Nero
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- $33.99
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- $33.99
Publisher Description
The Roman emperor Nero is remembered by history as the vain and immoral monster who fiddled while Rome burned. Edward Champlin reinterprets Nero’s enormities on their own terms, as the self-conscious performances of an imperial actor with a formidable grasp of Roman history and mythology and a canny sense of his audience.
Nero murdered his younger brother and rival to the throne, probably at his mother’s prompting. He then murdered his mother, with whom he may have slept. He killed his pregnant wife in a fit of rage, then castrated and married a young freedman because he resembled her. He mounted the public stage to act a hero driven mad or a woman giving birth, and raced a ten-horse chariot in the Olympic games. He probably instigated the burning of Rome, for which he then ordered the spectacular punishment of Christians, many of whom were burned as human torches to light up his gardens at night. Without seeking to rehabilitate the historical monster, Champlin renders Nero more vividly intelligible by illuminating the motives behind his theatrical gestures, and revealing the artist who thought of himself as a heroic figure.
Nero is a brilliant reconception of a historical account that extends back to Tacitus, Suetonius, and Cassius Dio. The effortless style and artful construction of the book will engage any reader drawn to its intrinsically fascinating subject.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Nero is infamous for his persecution of Christians, for fiddling while Rome burned and for matricide among other acts of brutality. In a graceful and lively tale of Nero's short reign (A.D. 54 68) he committed suicide at age 30 Champlin, a professor of classics at Princeton, invites us to reconsider the emperor's ways and work, drawing on the three major histories of the empire, by Suetonius, Tacitus and Dio. Although none of these writers was a contemporary of Nero, Champlin argues that each likely drew on eyewitness sources to paint their portraits of the emperor. Each indicts Nero for the excesses of his reign. However, Champlin persuasively demonstrates that these accounts can be questioned by focusing on Nero's disposition to think of himself as an actor on a stage. Champlin argues that Nero thought of his matricide, the murder of his wife (there is a question still about whether he intended to kill her) and his burning of Rome as elements in what was for him a great drama in which he was the star. He loved to play the roles of Orestes and Oedipus, two ancient matricides, performed pantomime, played the lyre and raced chariots in the Olympic games. He also cast himself as descended from the god Apollo and the hero Hercules. Champlin shows that although the Senate ran Nero off the throne because of their jealousy and fear of his eccentric behavior, the populace loved him and mourned his death. This is a first-rate study and a compelling re-evaluation of an oft-maligned ancient figure who created his own myth out of the fabric of his life. Illus., maps.
