Nero: for thousands of years his name has stood synonymous with the Roman Empire. But why? What was it about this enigmatic personality that catapulted him into becoming Emperor as a 16-year-old? It was at a time when Rome not only ruled the world, but also managed to house 1 million inhabitants – a population achievement not reached for almost a further 2,000 years when Queen Victoria reigned in London. In his heyday, pagan priests proclaimed that Nero was a living god, whilst hundreds of years after his death the Christian Church branded him as the Antichrist who would one day return to wreak havoc and destruction upon the planet. Throughout the many historic books published about Nero not even the historians are in total agreement with what happened during his lifetime, though the theologians do agree that the biblical number 666 is the Apostle Peter’s code-number for Nero.