Your Loving Son, Nero

Good evening. This is Crime Classics. I am Thomas Hyland with another true story of crime. Listen. The sound you hear is that of a swimmer in the Adriatic Sea. Her name is Agrapina and the stroke she's using is one of the day. According to research, a kind of combination overhand side and flutter kick. Agrapina is quite good at it too, she being the mother

of the emperor of Rome and having the best instructors in all things. For instance, her swimming instructor told her to roll over on her back and float when she got tired, which she just did.

And she was tired all right. She'd been swimming toward shore for the last two hours. Not for laurels, not for prizes, but to save her life. It seems her son had tried to drown her by rigging up a boat whose bottom would fall out, and which did when Argentina was on it.

Sonny's name? Nero. So tonight, I report to you about a mother and son in Rome in the first century A.D., listed in my files as Your Loving Son, Nero. Crime Classics, a new series of true crime stories taken from the records and newspapers of every land from every time.

host each week, Mr. Thomas Highland, Connoisseur of Crime, Student of Violence, and Teller of Murders. Now once again, Mr. Thomas Highland. In the year 62 AD, Nero had been on the throne for eight years and had put on sixty pounds.

And no wonder, at twenty-five he had tasted every sweet from Ethiopia to Britannia and had scouts out for whatever he had missed. I'd better tell you some nice things about Nero before we really get into this. First of all, he had a genuine love for Rome and its people. Oftentimes Nero would release a thousand birds of every kind, some with Roman money