Imagine unearthing a newspaper front page about Donald Trump two thousand years from now, amidst the ashes of a nuclear wasteland. “Trump dances to ‘YMCA’ with Village People at pre-inaugural victory rally”, reads the faded title. As you brush away the radioactive dust to reveal a photograph beneath, you can just about make out the figure of a man. Broad, formally dressed and with a coiffure that hasn’t been fashionable for centuries, he’s performing an uncomfortable-looking squat beside another man, dressed as what appears to be a giant bird of paradise.
You’ve heard of Donald Trump, of course.
He was the world leader who danced on stage, who boasted about grabbing women by the pussy, who famously “truthed” while America burned (whatever “truthed” means), and whose senile confusion between Iran and Israel sent the world spiralling into global nuclear war.
Trump is now remembered as one of the worst leaders of all time — deservedly, given the role he played in bringing about the end of civilised society. But there’s something of an enigma about him that many find absolutely fascinating. Donald Trump seemed to have been very popular (at least most historians think he won his first two elections fairly). He had a group of supporters called “MAGA”, who apparently sang his praises long after he had tragically choked to death on a Big Mac. And, as the disintegrating front page between your hands appears to suggest, Donald Trump really loved dancing.
Even for the most famous historical figures, trying to make sense of their lives with barely any information is exceptionally challenging. Widen the chronological chasm to two thousand years, and the challenge is only compounded further. Yet this is precisely the task we face when trying to fit together the pieces of the puzzle of Nero and his reign.
Scrutinise what we have, read between the lines, and make the occasional broad assumption, however, and we can at least give it a fairly good go (as I tried to do on the podcast below).
Who Are Our Authors for Nero’s Reign?
There are some things we can say about all of our sources. First, none of them liked Nero. None made any attempt to cast him as a good emperor. Instead, the man they portray possesses a plethora of vices, indulges himself like a parasite upon the Roman state, and ultimately makes his final theatrical departure from the scene under the looming shadow of civil war.
All our authors were also wealthy, well-educated, and literate men. This is not necessarily all bad. After all, if they couldn’t write, we would have nothing to read. But this means we only have an ‘elite’ male perspective of the foremost political figure of the time. We have next to no idea what the ‘ordinary’ Roman in the street thought about Nero (or any other emperor, for that matter). On the rare occasion we get a glimpse, what we have is essentially MAGA’s voice refracted through CNN. Only rarely does the vox populi resonate through, and even then it’s usually through graffiti, inscriptions, or chants as reported by others.
All our authors were also deeply misogynistic, blaming women for many of the disasters that befell the Roman state. It was, in their opinion, Nero’s second wife, Poppaea Sabina, who convinced her husband to murder his mother. Similarly, it was Nero’s mother, Agrippina, who shouldered the blame for turning her son against her by grasping too greedily for power. Such intrinsic misogyny is hardly surprising. These men were, after all, part of the culture that instituted the cult of the Vestal Virgins, young women tasked with tending to the sacred flame, and who faced unspeakable punishment should they let it burn out. The misogyny inherent within our sources cannot but colour our narrative of Nero’s reign, especially concerning his relationships with women.
Finally, our authors all belonged to a political class that had seen its privileges and prestige wither and die under the imperial system established by Augustus. There was no weight behind senatorial debate within a system of one-man rule. There were no decisions they could make that could not be vetoed by the emperor. Even lower-upper-class equestrians, like Suetonius and Seneca, had witnessed a decline in their families’ fortunes under the principate — even if personally they had benefitted considerably.
So much for what unites our sources, but who were our main authors for the reign of Nero?
Suetonius
Our first source for Nero’s reign is Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, a biographer and scholar at the court of Hadrian (120s CE). Suetonius’ biography, the Life of Nero, is a wild ride. It is the source of our most salacious “what the fuck” anecdotes from Nero’s life — and those of the other early emperors. But Suetonius is also really problematic. Suetonius was writing biographies rather than histories. So his purpose was not to provide an accurate account of what happened but to find anecdotes that say something about the corrupting nature of imperial power – and the emperors it corrupts.
Suetonius bases his biographies around rubrics, like how each emperor behaved at the games, performed his judicial duties, had sex, and even died. Every emperor also gets a section on their physical appearance, and it’s these rubrics — I suspect — that most clearly expose Suetonius’ tendency to bullshit. If Suetonius were our only source, we’d think Augustus was gap-toothed and monobrowed, Caligula was bald and gangly, and Nero was attractive, bandy-legged, and marred by blotchy skin. Perhaps all of this was true, but imperial portraiture, coins and cameos say otherwise.
Using Suetonius to try to understand Nero is a bit like using ChatGPT to write your undergraduate thesis. Yes, you get plenty of content. But lots of it feels embellished at best, hallucinated at worst, and stripped of any context that may explain some underlying reasoning.
Tacitus
Publius Cornelius Tacitus was the GOAT of Roman historians. His two main works, The Annals and The Histories, cover the period from the death of Augustus until the accession of Vespasian, and are rich in historical detail both in Rome and her provinces. If Tacitus were a dog, he would be a keen-eyed Border Collie and a very good boy – a very good boy because he sometimes cites his sources and expresses doubt where he senses bullshit, and a keen-eyed Border Collie because he rounds up Roman history as methodically as he does analytically.
But even the great Tacitus can’t help making up shit every once in a while or twisting events to suit his moralising agenda. His narrative of Agrippina’s death, for example, is pure theatre, written with the certainty of someone who was there. Similarly, the word-for-word speeches he puts into the mouths of enemy warlords (or ladies) like Calgacus or Boudica before doing battle with the Romans read beautifully, but are absolute bollocks, not least because no Latin speakers with eidetic memories would have been present within the ranks of the revolting barbarians.
Tacitus is also prone to sloppy source work. But compared to Suetonius, he’s a historian’s dream: more serious, far more reliable – the senior political editor for The Times up against a gossip columnist for The Daily Mail. Our main problem with Tacitus is that we don’t have enough of him. His account of Nero’s reign ends abruptly in 66 CE, and the rest of the text has never been found.
Cassius Dio
Cassius Dio’s writing is like George Bush’s art. On the one hand, the world is a richer place with both in it. Cassius Dio provides some information that we would not have otherwise and covers certain episodes that have been lost in the fragmentary texts of others. On the other hand, it’s a relief that neither is our only point of reference, or it might appear that Vladimir Putin looked permanently startled, having been rudely interrupted midway through blacking up.
Cassius Dio’s Roman History is well-meaning and entertaining, but I feel its author didn’t have the sharpest eye for accuracy. Dio makes daft chronological mistakes, and says completely mad shit even about things he’d claimed to witness (like the emperor Commodus dressing up as Hercules and clubbing to death in the Colosseum people who “had no feet”). More concerningly, as far as his coverage of Nero’s reign is concerned, he’s writing in the early 200s – some 150 years after Nero’s death. Which would be a bit like if I was the only surviving source for Benjamin Disraeli, and I had got most of my information because it came to me in a dream.
Seneca the Younger
Perhaps our most interesting author was Nero’s personal tutor, Seneca the Younger. Seneca is one of these figures who’s held up as a great Stoic philosopher and thinker, but who, on closer inspection, is wrong about almost everything. I see Seneca as a kind of Jacob Rees-Mogg character, pretending to be a spokesman for the common man while rich as Croesus and saying lots of wishy-washy fancy stuff in Latin to make himself sound intelligent. (Caligula, himself a man of letters, once threw shade on Seneca’s prose by calling it “sand without lime”)
While Nero’s star was in the ascendancy, Seneca was working away behind the scenes, spinning a narrative about a new Golden Age for Rome and laying the groundwork for Nero’s glorious reign. First, he wrote the De Clementia (“Concerning Clemency”), a mirror of princes, about how Nero should rule with mercy, which Seneca lived long enough to see turn out absolutely fucking abysmally. Many also credit Seneca with writing the Apocolocyntosis (“Pumpkinification” of the emperor Claudius), a dyslexic’s nightmare of a text which parodies the death of Claudius and his trial by the Olympian Gods (his punishment is to suffer for all eternity as the slave of the emperor Caligula).
Seneca wrote reams of letters, plays, and moral treatises which feature Nero directly or indirectly. In the end, he was forced to commit suicide in 65 CE after being implicated in a conspiracy against the emperor. Seneca’s close personal relationship with Nero is what makes him fascinating as a primary source. But the souring nature of that relationship makes him fraught with difficulties.
Minor Sources
Another minor source is Pliny the Elder, author of a big beast of an encyclopedia called the Natural Histories and, among other things, a long-lost history that covered the reign of Nero. Credit where credit’s due: Pliny was certainly inquisitive. That’s why he wrote a giant fuck-off encyclopedia, and why he got himself killed in Pompeii going to get a closer look at an erupting Mount Vesuvius. But he also had a bone to pick since he had been passed over by Nero, whose reign Pliny spent in apparently reluctant retirement. Instead of presiding over some practically defunct but prestigious political position, Pliny was sitting around putting on weight near the Bay of Naples.
One final source worth mentioning is the Jewish historian Josephus. Writing towards the end of the first century CE in the court of the Flavian emperors, Josephus had a few things to say about Nero and the pro-Jewish sympathies of his second wife, Poppaea Sabina. But his most interesting revelation is that there existed favourable traditions towards Nero (italics are my own):
“Many historians have written the story of Nero. Some, because they were well treated by him, have been careless about the truth out of gratitude. Others, out of hatred and enmity towards him, have so shamelessly and recklessly revelled in falsehoods as to find themselves deserving of censure. Nor can I be surprised at those who have lied about Nero, since even in writing about his predecessors, they have not kept to the facts of history… Nevertheless, we must let those who have no regard for the truth write as they choose, for that is what they seem to delight in.
Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, Book 20.8.3
Josephus spells out what most of us should already suspect: that Nero was a polarising figure who encouraged extreme loyalty or vituperative animosity. Nero was the Marmite of Roman emperors, and whether authors loved him or hated him very much coloured how they reviewed his reign. Traces of positive traditions survive, and we will be looking at these later in this article. But the majority lie smothered beneath the layers of bitter invective.
So with all of this, what can we say with certainty about Nero? Let’s start from the beginning.
Nero’s Early Life
Nero was born in December 37 CE to Agrippina the Younger and Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus. By all surviving accounts, Nero’s father was a wanker. He once killed one of his freedmen for not drinking as much as he was instructed. Then he ran over a boy near a village on the Appian Way. Once, in the Roman Forum, he gouged the eye out of an equestrian in the Roman Forum for giving him lip. You get the picture… Gnaeus died in January 41 CE, shortly before Nero’s fourth birthday. His son may have grieved him, but I suspect few others did.
Agrippina comes down to us as a particularly Machiavellian figure, and for a rip-roaring biography I cannot recommend Emma Southon’s “Agrippina: Empress, Exile, Hustler, Whore” highly enough. Agrippina probably had to be ruthless to survive the reign of Tiberius (who murdered most of her family), of her brother Caligula (who nevertheless had her banished for conspiracy), and of her uncle — and later husband — Claudius (who seems to have struggled to refrain from murdering people before she came along).
Agrippina saw in Nero the pathway to securing power. It was really through her veins that the blood of Augustus flowed thickest. But Roman society would have never accepted a woman. And so Agrippina groomed Nero for power and used him to prop up the chronically unpopular Claudius.
Teenage Dirtbag
At the age of 11, Nero was adopted by the emperor Claudius. When Nero was 13, he was given proconsular imperium (military command). Soon, he was permitted to lead a parade of the Praetorian Guard, shield in hand, dishing out donatives to the army and people. When appearing before the people at the games, Nero wore triumphal military garb while his half-brother, Britannicus, just 4 years younger, was dressed as a little boy.
It’s frankly incredible that Claudius allowed such scenes.
Britannicus was Claudius’s natural son and, before Nero, his heir. Based on the events of the past 40 years, Claudius must have known on some level that by promoting Nero and parading him as an imperator in waiting, he was effectively signing his son’s death warrant. Our sources suggest Claudius’ weakness for wine and women as the reason he promoted Nero over his own son (as usual, the blame lies with a woman). Whatever the reason, the die was cast, and in 53 CE Nero’s position was reinforced further when he married Claudius’ daughter, Octavia.
From the age of 15, Nero would wander the streets, especially the area around the Milvian Bridge — still a popular nightlife spot today — with his cronies, disguised as a freedman, beating people and raping men and women of high standing. The whole thing is very Clockwork Orange. Yet it wasn’t out of character for many emperors. As a youth, Lucius Verus (the protagonist of Gladiator II) inflicted similar misery on the Roman people. Even the wise Marcus Aurelius liked to run through fields scattering flocks of sheep and scaring shepherds, which begs the question of whether Theresa May’s Fields of Wheat claim reflected genuine teenage hijinks or a love letter to Stoicism.
Once, Nero was beaten black and blue by a senator called Julius Montanus, whose wife, Tacitus tells us, Nero was trying to molest. Nobody can doubt Montanus’ bravery, but his naivety raises questions. When Montanus recognised that the man he was pummelling to a pulp was none other than the emperor, he made the mistake of trying to apologise. Nero, refusing Montanus’ apology, instead obliged him to commit suicide. But Nero had learn his lesson, and would not venture out again for his nighttime forays without armed guards.
The Dawn of a New Golden Age
Nero became emperor in 54 CE at the age of just 16. The period surrounding his accession was one of great political uncertainty. There was no real antecedent for the accession of an inexperienced youth of 16. Augustus had not been much older when he emerged victorious from the Civil Wars as princeps. But he emerged far from untarnished: not so much from the wars as from his part in the proscriptions (a process by which political enemies were condemned to death and bounties were offered for their heads to be displayed in the Roman Forum).
Caligula, at 25, had been relatively young when he succeeded Tiberius, although his brief rule, which we are told, spectacularly superseded his predecessor’s in despotism, brutality and incompetence, was hardly a model fit for emulation. Whatever shape Nero’s reign would take, it was at least sure to be far from that of Claudius. His style of rule, marked by court intrigues and arbitrary purges, appeared to be navigated by a network of machinating freedmen and imperial women guiding an idiosyncratic and incongruous ageing emperor at the helm.
As with Nero’s uncle Caligula, everything started well. It seemed the Golden Age promised in the propaganda of Seneca had dawned. Contemporary reactions to this climate of uncertainty can be gauged from the literature, which enthusiastically promoted what Enigma would call a “Return to Innocence”. In fact, I reckon if that song had been around 2,000 years ago, it would have been the anthem to Nero’s accession. Choral, full of hope, optimistic in only the way that early 90s music could be.
Go on, give it a play. It’ll bring the rest of this section to life.
Seneca’s Apocolocyntosis contains a prophecy of Apollo which predicts the coming of a ‘golden age… an age of joy’ which will accompany Nero’s reign. The historian Peter Wiseman, who served as JK Rowling’s inspiration behind Professor Dumbledore, argues that a passage in the poetry of a figure called Calpurnius Siculus references Nero when speaking of a ‘golden age springing to a second birth’ (the first had been under the similarly Golden Age-obsessed Augustus).
Okay, so there are only a couple of references, but I firmly believe that the beginning of Nero’s reign was more golden than the Oval Office.
At the beginning of Nero’s reign, there was little to suggest that these lofty predictions would not come true. Tacitus reports a speech, written for the young emperor by Seneca to be delivered to the Senate, which provided something of a manifesto for the Neronian regime. The most significant clause was that ‘the Senate should retain its ancient powers’. Things did indeed start off well. Donatives were handed out to the military. Games were held for the people. The later emperor Trajan, who many regard as the GOAT, would refer back to this period as the Neronis quinquennium (the five years under Nero in which Rome received the best ever administration).
So what all went wrong? Let’s start with Nero’s character.
“Nero, Let’s Talk about Your Mother…”
Trying to sit ancient historical figures down in the psychologist’s chair is always a hiding to nothing. Historians are rarely qualified psychologists, so any conclusions we draw are based on our personal experience, bluster and “vibes” rather than study and science. Ancient subjects also can’t answer back (and if they could, they would seldom do so in English). So the only dialogue they can ever have with us is mediated through other dead people, most of whom hated them.
That said, fuck it. This is my blog and I’ll psychoanalyse Nero if I want to.
Nero was an only child raised by an immensely overbearing mother. How central she was to his rule is evidenced by two pieces of evidence in particular. The first is the anecdote preserved by Suetonius and Tacitus that on the first day of his rule, Nero gave the military the watchword “the Best of Mothers.” The second is a coin series issued early in Nero’s reign that shows Nero and Agrippina appearing alongside one another. Emperor and mother, facing off as equals.
Nero’s early life was not dissimilar to that of his uncle Caligula, but he bore greater personal conviction and less childhood trauma (Nero lost his dad when he was 3; Caligula had lost his mum, dad, and two older brothers to murder by the time he was 21). Nero was groomed to be emperor from a very early age, but being emperor meant being a military man. Nero’s true passions were not warfare and administration, but art, acting, music, sport and spectacle. Today, politicians seem more comfortable straddling the line between statesmanship and show business. Unfortunately for Nero, Roman society was less forgiving, and his pursuits were deemed unbecoming of the aristocracy, never mind the emperor.
Was Nero Any Good as an Artist?
Had Nero been around today, he would have been somewhere between a privileged royal prince and a raw trust fund talent: Newton Faulkner with a bowl cut, Fred Again with a lyre. I have no reason to doubt that Nero wasn’t proficient at what he did. The point is that, as an emperor, he shouldn’t have been doing it. Here are the artistic pursuits in which Nero immersed himself, and how competent he was according to ancient accounts.
Nero the Poet
Turning first to Nero’s poetry, the epigrammist Martial once described it as doctus (“learned”) — high praise indeed from a fellow man of letters, not least one who hated Nero. Even Suetonius, who seems to have detested Nero, acknowledged that his poetry came easily and was heartfelt:
He effortlessly and eagerly wrote his own verses, and did not, as some think, publish the work of others as his own. I have had in my possession notebooks and papers with some well-known verses of his, written with his own hand and in such ways that it was perfectly evident that they were not copied or taken down from dictation, but — with many instances of words erased or struck through and written above the lines — crafted out exactly as one writes when thinking and creating.
Suetonius, Life of Nero, 52
Nero the Musician
Regarding Nero’s ability as a musician, Suetonius described the emperor’s voice as “feeble and husky” and “thin and indistinct.” Yet others talk about a “honey sweet and melodious voice” and a voice “much improved by training.”
The poets will bewail thrice-wretched Greece when a great king of great Rome, a godlike man from Italy, will cut the ridge of the isthmus. Him, they say, Zeus himself begot and lady Hera. Playing at theatricals with honey-sweet songs rendered with melodious voice, he will destroy many men, and his wretched mother.
The Fifth Sibylline Oracle, 5. 137–143)
Nero certainly took his training seriously. Nero hired the leading Citharodist of the age — a guy called Terpnus, whom I like to imagine as a Greek Ed Sheeran. Under his instruction, Nero would lie on his back and hold a lead plate on his chest, purge himself using a syringe and by vomiting, and deny himself all fruits and foods deemed harmful to his voice. Come to think of it, it’s not totally far-fetched to suggest that Terpnus was trying to kill Nero, who must have been unbearable.
Indeed, in the last few months of his life, Nero would not address the soldiers directly but, on the advice of his voice coach, would only ever use an intermediary — something that would have gone down like a fart at the funeral with the Praetorian Guard.
Nero the Actor
It is impossible to judge Nero’s skill as an actor. Indeed, it is impossible to judge Nicholas Cage’s skill as an actor, and he hasn’t been dead for 2,000 years.
That Nero’s performances went down well with his audience is hardly surprising. The emperor employed a group of upper-class cheerleaders, known as the Augustiani, who were taught to clap and cheer in innovative ways. But the emperor was also said to have been an anxious performer, suffering pre-match nerves and stage fright. Suetonius preserves an illuminating anecdote:
He observed the rules of competitions most scrupulously, never daring to clear his throat and even wiping the sweat from his brow with his arm. Once, during the performance of a tragedy, when he had dropped his sceptre but quickly recovered it, he was terribly afraid that he might be excluded from the competition because of his slip. His confidence was only restored when his accompanist swore that it had passed unnoticed amid the delight and applause of the crowd.
Suetonius, Lilfe of Nero, 24
Yet if the way Nero acted betrayed a lack of confidence and conviction, the roles he chose did not. Nero took on many “brave” roles throughout his life. Not long after having his mother killed, he appeared onstage as Orestes and Oedipus.
Orestes was the most famous matricide in the ancient world and the subject of a tragic trilogy, the Oresteia, by the Greek playwright Aeschylus. This tragedy centres on the murder of Clytaemnestra by her son, Orestes, to avenge her murder of Orestes’s father, Agamemnon. This act plunges Orestes into a moral and spiritual crisis, as he is pursued by the Furies for the crime.
You’re probably more familiar with Oedipus, another tragic figure immortalised in the poetry of the Greek playwright Sophocles. Oedipus’s fate is to unwittingly kill his father and marry his mother, and when he discovers what he has done and he gouges out his eyes. Nero played him, too. Given the incest rumours swirling around implicating Nero and Agrippina, this is pretty bold stuff.
Yet none of this was as bold as Nero appearing onstage as Canace while wearing the mask of his late wife, Poppaea. Canace was a mythological princess who, through an incestuous relationship with her brother Macareus, gave birth to their child. Ashamed, she committed suicide and left her child to die.
In 65 CE, Nero’s second wife, Poppaea Sabina, died while pregnant. Most sources say that Nero kicked her to death in a fit of rage, and that he grieved for her long afterwards. Whether part of this grief involved him playing a woman giving birth, we can’t say for sure. But either way, it’s fucked.
Nero the Charioteer
We are told that Nero was obsessed with chariot racing from an early age. This was not necessarily a bad thing. Going to watch the games was generally fine, as long as done in moderation and with some decorum. Finding an analogy for this is tricky. Fifty years ago, I might have said that Nero’s obsessive approach to chariot racing would be a bit like if a British royal was a bit too much into football and attended all their team’s games. But the “beautiful game” has since been stripped of its working-class connotations and is no longer looked down on as the poor man’s sport. It might be a bit like if Prince George was a bit too much into boxing, and was always going to amateur bouts in the backrooms of pubs dressed in his best yet aggressively involved in the action.
What was not okay was Nero’s direct participation as a charioteer, which he pursued privately from 59 CE and publicly from 64 CE. That charioteering had once been in the preserve of kings, or was fine when done slowly and in the context of a military triumph, seems to have been lost on the Roman elite. They saw performative spectacle as debasing for an emperor, something suitable only for the infames (an underclass of prostitutes, gladiators, actors, charioteers — anyone using their body for public enjoyment). But Nero must have had some talent to race a 10-horse chariot at the Olympic Games, even if he finished the race on foot after being thrown off.
Nero the Needy
But talent is not the point. Nero was not a serious, self-assured ruler but one who craved approval. He appears to have been guided by a need for approval, popularity, and what we’re told was “a longing for immortality”. Suetonius, always more interested in the character of his biographical subject than the feats they achieved, probably nails it when he says:
“Above all, he was moved by a passion for popularity and was envious of anyone who in any way inspired the enthusiasm of the common people.”
Suetonius, Life of Nero, 53
As we’ll come to see, the more time passed, the fewer people Nero had to rein him in — mainly because he had them killed. First, there was his mother, Agrippina, who suffered the fate many mothers might if their spoiled teenage sons suddenly became one of the most powerful people on earth. Then there was his second wife (the one Nero actually liked), Poppaea Sabina, who many say he kicked to death when pregnant. Then there was Seneca, his one-time tutor, whom Nero compelled to commit suicide following a conspiracy. I’m getting a little ahead of myself, but my point is that Nero lost any potential “Twat-ometers” (people to tell him when he’s being a total twat), and that has cost his reputation dearly.
Nero wanted to compete full-time and as an equal to other performers. But as his Twatometer would have told him, a patron with 28 legions at his command cannot compete on a fair footing with others. On some level, Nero must have known this. Hence, we have the unfettered bribery, corruption, and deep-rooted insecurity. But Nero also had boundless energy and creative vision, some of which translated into genuinely impressive civic projects and spectacle.
Finally, there’s little doubt that Nero was a total megalomaniac. We’re told that he “held all religions and cults in contempt,” yet he both craved and cultivated a personality cult for himself. Nero drew inspiration from the Phoebus Apollo (god of sun, music, medicine, poetry and sciences) – the perfect model for a young, artistic emperor of the world. But he also looted Apollo’s shrine at Delphi to beautify his Golden House. Nero’s relationship with Apollo (and indeed the gods) was entirely on his own terms. This will be familiar to many of us today, as we watch modern “god-fearing” men on the far right of politics use Christianity as a crutch to legitimise injustice.
What Did Nero Look Like?
We have three ways of trying to work out what Nero looked like: descriptions in written sources, portraits on coins, and portraits on statues that were distributed throughout Rome and her empire.
Turning to written descriptions first, Suetonius describes Nero as fairly tall but foul-smelling with dull blue eyes, fair hair, and a face that was handsome rather than attractive. Suetonius also tells us that Nero had a thick neck, a protruding belly, and thin legs. Suetonius’ description of Nero’s eyes as dull is echoed in Pliny’s Natural History (11.144). Pliny had met Nero, and so his description is probably quite accurate. Contrary to Suetonius, however, he asserts (30.16) that Nero’s body was without blemish (nihil membris defuit).
Suetonius certainly seems to have been creative with his physical descriptions, something informed by his interest in physiognomy. He believed that physical attributes could reveal aspects of one’s character. Thin legs, for example, betrayed cowardice, and were ascribed to the emperor Caligula. Even Germanicus (Caligula’s father and the darling of the human race) is given the ‘thin legs’ treatment. But Suetonius qualifies this by saying that he worked hard to bulk them up.
Coins of Nero are pretty interesting. His look seems to go through several phases after the boy (AD 50) and the Beatle (AD 51), with coins from 61 onwards showing him getting fatter every year — which, as someone living in Italy, I can fully empathise with.
But perhaps what we consider fat would have in Nero’s time been seen as bulky. Indeed, Nero had close control over the public image he put out there, and no public image enjoyed wider circulation than that which appeared on coins. Could it be that Nero was transitioning more towards the aesthetic of a wrestler, perhaps casting himself as Hercules, in the twilight years of his reign? Or is this the face of an emperor who gave in to gluttony and wasn’t afraid to show it?
We should never underestimate how much the Romans loved dressing up. Mark Antony dressed up as Hercules, many emperors and military dynasts dressed up as Alexander the Great, Augustus once came dressed as Apollo to a “divine dinner party”, and Caligula… well dressed (and cross-dressed) as everybody.
In this respect, Nero was no different. Among his many personas were a citharon (Apollo), a charioteer (Phoebus Apollo), and a wrestler (Hercules). Nero is a bit like Boris Johnson. Always dressing up for different roles (high vis, NHS scrubs), only far cooler, since he’s racing chariots dressed as the sun god rather than flying in an Apache helicopter in an ill-fitting military camo.
