Nero's Suicide and End of the Julio-Claudian Dynasty

Nero’s suicide on June 9, 68 tore open a political vacuum in Rome, a city that had known one family’s rule for more than a century [18]. The Senate met in the Curia Julia and declared Galba princeps, trying to knit authority back together with procedure and precedent. But the city’s stone courtyards carried a different sound: the metallic clatter of Praetorian armor and the anxious murmur of a crowd at the Forum Romanum.

Tacitus, writing as a senator and survivor, framed the year that followed as “rich in disasters… torn by civil strife,” a verdict born of watching decrees fail to control legions along the Rhine, the Danube, and in Syria [1]. The Palatine Hill, still dotted with Nero’s domus, felt like a stage reset overnight. Rome had no blueprint for an emperor chosen without a clear heir.

Galba accepted the Senate’s call from Spain and entered a Rome that expected gifts, stability, and a plan. The Praetorian Camp just outside the Servian Wall bristled; the Guard had learned across 14 reign-years of Nero that imperial favor sounded like coin. The air carried the scent of smoke from braziers and the sharp crack of orders as centurions kept lines dressed.

Now succession turned inside-out. Instead of family descent, three forces would wrestle in the months ahead: Senate decrees, Praetorian knives, and provincial eagles. On the Capitoline Hill, augurs watched the sky while news riders traced the Via Flaminia and the Via Appia, counting days—three to Ravenna, six to Bononia, ten to the Po—as word spread that the center had shifted.

In the neighborhoods along the Tiber, shopfronts reopened but conversation ran to rumors: who controlled the grain ships from Alexandria, which legions held the Alps, whether the Rhone or Rhine would move first. The purple robe, a deep imperial scarlet, awaited a body to fill it. But whose?

Galba’s name steadied markets for a moment. It did not silence weapon belts in the Praetorian barracks, nor the drums in winter camps at Bedriacum and Mogontiacum. The mechanism of power had changed in a night. And the echoes of Nero’s final cry would carry into four imperial acclamations in 18 months.