Domus Aurea

Agrippina the Younger, great grand-daughter of Augustus and sister of the incestuous emperor Caligula, married her uncle Claudius in A.D. 49. At the time, her son, Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, was 11 or 12. Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus is known to us as Nero. He was engaged to Claudius' daughter Octavia, and in A.D. 50, Agrippina persuaded her husband to adopt Nero and give preference to him over Claudius' own son Britannicus. From this time, Nero became Nero Claudius Drusus Germanicus. In 54 B.C. Claudius died and Nero became the last of the Julio-Claudian line of emperors of Rome. Nero was a cruel and decadent emperor who turned a great Roman disaster to personal benefit. This disaster was the burning of Rome in A.D. 64, at which time Nero turned much of the burned land over to his personal pleasure palace, the domus aurea.