Nero

Champlin's Nero is worse

I am not sure why so many reviewers here think that Edward Champlin is going easy on Nero or recasting him in a positive light. Champlin certainly dispenses with the caricatures that history has handed down to us, including the image of Nero fiddling as Rome burns. He shows us convincingly and I think definitively that Nero was not the buffoon of Roman tabloid authors like Cassius Dio.The picture Champlin gives us of the last emperor of the Julio-Claudian line is far more intriguing. The Nero we find here is, in fact, far more devious and far more cruel in that his crimes were not the result o

The man, the monster, the legend.

Champlin bravely asserts his own contribution to the great wealth of Neronian scholarship for the critics to pick apart. I find very little to quibble about.It is difficult to write even-handedly about Nero for a Western audience. Who could forget the image of a man who "fiddled while Rome burned" or the terrible tyrant who had begun a nearly 170 year "persecution" of the early Christians, under whose reign both Peter and Paul were executed? As other reviewer comments reveal, you can easily earn the brand of a Nero "apologist" if you don't tow the party line, however inaccurate it might be.Cha

Great Research - Mediocre and Meandering Writing

It sounds like this guy's buddies have been reviewing this book, based upon all the glowing reviews. Mr. Champlin (the author) seems to be a gifted researcher...the bibliography is staggering and the details of Nero's life are amazing, if true. But to get to them you have to wade through these ramblings that go on and on and on. In my mind, a four-star review means that I thought it was at least worth it to wade through them to get to the fruits of his research. His descriptions of the 'Golden House' (a palace that Nero had constructed) are what I was really looking for, and he delivers - but

A Good Analysis of Nero's Presentation That Takes the Argument Too Far

The thesis of this book is that Nero was entirely sane and all interpretations of Nero come from distortions of the way he presented himself. Dr. Champlin's argument compares Nero with various mythological figures. That these line up with specific features or events in Nero's life is, he argues, evidence that Nero promoted these similarities himself through his self-presentation and visual style. Much of this information is useful. His analysis of Nero's change from identifying himself with Apollo to associating with Helios is particularly interesting and most likely correct. This book will no

Nero:sugar coated at best

Yes, I would agree with the other reviewers that this book does give a good historical depiction of the monster Nero. What the other reviewers fail to recognize is the duplicity in the life of this man (understatement) that the author glosses over i.e. the burning of the Christians at his dinner parties is given just a few passages and then excused. The truth being that Nero was a true monster in any definition of the word. Bred from the loins of a killer to be a killer himself, nonetheless born from a lineage of killers going all the way back to Livia, who without, the history of the empire (

Nero

If you've read any relatively recent works on ancient Rome, you'll know that the contemporary sources were infamously unreliable. The principate, established by Augustus, disenfranchised the large aristocracy known as the senatorial class who were, unfortunately for posterity, also responsible for documenting the era. It's therefore accepted that, from them, a historian is only able to gain piecemeal understanding of any Roman figure, especially when it comes to emperors.That they would be hostile is a given but, in "Nero," Edward Champlin doesn't merely accept this at its face, instead decidi