabina. Both Tigellinus and Poppaea goaded Nero to
persecute wealthy and well-connected citizens on trumped-up charges of
treason, while the jealous and greedy Nero was all too willing to comply;
the property thus confiscated would support their luxurious imperial lifestyle
and reckless public expenditures.
While the common people of Rome were grateful for Nero’s handouts
and spectacles, the upper classes justifiably feared and detested him as an
oppressor, a madman under the control of evil influences. On a hot July
night in ad 64, a terrible fire broke out in the urban slums of Rome,
destroying more than half the city, including hundreds of blocks of insulae
(apartments) and Nero’s own palace. Although the emperor supplied the
poor with emergency housing and provisions, he did not escape the rumor
that he had set the fire himself in order to start a lavish new building
program. To avert this suspicion, Nero used as scapegoats the Christians,
who, according to the historian Tacitus, were a small but widely disparaged
religious sect (Annales 15.44). By ad 65, Nero’s outrageous behavior
and increasing cruelty led to the formation of a number of serious plots
against his life, and during the last years of his reign many conspirators,
along with Republican-minded senators and victorious commanders, were
forced to commit suicide. This only antagonized the upper classes even
more. Finally in ad 68, when Nero was away on a tour of Greece, his
provincial governors became embroiled in rebellion, and although the
insurrection was put down, his high administrators and army officers
196 HISTORY OF THE WORLD, PART I (1981)