At times I have had to fill in when information is missing, where the modern reader would be confused, or where the story demands it. For example, from what I understand, divorce was a simple matter in Rome. It may not have required the statements and questions I have here, but apparently they were asked in some context, because they are recorded in the histories.
As I stated earlier on the reliability of the ancient historians, much that was rumor was reported as fact. Whenever someone died there were always whispers of poisoning, and many deaths were laid at Nero’s door when there would be no plausible reason for it. So I have Burrus dying a natural death, which he probably did. On the other hand, I don’t whitewash Nero by omitting things he did; I have included all his escapades and actions, such as his disguised night crawls and brawls with his friends in Rome, the engineered death of Britannicus, and, of course, the most famous, the theatrically managed death of Agrippina. But many of his actions considered shocking by Tacitus, such as chariot driving and stage performances, to us seem rather tame and hardly scandalous. Undignified for an emperor, perhaps, but hardly worthy of being described as “the wildest improprieties.” From this image comes our Hollywood emperor, with the type of improprieties left up to the studio’s imagination.
I have been blessed with many outstanding books and sources for my work. First, of course, are the three histories I mentioned earlier: Tacitus, The Annals of Imperial Rome (London: Penguin Classics, 1985); Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars (London: Penguin Books, 1986); and Dio Cassius, Roman History, Books 61–70 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1925). For biographies, I found the oldest (and still the longest one in English), Bernard W. Henderson’s The Life and Principate of the Emperor Nero (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1903), was very good in providing many small personal details that helped make the book intimate. Michael Grant’s Nero: Emperor in Revolt (New York: American Heritage Press, 1970) served as a basic go-to book for clear explanations and all pertinent facts. Miriam T. Griffin’s Nero: The End of a Dynasty (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985) proved to be a treasure chest of information and analysis on him and the period. Stephen Dando-Collins’s book The Great Fire of Rome: The Fall of the Emperor Nero and His City (Philadelphia: Da Capo Press, 2010) also has much more information than on just the fire, but it is excellent on that; and his Nero’s Killing Machine: The True Story of Rome’s Remarkable Fourteenth Legion (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2005) covers the war with Boudicca. Richard Holland’s Nero: The Man behind the Myth (Stroud, UK: Sutton, 2000) is good on the psychology of Nero; and Edward Champlin’s Nero (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003) is superlative in analyzing the person inside the myth, and the method in his madness—if indeed it was madness. Last, from editors Emma Buckley and Martin T. Dinter, A Companion to the Neronian Age (Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013) provides invaluable information on a variety of facets of Nero, military, mythological, artistic, and psychological; their book contains the David Braund essay.
Two excellent Seneca biographies, James Romm’s Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero (New York: Knopf, 2014) and Emily Wilson’s The Greatest Empire: A Life of Seneca (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), were very helpful. For Seneca’s direct words: Seneca: Dialogues and Essays (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).
On some other topics, Patrick Faas’s Around the Roman Table: Food and Feasting in Ancient Rome (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003) is just what it says it is; Linda Farrar’s Ancient Roman Gardens (Stroud, UK: Sutton, 1998) is a wonderful source for information on private and public gardens; and Roland Auguet’s Cruelty and Civilization: The Roman Games (New York: Routledge, 1994) tells you all you want to know about the arena. T. G. Tucker’s Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul (New York: Macmillan, 1936), although written in 1910, has the most complete coverage, along with diagrams, of any book I’ve seen for details of daily living.
Readers Guide for
The Confessions of Young Nero
Margaret George
Questions for Discussion
Augustus, a canny politician and great statesman, was unable to solve the basic dilemma of disguising the empire as a republic. It was part of Roman civic pride that they had banished kings—Julius Caesar was assassinated for behaving like a king—but in truth the Republic was not structured to govern what was now an empire.
So the fiction had to be maintained that the emperor was really just the first citizen. That meant the Romans could not openly have a dynasty and there was no clear line of succession—hence every man for himself in securing the throne. In an atmosphere like that, there were no holds barred in battling for supremacy. So ruthless was this process that by the time of Nero’s death, there were no descendants of Augustus left alive, and the entire dynasty ended.
1. What if Nero had refused to compete for the crown? Could he have had a quiet life and pursued his art in peace? Later in life, he expressed the idea that he could support himself by his art if he were deposed. Was that at all realistic? Or just another of his romantic dreams?
2. Two living emperors (Caligula and Claudius) are in the book, and the earlier ones are a constant psychological presence. What effect does Nero’s awareness of his lineage and of the expectation that he live up to it have on him from an early age?
3. Nero’s descent from Augustus meant that he was always in a spotlight but at the same time obscure, as there were many other descendants of Augustus. In the book he says, “I was, as always, solitary and singled out.” He was both watched and ignored. What did he do in response to this?
4. There were rumors that Nero and his mother had an incestuous relationship, instigated by her as a means of controlling him. Of all the forms of incest, mother-son is the rarest. But it is the easiest to conceal, because mothers normally lavish affection on their children, including physical affection. In what ways do you see Agrippina’s seductive behavior affecting him in the novel?
5. How would you sum up Nero’s feelings toward his mother? Was the matricide at all justified? At what level? Political or psychological?
6. Did Nero really have no choice but to go along with Agrippina’s plans to murder Claudius so he could become emperor? What if he had refused?
7. Murder abounded in Nero’s family, but in the novel he wants to think he is different. At the same time, he fears he isn’t. Is there such a thing as “the blood of murderers” that is inherited?
8. There were four important women in Nero’s life: his mother; his first love, Acte; his first wife, Octavia; and his second wife, Poppaea. With the exception of Octavia, who was his arranged-marriage wife, the others were all older than he was and very strong characters. Acte and Poppaea he was madly in love with. Was he seeking a mother figure/surrogate in the older, beautiful, and strong-willed women he loved?
9. Nero was a romantic about marriage and exotic adventure. In what ways was this his undoing?
10. Nero was only sixteen when he became emperor and held supreme power in many spheres. At an age when people now just become eligible to drive and are too young to serve in the military, he commanded the entire Roman army and empire. Considering this, how well did he perform?
• • •
It has been observed that Nero and Oscar Wilde had much in common. Both believed that life should be a work of art and that aesthetics was the most important aspect of living. Both, too, treated life and sexuality as theater. Because of this viewpoint, both came to a bad end, although the things they practiced are tolerated, if not condoned, today. Oscar Wilde’s quip as he passed through customs (“I have nothing to declare but my genius!”) and Nero’s last words (“What an artist dies in me!”) are very similar.
1. From his childhood on, Nero showed an interest in art and music. His earliest tutor, Paris, was an actor, and music was part of his education. How much influence do you think Paris had on him, teaching him at an influential age?
Do you think art became a refuge for Nero, his private sanctuary when he needed to escape his role as emperor and his family’s machinations?
2. Two of Nero’s outstanding passions—his love of Greece and his love of athletics—must have come from somewhere, although both are un-Roman. The Romans thought Greece was effete and athletics for its own sake a waste of time. Why do you think Nero was drawn to both? Could it have been because of his early tutors, who were Greek? Was it his way of carving out his own identity?
3. As part of his Greek mania, Nero seemed obsessed by the story of Troy. He composed an epic about it, making Paris the hero. Paris was banished from Troy as a child because of a prophecy; as an adult, he was mocked for fighting with arrows from a distance rather than at close range with a sword like traditional epic heroes. Did Nero identify with Paris because Paris did not follow the pattern of epic heroes and was an outsider?
4. Nero was born right around the same time of year as the Saturnalia. It seemed to be his special holiday, where rules were suspended and people went about in disguise. He showed an early attraction to costumes, change of identity, and pageantry, and to rule breaking. What do you think inspired this behavior?
5. At times, Nero seemed to be several people, and he was aware of this when he said there was the daylight, dutiful Augustan Nero, the artist Nero, and the dark Nero who did dark deeds. He thought of them as separate entities rather than as facets of the same person. Was this his way of avoiding admitting the dark Nero was just as truly himself as the other ones?
6. One historian says the history of Nero’s reign was the attempt to “break boundaries.” In what ways did he do this in his personal and political life?
7. To be an emperor was to have supreme power over many things, but that in itself precluded anyone being truly honest with Nero. It also meant that there could be no true competition because no one could beat the emperor. What did this mean to his deep need to measure himself as an artist and an athlete?
Margaret George is the New York Times bestselling author of novels of biographical historical fiction, including Elizabeth I; Helen of Troy; Mary, Called Magdalene; The Memoirs of Cleopatra; Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles; and The Autobiography of Henry VIII. She also has coauthored a children’s book, Lucille Lost. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin, with her husband and a sexagenarian pet tortoise, and travels extensively for her research and work. Visit her online at margaretgeorge.com and facebook.com/AuthorMargaretGeorge.
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Margaret George, The Confessions of Young Nero
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