One of the best known and simultaneously most notorious figures from Roman history, Nero (r. AD 54–68) is usually characterised as a tyrannical and ineffectual emperor, a ruler who proverbially ‘fiddled while Rome burnt’. However, as new research demonstrates, this reputation is crudely reductive and was carefully crafted in antiquity by hostile elite authors, who envisioned a different form of rule more mindful of the demands of their own social and political class.
This publication redresses the balance and provides a more nuanced interpretation of Nero’s reign and Roman society of the time, reflecting on the traditional perceptions of his rule and revealing the substantial external and internal challenges with which the sixteen-year-old heir to the Roman empire had to contend.
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