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Nero: The End of a Dynasty (Roman Imperial Biographies) 1st Edition

by Miriam T. Griffin (Author)

3.9 19 ratings

Part of: Roman Imperial Biographies (22 books)

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Nero's personality and crimes have always intrigued historians and writers of fiction. However, his reign also illuminates the nature of the Julio-Claudian Principate. Nero's suicide brought to an end the dynasty Augustus had founded, and placed in jeopardy the political system he had devised.
Miriam T. Griffin's authoratitive survey of Nero's reign incorporates both a chronological account, as well as an analysis of the reasons for Nero's collapse under the pressure of his role as emperor.

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Editorial Reviews

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'Nero is likely to find a wide readership, and deservedly so, since the author has taken care to make her exposition accessible to the layman.' - A. Wallace-Hadrill, Times Literary Supplement

'an important book based upon a complete mastery of the material.' - Joint Association of Classical Teachers Review

About the Author

Miriam Griffin

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Routledge; 1st edition (October 9, 1987)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 332 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0415214645
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0415214643
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.21 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.5 x 0.75 x 11 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,059,671 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #376 in Historical Italy Biographies
- #725 in Ancient Rome Biographies
- #87,157 in Unknown

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3.9 19 ratings

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Average User

interesting read

Reviewed in the United States on December 20, 2019

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Nuanced take on a historical figure that academia previously assumed to have all figured out.

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James Kenney

So, yeah, shiver in secret delight at this monster's evil deeds, but don't forget, half of them were probably made up

Reviewed in the United States on March 17, 2015

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In our haste to depict Nero as a "Monster" (oooh, how thrilling!) let's not forget the kid was only 17 when he donned the purple, and his mother made Medea (who scattered the dismembered parts of her children on the sea to delay her erstwhile lover Jason from pursuing her after she killed his wife) look like a piker. How would YOU have done if you were suddenly handed control of the world when you were in high school? Okay, probably better than this guy, but for those who'd like to demonize him, remember, as the author says, St. Augustine, writing 350 years later, records that the Greeks and other eastern Roman provincials, believed Nero wasn't really dead and would return some day. THEY must have liked him! The truth is, Nero was the first Roman emperor to show some respect for the Eastern half of the Empire, and frankly, that half was far more civilized, more sophisticated, more valuable and much older than the West, and was the part that was destined to survive the Huns and the Goths, and endure for another 1,000 years...so maybe they weren't such bad judges of character as the popular view would have us believe.
Tacitus had an obvious motive for painting Nero in the worst possible light. Suetonius is a hack, and anyone who relies on him for evidence, a fool. Cassius Dio wrote centuries later, and is of dicey reliability at best. These are our sources!
So, yeah, shiver in secret delight at this monster's evil deeds, but don't forget, half of them were probably made up, and the other half, while ill-advised (such as ordering his best general Corbulo to commit suicide) have a twisted logic to them that the events of the Year of Four Emperors makes only too clear.
An excellent study of a difficult Emperor in a difficult position, well-organized and reasonable, even though it too subscribes to the general myth that Nero was Satan incarnate. (Or at least, his understudy.)

7 people found this helpful

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Robert C. Sellers

brilliant

Reviewed in the United States on July 11, 2018

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brilliant and helpful

Reviewed in the United States on September 27, 2018

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I never write negative reviews but this book is almost impossible to get through. It's one of those books where you finish a page and ask yourself, "what did I just read?" The author is ALL OVER the place with this book. I've read enough ancient history in my life to appreciate the great authors and storytellers and this is absolutely not one of them.

3 people found this helpful

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JPS

A failure, a monster, or both?

Reviewed in the United States on May 13, 2012

Nero is one of the most despised Emperor's of Rome and he is typically portrayed as a monster. In hr excellent scholarly book, Miriam Griffin shows to what extent this view is based on historical but also how much it owes to the hugely negative press that Nero has received from written sources. As she mentions, "Nero was to become one of the canonical tyrants along with Caligula and Domitian." In all three cases, however, the story of their regin, as it has come down to us, has essentially been written by (or on behalf of) the Senators, who were their main opponents and the main focus of their multiple and ruthless purges. Another point that the author makes is that Nero's picture as the incarnation of evil "trimphed as Chrisitianity triumphed", given his persecution of Christians.

This leads the author to examine to what extent and why his reign has been seen as so disastrous. She also examines whether he really deserves to be seen as the monster that he shown to be. Finally, she looks beyond the conventional picture of Nero that Roman authors have given us to explain why Nero fell. While Griffin clearly does not withwash Nero in any away, she does show that the first years of his reign were seen, even at the time, as something of a golden age. The horrific portraits of Nero, his paranoïa verging on madness and all of his other excesses, would only appear and increase over time, as difficulties increased, as Nero got rid of his best counsellors and advisors, and as he increasingly became unable to cope in his role of Princeps and rule the Empire.

This is in fact the core of Miriam Griffin's thesis: ultimately, Nero was an utter failure as Princeps, for numerous reasons (including his failures to portray himself as a successful military leader and his attitude towards potential competitors in this area, whether real or presumed) which are carefully analyzed and explained in her book. To quote her, "he never achieved a satisfactory and consistent image as Princeps". This might have been behond the scope of his abilities, as she suggests, and it would have been extremely difficult for anyone to achieve. However, this is was not what the Roman authors would concentrate on, nor what they would want to mention, if only because it implied showing how flawed and how fragile the Princeps and the institutions created by Augustus happened to be: neither the Republic of old, which was in fact an oligarchy, nor a pure monarchy, which the Romans traditionnally hated, but something in between. There was also a considerable flaw: there were no established rules for the succession, only a precedent of choosing him within the Julio-Claudian dynasty of which Nero was the last survivor, having eliminated the competititon early on and having no heir of his own. As years passed, the problem of succession, along other problems that Nero was unable to tackle, kept growing, until he fell.

A superb piece of careful and well-researched scholarship that is well-worth five stars.

6 people found this helpful

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Glenn S.

An ok book.

Reviewed in the United States on September 5, 2016

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The book is a bit dry. It was good as far as a source of history, but not written in a way that suited my tastes.

2 people found this helpful

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The Keen Reader

Nero - the last Julio-Claudian

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 29, 2013

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Miriam Griffin, of the University of Oxford, has taught, researched and written extensively on the Roman Republic and Empire. I have her book on Seneca waiting for me to read in a pile of books. This study of Nero, originally published in 1984, seeks to be "a hybrid, biographical in its concentration on the Emperor's personality and problems, historical in its analysis of his fall in terms of the interaction of that personality with the political system." This seems to me to be a very sensible approach to Nero: his personality cannot be separate from his rule, yet to what extent each contributed to or impacted on the other is a point of ongoing discussion between scholars. Part I of the book covers Nero's Principate; Part II is a post-mortem on the fall of Nero. Was the failure of Nero's Principate the failure of Nero himself, or the system set up by Augustus less than one hundred years earlier? Did the end of the Julio-Claudian dynastic rule allow the strengthening of the Principate as an institution?

Nero's downfall, his fate as the last of the Julio-Claudian Princeps, the fact that a new regime justified its own ascendancy as the rightful triumph over his evil, his treatment of the Jews and the Christians; all these contributed to ancient sources being fairly unanimous in their hatred and condemnation of Nero. Any favourable sources from during his lifetime would likely have been quashed or concealed. So to write dispassionately about Nero means to take extant sources, including coinage, inscriptions, and written sources, and to try to resurrect them in the context of his own lifetime. A difficult task, by anybody's standards. Can we be sure that Agrippina hastened Claudius' end? Did Britannicus really die of an epileptic fit at a convenient moment, or did Nero kill him to remove the threat of Agrippina's support for Britannicus? Even the question of Nero's actual involvement in direct rule (certainly during the lifetimes of Burrus, Seneca and Agrippina) remains open to discussion and interpretation. So many questions; so few definitive answers. So, as any responsible author would, Ms Griffin has used the sources (in this case, primarily Suetonius, Tacitus and Cassius Dio) and interpreted them in the way that appears to offer the most likely scenario, keeping in mind the overarching inquiry regarding the relationship between Nero, his rule, and his character, and the Principate itself.

This is in no way an easy book to read, but it is hugely rewarding. A certain amount of fore-knowledge about the Principate, about Nero and his rule, about Roman legalities and procedures is required to make sense of what is largely a book which consists of analysis of actions and sources in order to judge the overarching questions noted above. While the reader may not end up agreeing with all of the author's views, there is certainly no denying her right or ability to come to the conclusions that she has. It's all grist to the mill, adding to the understanding of the reader of the Roman Principate in general, and Nero in particular. Totally recommended for a reader who already comes armed with some previous knowledge on the era.

3 people found this helpful