The life of emperor Nero was as schizophrenic as his reputation is mad. In the first half, his refined upbringing allows him to preside over a brilliant cultural height, symbolized by the Domus Aurea ('golden house'), his unprecedented palace. After the great fire of Rome, which he probably didn't order, his plans to rebuild the capital, completely redesigned, a huge urbanization even by modern standards, ran into such exorbitant costs that taxes even raised extremely couldn't finance it, so he resorted to a recipe for revolt if ever there was one: all the rich (the class in a position to challenge the crown) were ordered to write testaments in his favor, and then massively made to commit suicide or killed, a huge 'confiscation by death'.
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