The New, Nicer Nero
smithsonianmag.com
smithsonianmag.com
The other day I was casually reading the wikipedia article for Commodus[1] the baddy Emperor from the movie Gladiator and noted how peaceful his rule was. His only wars were when he was co-emperor with his father Marcus Aurelius, and ended when Commodus became solo ruler. By contrast, Marcus Aurelius[2] entire reign was at war and and he is marked by history as the last of the Five Good Emperors.
Wonder how much we think of Roman Emperors comes from the writing and propaganda of their contemporary elites. Rome had an economy based on the back of slaves [3] captured in war after all, so it would not surprise me that elites would praise hawkish Emperors and deride the doves.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nero#Military_conflicts
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodus#Solo_reign_(180%E2%80...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Aurelius#War_with_Parth...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_ancient_Rome#Trade_...
Also, w.r.t. wars and other state matters, a ruler generally will not operate in vacuum, and had to account for the provincial gouvernements' needs and demands, the Senate, etc, ... and of course, the need to defend against aggression.
> "There was also something called the jus primae noctis, which would probably not be mentioned in a textbook for children. It was the law by which every capitalist had the right to sleep with any woman working in one of his factories."
It's not true (as we well know, being our own primary sources[1], but upon reflection, even without the explicit right, it's not exactly difficult to find some capitalists[2] who behaved as if they had had the implicit right, so neither is it strictly false.
[1] and having heard the slander instead applied to feudalism
[2] Pedantically, the ones who have been in the news are the capitalists' agents, the high class house servants we call CEO instead of majordomo. Actual capitalists sleeping with factory women (pace Zweig's account of the pre-1914 World of Yesterday) is generally found more in genre literature than in journalistic pages.
Almost all of it. Most of the time, all we have to go off are the Roman historians, which are notoriously extremely biased. You learn pretty quickly in any Classical Studies program to unlearn a lot of the preconceptions about Rome and its history that are embedded in modern culture.
The five good emperors were not sons of their emperor. Marcus offered Caesar title to Pomeianus, a great general who didnt have nepotism to back his rise, married Marcus's daughter Lucilla and provided the inspiration to Maximus in Gladiator. He refused it the three times it was offered. We could have had six good emperors.
https://www.nero.com/eng/downloads/previous-versions/nero-pr...
This gives away the game. Yes, his mom died, but he couldn't have done it. Yes, he killed Christians, but it wasn't as bad as people thought. Yes, he sang while Rome burned, but hey, Oppenheimer said "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds", which is basically the same thing.
It's a fun read, and it's interesting to see how historical narratives get formed. It did make a good case that he might not as bad as the worst narratives say. But I wouldn't go much further than that.
For example; it's presently wildly popular to believe that the Germanic invasions were peaceful multiculturalism, rather than, you know, a civilization ending event. I assume because the twee nincompoops who populate modern Classics departments are made uncomfortable by the parallels with present day barbarian invasions of Europe. There is zero actual evidence for this; in fact, looking at the archaeological, numismatic and philological evidence; it's abundantly obvious [0] that Rome wasn't peacefully transformed by Teutonic multiculturalism, but was in fact, sacked by barbarians and ruined forever.
Similarly, while I'm no Nero expert, and I think it would be interesting if Nero was a misunderstood bunny rabbit and his witch of a mother a "hidden figure" who would have made a great Elizabeth, I strongly suspect the ancient and later writers and views on Nero and Aggripina will turn out to be more accurate than something out of modern nincompoop Classics departments, populated with the likes of Zuck's dumb younger sister[1]. I could be wrong! And Smithsonian could also be misrepresenting the thesis of the book, but Nero being a jerk seems more likely than not.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryan_Ward-Perkins
[1] https://eidolon.pub/@donnazuckerberg -hilarious trash writer, taken seriously because there are less disapproving tweedy types around, and because her brother is a billionaire
Present day invasions?
In your rant about Nero, you hint at this: even if the more ancient writers are more correct, there is great value in the recent re-telling. Otherwise, the incorrectness in the Nero story would never be less wrong.
Also, I strongly disagree with your assessment of the overall situation - I think modern scholars are much more likely to be rigorous. Have you ever read 1491? In the "Numbers from Nowhere" section, it details how bad the methodology was in early indigenous population estimates... That kind of lazy/biased/incompetent historical research appears all too common, when evaluating older historians' methodologies.
Modern scholars who literally think the Germans didn't sack Rome? I'm pretty sure the contemporary accounts of the Romans who were sacked had a more accurate view of what was going on than some simpering dipshit at Harvard trying to make a name for himself by saying the sky is actually Paisley and the Germans peacefully assimilated.
There's a place for historical revisionism; Nero being a misunderstood bunny rabbit isn't a good place for it any more than "Germans didn't sack Rome." Nice try though.
I am pretty sure that a citizen historian who was brutalized by the invading tribes* has a much stronger incentive to exaggerate and lie than a modern scholar. Not to mention, modern scholars have their work reviewed by peers, and are able to sample multiple sources much more easily because of things like the development of field-of-study rigor and other things like the printing press.
Look at how news stories develop. The first stories are generally not correct. It takes time, perspective, and lots of hard work to piece together enough of the puzzle to try and provide an accurate story.
* German is a bit of a misnomer, given the time period we are discussing.
>modern scholars have their work reviewed by peers
The idea that a bunch of weebs 2000 years later are more authoritative than someone who was there at the time because "peer review" is is laughably insane. Peer review doesn't even work in physics. In other fields it seems to be a route for spreading mass hysterias and collective insanity.
Please name one actual fact about the Roman empire surfaced by modern historians contradicting contemporary historians and abetted by Peer Review. "Nero as misunderstood bunny rabbit" doesn't count, unless you can account for his, say, murder of his bloody mom.