Nero. Madness and Reality

Nero: a tyrant or a victim of history?

Alexander Baetz smashes myths about the most scandalous Roman emperor, offering a look at the realities of his time behind the familiar image of a madman and a despot—court intrigues and the struggle for power.

The name “Nero” became synonymous with every imaginable vice—a point on a colorful palette of evil. In the memory of the centuries, Nero remains as a tyrant, a mother-killer, a Rome-burning arsonist, and a persecutor of Christians. There is also a more lenient view: a fat neurotic, a ruthless idler, a pampered failure who was fascinated by poetry and horse races—completely unfit for the role of a Roman emperor.

However, memories of Nero have always been derived from senatorial historiography. Not a single nurse and not a single taster thought to transfer their opinion about Nero onto papyrus. Roman hired workers and craftsmen—constantly busy on the emperor’s building projects—are silent. Nero’s bodyguards, his freedmen, the charioteers, the actors, and in general the common people— the overwhelming majority of Rome and the empire’s population—are silent too.

The historian of antiquity Alexander Baetz does not set out to rehabilitate Nero, and there are no reasons to do so; the goal of the book is to demythologize the emperor. Baetz invites you to immerse yourself in the realities of Roman society, the system of imperial power, and court intrigues, to try to see something in Nero’s image beyond orgies, immorality, decadence, cruelty, and arbitrary rule.

“The tomb of Nero was decorated with flowers for a long time. True, we don’t know exactly who kept his memory—because even today, flowers are brought to the graves of tyrants more often than one would wish. Loving Nero was nothing to be ashamed of.”