Compare And Contrast The Reign Of Nero And Tacitus

Nero last of the Julio-Claudian emperors has lived on for almost two thousand years in infamy. Three different sources seemed to have the same opinion of him, that he committed heinous crimes against the senate, the people of Rome, and his own family and therefore is deserving of his reputation. Dio Cassius, Suetonius, and Tacitus are all ancient sources who wrote of the emperor’s reign. Tacitus is the only of the three to have been alive during his reign. All three were wealthy upper class citizens holding titles writing after Nero’s death. And all had the same opinion of Nero that he was a disgraceful emperor deserving of his fate. But their accounts vary greatly and details as simple as names are not constant throughout the accounts. Two events stand out as the most controversial and varied in their recounting, Nero’s murder of his mother Agrippina, and the great fire of Rome. Both of the events have been told differently by the aforementioned sources so I will examine each account and compare them. Although Nero was notoriously cruel his part in the horrors that befell Rome during his reign have been exaggerated by biased sources.

The first event which has forever coloured the perception of Nero is the murder of his mother Agrippina

Still the decision weighed heavy on his conscience “…for he often owned that he was hounded by his mother’s ghost and by the whips and blazing torches of the Furies.” Nero unlike a monstrous psychopath keenly felt “..the stings of conscience, though soldiers, senate and people tried to hearten him with their congratulations…” The murder of Agrippina does not show Nero to be a soulless beast without conscience or heart but instead depicts a man forced to the unthinkable because of a heinous betrayal, whether that be Agrippina’s betrayal or that of the people that counselled him to such