The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Volume 06: Nero — A Reader’s Guide

Ancestral Vices and Authorial Judgment

Suetonius devotes the first chapters to Nero's forebears, selecting episodes that foreshadow the emperor's flaws. Cneius Domitius, the great-grandfather's grandfather, rode an elephant in a triumphal progress after conquering the Allobroges and Arverni; the orator Licinius Crassus mocked his 'brazen beard, who had a face of iron, and a heart of lead.' Another ancestor proposed prosecuting Julius Caesar. These vignettes are not neutral—they are chosen to illustrate a pattern of arrogance and political aggression. Suetonius's editorial voice is explicit: he intends to demonstrate hereditary vice. Yet the evidence he provides is anecdotal, not systematic. Readers should note that the historian's moral framework shapes which ancestors he includes and how he presents their actions.

Nero's Appearance and Negligent Dress

In a rare physical description, Suetonius reports that Nero had 'his hair cut in rings, one above another,' and in Achaia let it grow long behind. He appeared in public in the loose dress he used at table, 'with a handkerchief about his neck, and without either a girdle or shoes.' The historian also notes Nero's 'very slender' legs and a constitution so sound that in fourteen years he had only three slight fits of sickness, during which he neither forbore wine nor altered his diet. These details are not merely cosmetic; they serve Suetonius's characterization of Nero as careless of traditional Roman decorum. The contrast between physical robustness and sartorial negligence reinforces the theme of an emperor who flouts convention.

Artistic Ambition and Rivalry

Suetonius emphasizes Nero's eagerness for popular acclaim, calling him 'the rival of every man who obtained the applause of the people.' He describes Nero's training in poetry, drawing, painting, and moulding statues, and notes that he composed verses 'with pleasure and ease.' The historian claims to possess pocket-books and loose sheets with well-known verses in Nero's own hand, 'blotting and interlining' that prove they were not copied. Nero also practiced wrestling, sat on the ground in the stadium like an umpire, and planned to kill a lion naked in the amphitheatre. These ambitions, Suetonius implies, were not mere hobbies but expressions of a competitive drive that sought to rival Apollo and Hercules themselves.

Caprice, Superstition, and Renaming

Suetonius records Nero's 'insatiable desire to immortalize his name' by renaming the month April to Neroneus and planning to call Rome Neropolis. His religious attitudes were similarly erratic: he held all rites in contempt except those of the Syrian Goddess, whom he later urinated upon. He then adopted a new superstition, worshipping a little image of a girl given by a plebeian as a 'preservative against plots,' offering three daily sacrifices. These actions are presented as evidence of capriciousness rather than coherent belief. The historian's selection of these anecdotes—renaming, urination, an idol—paints Nero as both grandiose and petty, a ruler whose whims governed public and private life.

Suetonius's biography is not a continuous narrative but a collection of thematically arranged anecdotes. Readers should attend to the historian's explicit judgments—such as his claim that Nero 'degenerated' from his ancestors—while recognizing that the evidence is chosen to support that verdict. The translation by Alexander Thomson, revised by Thomas Forester, preserves the directness of Suetonius's Latin, making the emperor's contradictions—artistic ambition and moral squalor, physical vigor and public indecorum—readily apparent.

Reading of Nero’s strange, artistic compulsions, the way he forced the world to watch him perform, I felt the same quiet ache I recall from Suetonius. There is a loneliness in rulers who crave applause. That thought drifted me to Akhnaton, another figure of solitary vision. The Life and Times of Akhnaton, Pharaoh of Egypt — Background and Themes holds a similar, gentle tragedy.