Monday 21 March 2011

Introduction

Suetonius’ 'The Twelve Caesars' is a biographical work on the twelve Caesars from Julius Caesar to Domitian. Suetonius wrote the work whilst working as private secretary to the Emperor Hadrian, which gained him access to the imperial archives. With this source of information he produced The Twelve Caesars.

The Emperor Nero is an interesting character to read about in The Twelve Caesars. Suetonius portrays the emperor as a mad and eccentric tyrant. In this blog I will show how Suetonius is portraying the Emperor Nero, and explain whether he is likely be being objective and if he is not, why he is not. To do this, I will be using three verses from Suetonius’ biography on Nero, from verse 27 to verse 29.

In the verses I will be looking at, Suetonius describes a number of obscenities Nero commits, such as committing incest with his mother and castrating a boy to try and turn him into a girl, followed by then marrying him. The questions which need to be asked are, ‘Is Suetonius being objective in his writing?’, ‘why might he not be?’ and ‘what value does the source have?’.

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