A Child's History of the World

by V. M. Hillyer

He killed his teacher, who was named Seneca. He was not a bad teacher, either.

We think that Nero ordered both St. Peter and St. Paul put to death, for they were executed at this same time.

Nero seemed to take great pleasure in making others suffer. He loved to see men torn to pieces by wild beasts; it amused him greatly. I have seen boys who liked to throw stones at dogs just to hear them yelp, or tear the wings off of butterflies. Such boys must have some Nero in them; don’t you think?

If a man was a Christian, that gave Nero an excuse to torture him horribly. Nero had some of the Christians wrapped in tar and pitch, then placed around the garden of his palace and set fire to, as if they were torches. It is even said that Nero set Rome on fire just for the fun of seeing the city burn. Then he sat in a tower and, while he watched the blaze spreading, played on a harp. The saying is that “Nero fiddled while Rome burned”; but there were no fiddles at that time, and so we know it must have been a harp. The fire burned day and night for a whole week and destroyed more than half of the city. Then Nero laid the blame on the Christians, who, he said, started the fire. Did you ever blame another for something you had done?

Some think Nero really was crazy, and we hope he was, for it is hard to think any human being who was not crazy could act as he did.

Nero built himself an immense palace and overlaid it extravagantly with gold and mother-of-pearl. It was known as Nero’s House of Gold. At its front door he put up a colossal statue of himself in bronze fifty feet high. Both the House of Gold and the statue were later destroyed, but the Colosseum, which was built a few years afterward, was named Colosseum from this “coloss-al” statue of Nero that was once there.

Nero was very conceited. He thought he could write poetry and sing beautifully. Although he did both very badly, he liked to show off, and no one dared to laugh at him. Had any one been so bold as to make fun of him or even to smile, he would have had that person put to death instantly.

Even the Roman people who were not Christians feared and hated Nero. So they voted to have him put out of the way. But before they had a chance to do anything, Nero heard what they were planning, and in order to save himself the disgrace of being put to death by his own people he decided to kill himself. He was such a coward, however, that he couldn’t quite bring himself to plunge the sword into his heart. But as he hesitated, holding the sword to his breast and whimpering, his slave, impatient to finish the job, shoved the blade in. Thus was Rome rid of its worst ruler.

So much for the first part of this “blood and thunder” story. Here is the second part:

The Jews in Jerusalem didn’t like to have Rome rule over them. They never had. But they were afraid to do much about it. But in the Year 70 A.D. they rebelled; that is, they said they would no longer obey Rome or pay her money. The emperor sent his son, who was named Titus, with an army to put an end to the rebellion, to punish them as if they were disobedient children.