What Redivivus Means

Redivivus is a song about the Roman Emperor Nero coming back from the dead as the Anti-Christ. To fully understand this song though, let's discuss who Nero was as an Emperor first.

Nero was the last Roman Emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. That dynastry consisted of Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero. They ruled the Roman Empire from 27 BC to AD 68, when Nero committed suicide.

Nero was the nephew of Claudius, and he was adopted by Claudius to be his heir. He took power after Claudius' death in AD 54. He was known as being compulsive and corrupt. He planned a great palatial complex called the Domus Aurea which ironically will play a huge part in Renaissance history, well over a thousand years after his death, but that's a story for another day.

Nero was very artistic. He played in plays, played musical instruments, and sang. He spent a lot of tax money on promoting athletic games and entertainment.

He was also seen as downright evil. He had a foul temper and even ordered the execution (yes, it was carried out) of his own mother as she got in the way of his power.

Historians today are divided if Nero really had Christians dipped in oil and set on fire in his garden. Some say he really did do those disgusting acts and some say his enemies exaggerated his cruelty. Nonetheless, he was a tyrant.

Matricide

Nero's mother Agrippina started to lose influence over her son and she began pushing for Nero's stepbrother Britannicus to become Emperor. According to Roman historians, Nero hired the infamous Locusta, a poison maker, to brew up a poison for Britannicus. Britannicus drank the wine with Locusta's poison and died. Nero claimed that he died from an epileptic seizure.

Nero started removing Agrippina's allies from power one by one until finally, he had her executed in 59. A few years later, he started having other rivals executed one by one.

Lovers

Nero's wife Poppaeua Sabina died in 65 and Nero had her body stuffed with spices, embalmed, and placed in the Mausoleum of Augustus. In 66, he married Stalilia Messalina, who was already married. So Nero had her husband driven to suicide so Nero could marry her.

In 67, Nero found a man named Sporus who looked like Sabina, his dead wife. He had him castrated, then married him. He even called Sporus is dead wife's name.

Who liked him?

Although a tyrant, Nero was popular with a lot of people. He was the equivalent of a rock star, a good and talented actor, singer, and musician and spent a lot of tax money on both theater and sports games. He put restrictions on the amount of bail and fines and lowered lawyer fees. That helped make him popular with the lower classes. Another act that made him popular with the lower classes is that patrons of freedmen wanted the right to revoke the freedmen's freedoms. Nero didn't allow patrons to do that.

He cut taxes from 4.5% to 2.5%. He wanted to cut them even further, but the Senate said that would bankrupt the treasury. When the treasury got low, for the first time in the Roman Empire's history, he devalued the denarius.

I don't want to discuss the Great Fire of Rome too much as there's too much disagreement between historians about it. He was blamed for starting it and you probably even heard the saying that "Nero played the fiddle as Rome burned." For one, the fiddle wasn't even invented back then. And another Nero personally helped put out the fire and even housed some people made homeless by that fire. I personally do not think he had a hand in the fire.

I also don't want to discuss the wars and peace treaties too much as that's too much to cover in this article. However, I do want to note that Nero was popular in the East, which is an important point later on.

Death

In 68, there was a lot of rebellion against Nero. There was growing support for Servius Sulpicius Galba to be the Emperor. He was the governor of what is now Spain. The rebellion was initially suppressed, but it started to grow, having more and more backing including some of Nero's own guard.

One night, his private guard abandoned him. He considered various methods of suicide, but didn't commit just yet. One of his couriers brought him a message that said the Senate had declared Nero a public enemy and was going to beat him to death. He said "What an artist dies in me" and had his assistant Epaphroditos kill him by sword. When the horsemen who were to bring him back to the Senate found him, he was already bleeding to death.

Redivivus

And here is where our story begins. We know he hated Christians. We know he had a cult following. We know he was an artist and a performer. We know he was popular in the East. And we know he was a tyrant with such a foul temper that he even had his mother killed as she was a threat to his power.

After his death, it was a very popular belief that Nero would rise up with an army from the East and take the throne back. Some wanted that to happen and others feared it happening. Some believed he never really died, but fled to the East and will return with an army.

Hated by Christians, the Christians in turn changed this belief of his return and noted him as the Anti-Christ, the Beast in Revelations. Thus, Christians took the already existing Nero Redivivus legend and made him into the Anti-Christ.

Weird still is that three people pretended to be Nero. One of them even looked like him and played the lyre.

The legend persisted all the way to the 5th century. Of course for us, this made a pretty cool story to which we turned into a song.

Our version of the Circe tale

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