Nero perishes by his own hand

The Roman emperor's despotic rule ends in ignominy

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Hoofbeats rumbled ever closer as the cornered tyrant hesitated, the end pressing in. Declared a public enemy by the senate and abandoned by the imperial Praetorian Guard, Nero - once ruler of an empire stretching from Britain to Syria - had become a fugitive, fleeing Rome. According to the historian Suetonius, the cornered Nero - with the aid of a loyal attendant - forced a dagger into his own throat. "What an artist dies in me!" he reputedly cried as his would-be captors arrived.

Born Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus in AD 37, Nero's ascent had been engineered by his mother, Agrippina the Younger. By marrying her uncle, the emperor Claudius, and persuading him to adopt her son, she displaced his presumed heir, Britannicus.