War Nero, at least in part, a potentate to the taste of our time? A Roman emperor who did not conquer, but who knew how to secure the peripheral zones of the empire through limited power projection and diplomacy? A ruler who broke out of the iron role expectations of a princeps by cultivating an alternative lifestyle? Who, in his immediate surroundings, valued status issues less than was in line with senatorial tradition, yes, who fled from the cage of a solemn Roman culture forged by illustrious greats such as Brutus, Cato and Augustus, his person instead in clothes, habitus, interests and activities again and again newly self-constructed, experimenting with hybrid styles and rituals? A postmodern princeps?
Don’t worry, Alexander Bätz, ancient historian and librarian by trade, in his dignified and serious book about what is probably still the most prominent Roman emperor, offers at best indirect material for thinking in such a direction. His goal is not to save the honor of the ruler who publicly plays the cithara, but to demystify him and to classify him in the circumstances of his existence.
One might almost wish that the author had had a little more courage to extrapolate the actions of the government under this emperor and to ask more insistently what part Nero had in the various phases of his almost fourteen-year reign in good or at least rational decisions: in foreign policy, the occupation of important governor and command posts, the handling of the religious apparatus or the improvement of the infrastructure.
Extravagances, misdeeds and horrific crimes
In this sense, the pages on how Nero acted during the great fire in Rome in July of the year 64 read particularly instructively. With a keen sense, Bätz prepared from the consistently anti-Nero tradition how the emperor reacted to the emergency with prudent measures; he “filled the role as disaster manager well, the first aid seems to have worked”. In addition, the reconstruction measures followed a well thought-out concept that – one of the few modernisms at Bätz – “reminds of a modern land use plan” and was further pursued by the successors, who otherwise tried to distance themselves as much as possible from Nero – only the area of the ” Golden House” led them to more popular uses.
Alexander Baetz: “Nero”. madness and reality.
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Image: Rowohlt Verlag
To be sure, in Nero’s time the institutions and routines of Roman rule already had a great deal of weight of their own and could withstand an emperor who preferred to act as a creative genius for a long time. Whether too much money was spent on wars or on festivals and buildings made no difference to the treasury; for the people affected, however. And of course the first years in which the experienced senator Seneca, together with the praetorian prefect Burrus, exerted at least one major influence on the young regent should not be included in the balance sheet.