50 pages • 1 hour read
SuetoniusThe Twelve Caesars
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 121A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
NeroChapter Summaries & Analyses
Sections 1-7 Summary
Nero’s father belonged to an old and wealthy aristocratic family, the Domitians. When Nero’s mother Agrippina married her uncle Claudius, Claudius adopted Nero as his son and heir.
Sections 8-33 Summary
As emperor, Nero initially promised to imitate Augustus’s model of rule. However, he had more interest in poetry, music, and theater than in politics or military expansion; he even held his own musical performances. Nero had numerous sexual affairs with married women and young men, nearly marrying a freedwoman named Acte and supposedly marrying a eunuch named Sporus. It was even claimed that he wanted to sleep with his mother. Meanwhile, Nero squandered tax revenue on luxuries, especially a massive new palace, the Golden House.
Sections 34-37 Summary
Suetonius alleges that Nero murdered his stepbrother and cousin Britannicus, as well as his own mother, who kept trying to exercise her influence over him. He divorced his stepsister and wife Octavia, then had her exiled and murdered. He next married Poppaea Sabina, then killed her too by attacking her while she was pregnant. Nero was no more merciful to other relatives or to people outside his family.
Sections 38-39 Summary
Nero started a fire that lasted nearly a week and devastated Rome, just to clear some land near his Golden House.
Sections 40-57 Summary
A general named Vindex started a military revolt against Nero. Vindex was defeated and driven to suicide, but the rebellion was taken over by the governor of Spain, Galba. Finding that he had been abandoned by his guards, Nero committed suicide. Suetonius admits that, even many years later, Nero’s death was mourned at his tomb.
“Nero” Analysis
Like Caligula, Suetonius presents Nero (37 CE-68 CE) as a classic example of a tyrannical emperor. He used violence to neutralize political threats and to eliminate members of his own family who were potential threats or who stood in the way of his desires. His sexuality drew him to various individuals of both genders and into multiple illicit relationships. He neglected his political responsibilities to pursue his artistic interests. According to one anecdote, Nero killed his wife Poppaea, pregnant with an heir Nero sorely needs, in an abrupt fit of rage. While Nero’s flaws and vices are diverse, they all stem from the same problem: Nero had the personality of a tyrant, which was revealed and became unrestrained after the murder of his mother.
While some of Suetonius’s claims about Nero have been verified by other sources—for example, the ruins of Nero’s Golden House were uncovered by archaeologists—there are also reasons to doubt some parts of Suetonius’s narrative concerning Nero. For example, most modern historians agree that there is no evidence that Nero deliberately set the Great Fire of Rome. In fact, other ancient accounts report that Nero personally involved himself in the firefighting efforts.
However, there are ways to complicate Suetonius’s own claims from within the text itself. Perhaps the most telling hint that Nero was not quite the monster Suetonius depicts is Suetonius’s own description of how people continued to decorate Nero’s tomb with flowers even years after his death. This is hardly how people would treat the grave of a man who was widely known to have deliberately committed arson for the sake of his real estate.
