As a young boy, Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus witnesses the mad Emperor Caligula kill his father and exile his mother.
While in exile in the pontine islands, Agrippina, his mother, sees a vision telling her that her son can become emperor, but she will have to die first.
Nero enjoys being married to Claudia Acte, but soon he gradually goes mad with power and sets fire to Rome.
He divorces Acte, and forces the citizens to watch hour long recitals, and at one of these, accidentally kills his new pregnant wife, Poppaea Sabina.
The film also omits Nero's other reported attempts to kill his mother Agrippina the Younger, first by poisoning.
In a late part of the movie Nero is shown playing his harp in the center of a Roman Theatre as Emperor around 62 A.D.
In reality, Nero escaped from the city in disguise to the house of one of his loyal freedmen; there he committed suicide by stabbing himself in the neck.
Historically, he was killed in a cryptoporticus underneath a palatine theater by praetorian guards led by Cassius Chaerea, Marcus Vinicius, and Lucius Annius Vinicianus.