Nero

Did the Boy Emperor in fact fiddle while Rome burned? Natalie's joined by star of BBC TV's I, Claudius, Christopher Biggins and Llewelyn Morgan to find out if he was all bad. For a seventeen year old put in charge of an Empire, he was surprisingly popular with the people, to the extent that fake Neros sprang up around the world after his death.

'Rockstar mythologist' Natalie Haynes is the best-selling author of Divine Might, Stone Blind, A Thousand Ships and No Friend to This House as well as a reformed comedian who is a little bit obsessive about ancient Greece and Rome.

Christopher Biggins is an actor and director who played Nero in the BBC Television adaptation of Robert Graves' 1934 novel I, Claudius.

Llewelyn Morgan is a Professor of Classics at Oxford University, and he is interested in basically anything written in Latin. He has written two Very Short Introductions to Roman poets, one on Ovid and one on Horace.

Producer Beth O'Dea