Perceptions Of Nero

[Primus Pilus]

The following quotes are from a private message conversation between Frankq and myself concerning Nero... I think we were both just thinking out loud, so some additional input may help to round out a picture of the most beloved 5th princeps.

 

From Frankq:

 

Despite the revised look on many Romans, Nero is not coming out in a good light. And I

[phil25]

Fascinating stuff, and I agree with almost all of it!!

 

I think Nero was probably complex and contradictory, and may have "matured" or changed with time and office. The disposal of his mother was certainly a turning point in my view.

 

He is interesting too - almost exceptional - in seeming to have no taste for military glory; not even a wish for the reflection of it (a la Claudius).

 

Agrippina Minor was, of course, totally familiar with Gaius' court and policies, and if there were (hypothesis only) strand of autrocracy (what I have described elsewhere as an Antonian policy) the she would have known of it and may have supported it strongly. Thus it may directly and strongly have influenced Nero.

 

The sources are so adamantly anti-Nero in tone as to make it even more difficult than for Gaius to like or sympathise with Nero.

 

I have on my shelves a novel I bought many years ago (1987 published date) called "Imperial patient: the memoirs of Nero's doctor" by Alex Comfort. The author wrote much on medical matters in his day.

 

It is a long while since I read the novel, but I have retained it because it is well-researched, and I recall it as having provided the only satisfying and practical sympathetic portrait of nero i have ever read. (Alas, I'd have to re-read it to tell you how and why!!)

 

The blurb on the jacket asks whether Nero in some esoteric sense was Dionysus? And whether his suicide re-enacted the Elusinian mysteries?

 

I cannot comment, other than to say that personifying Dionysus is something some have attributed to Antonius, Nero's direct ancestor. Could there be something in it?

 

To understand it would, of course, entail unravelling the Roman vision of life and the sort of place an "avatar" of a God might hold, the purpose he might serve. It would require us to drop the more logical modern conventions.

 

I simply don't know the answer - but it is a fascinating topic.

 

Thanks for sharing guys.

 

Phil

[frankq]

The sources are so adamantly anti-Nero in tone as to make it even more difficult than for Gaius to like or sympathise with Nero.

 

BINGO!!!! Bingo, bingo, bingo!!!!!

[Pertinax]

The "Imperial Patient" is still available as a used item on Amazon , Comfort was a very "non-conventional" person but a trained medic and fluent writer. Does the work have a considerable medical content (and bibilography ) at all?

[Primus Pilus]

 

 

The sources are so adamantly anti-Nero in tone as to make it even more difficult than for Gaius to like or sympathise with Nero.

 

BINGO!!!! Bingo, bingo, bingo!!!!!

 

Yes, quite interesting. The tone of Nero's biographic information is decidely negative from the start... much more akin to Domitian it would seem. I'm forced to wonder how much the ancient sources attributed power to the likes of Agrippina and Poppaea simply to discredit Nero. (ie how could a man of the 1st century allow any woman to control him, blah blah...) However there are other powerful and influential women throughout the Julio-Claudian and "Adoptive" (2nd Century AD) eras without the negative connotation that may have been associated with the female influence.

 

He is interesting too - almost exceptional - in seeming to have no taste for military glory; not even a wish for the reflection of it (a la Claudius).

 

Indeed... is it odd that perhaps only one of Rome's greatest emperors, Antoninus Pius, seemingly shared this trait.

 

Though Suetonius tells us that Nero did celebrate an enormous and strange triumph based on his olympic victories in Greece. Perhaps this was in part in regards to the settlement with Parthia over Armenia or even the defeat of Boudicca and was twisted to ignore the military aspects of such simply to discredit Nero in the historical record. Though as there is no evidence of such, we are left to wonder I suppose. And as both military events occured several years prior, this may lend credence to the notion that Nero really did enter Rome in a trimphal procession of minstrels, actors and athletes.

 

Just more rambling thought.

[frankq]

Consider this about Poppaea. I checked and rechecked and rechecked. This lady was seven years Nero's senior. He replaced one dominatrix with another.

[phil25]

Or simply needed a mother-figure.

[frankq]

Or simply needed a mother-figure.

 

That, too, I considered. Definitely some fixation with a domineering and older member of the opposite sex. Interesting to note that Caesonia, Gaius' wife, was a few years older too and like Poppaea already had kids.

[phil25]

It is always dangerous to speculate about the psychology of individuals from antiquity, since our information is limited and our sources sometimes suspect, but in the case of Nero, I think it can be justified.

 

Imagine a young man with artistic ability, sensitive, talented but not really to professional standards, intelligent, vulnerable.

 

He grows up amid luxury, almost his every whim catered too. He comes to think of himself as "special" - as being marked out by fate. But he is spoiled, flattered, has no sense of proportion or realistic self-appraisal. He has a tendency to put on weight, is not a good sportsman, lacks courage (though perhaps not a strange sort of self-confidence and assertiveness). Indulged and indulgent, he gorges himself on good things which are freely available and because he feels a frustration at his situation compared to others - a tendency to self-pity? Does that come out as petulance? Comfort eating is a way out.

 

Strangely as I write this, the figure of Dudley from the Harry Potter books leaps to mind!!

 

Add to this - he is sexually abused by an overly possessive and dominating, ambitious mother. He is somewhat confused about sexual roles, easily led - he defers in decision-making to older men like Burrus and Seneca who patronise him.

 

Then, suddenly he finds himself first heir to the imperal throne, and then princeps.

 

But he is without training, and he is denied any access to his power. His mother and the older men work the levers for him - hardly consulting him.

 

They do it well - Nero's first five years are later compared to the best the empire ever knew. Does the reflected glory make Nero think that he has after all got talent - or that fate loves him and anything he touches turns to gold?

 

And when he is encouraged by others he meets to throw off the shackles - to seek revenge on his hated (but loved) mother and can take revenge on Seneca, he finds himself an absolute autocrat.

 

Gaius, in a similar position, with a different background (a glorious military hero as father0 tends to dress up in Alexander's breastplate and do military things, in the bay of Naples, in Germania or on the Channel coast. Nero, by contrast, turns to his "artistic streak" - he sings, he acts, he craves applause as the genius he believes himself to be.....

 

When physically threatened or in danger he lashes out - whether the victim be Piso or Corbulo. Fear drives his hand. And like macbeth, once he has killed his mother he is so deep in blood that more guilt makes no difference - easier to go on, to strike out...

 

I don't think I need go on.

 

But the question that emerges for me is, was Nero ever interested in politics or power except to indulge his own sensual ambitions?

 

Was he a puppet emperor, even after Agrippina and Seneca etc have left the scene? Was it Tigellinus and the other creepy characters we glimpse in Suetonius and Tacitus who pulled his strings?

 

Thanks for the opportunity to think this through. Stimulating posts.

 

Phil

[frankq]

Being emperor was Agrippina

[Andrew Dalby]

Being emperor was Agrippina

[phil25]

But there must have been some element of competitiveness viz a viz Britannicus, surely.

 

Britannicus was a Claudian by birth, legitimate heir to his father.

 

Maybe Agrippina also encouraged in Nero a deep calousness and rivalry. Isn't there a story that he resented being referred to as Ahenobarbus after his adoption? He so wanted his step-sibling dead, that when it came to Octavia, Seneca, his mother etc, he was hardened to killing anyone who stood in his way.

 

Do not the Jesuits say, give me a boy at the right age and I will make him mine for life?

 

Phil

[Basemetal]

Hi!

I'm new here but I found the description of Nero fascinating.

I collect ancient roman coins.

Roman Imperal coins are known for their faithfulness to the living emperor. In fact, given that the coin was oftent the only image of the emperor many Roman subjects would ever see. "This is Nero-accept no substitues"

was important.

Nero is often seen and remembered as vain, egocentric, self-indulgent and monomanical. Yet his coins show a sloppy Peter Ustinof kind of guy. He didn't seem to mind. What a dicotomy. Here is a would-be poet, a singer, a patron of the arts and all things Greek, and yet, he allows himself to be protrayed as a double-jowled, poltroon. Wonder why? Just because he was emperor?

"Say you young Gaius, how does my bust on this brand new sestertius become me?"

"Why, you look like the veritable image of Jupiter himself emperor"

While privately thinking: "This Tub 'Olard is huge!"

How say you all?

[phil25]

Do we not have to change our modern perceptions of appearance, in examining Roman, and other ancient, sculpture, coins etc?

 

Symbolism, conventional wisdom, the associations held by certain charcateristics, may have been, and probably were, very different to those which we know.

 

Corpulence today is often mocked, because we today in the west, have a fetish about fitness. Obesity is a bad thing. But in Britain in Victorian times, a "tummy" was a sign of success and status and was called a "corporation" - it spoke of rich diet, money, affluence etc.

 

Look at the differences between say the standards of female beauty in an Elizabethan woman, one of reuben's models and a 1920s flapper. or more widely, how a Japanese woman presented herself in Samurai times.

 

Nero may actually have had a thick neck or double chins, but was he also sending a message through his statues and coinage? Did this speak of a non-military princeps, of prosperity, or artistic sensibilities?

 

I think we might need to examine how certain gods were presented in statues and paintings - Dionysus/ Bacchus was often a fleshy figure wasn't he.

 

Another reference, Nero was a direct descendent of Antonius - and the triumvir's coind show a bull-necked massive head. Was Nero drawing attention to his descent, claiming kinship with a famous leader?

 

I'm not saying I am right, but I think it too easy to jump to anachronistic judgements that Nero was "sloppy"

 

Phil