Saturday 26 March 2011

What Value does the source have?

From the previous posts, I have come to the conclusion that the account of Nero’s life in verses 27 to 29 in Suetonius’ The Twelve Caesars is an objective account, Suetonius tries to give as balanced a view of the emperor as he can in the circumstances. Suetonius appears to be one of the first historians to take priority in historical accuracy for future generations, rather than purposefully painting the image of the past in a good or bad light to deny the right for the reader to make an objective decision.

Suetonius’ place in the Roman class system helps us understand how equestrians viewed the emperors. Suetonius’ objectivity in The Twelve Caesars suggests that equestrians did not perceive the establishment too negatively. If Suetonius did think negatively on the Caesars, he does well to restrain himself in not berating them.

Much of the description of the lives of the emperors concerns their private lives rather than historical events that they were involved in. This shows Suetonius’ knowledge of the Roman populations’ demands. Much of the information involves the sex lives and scandal of the lives of the emperors. This is present in verse 29 of the biography on Nero when the freedman Doryphorus marries Nero and Doryphorus makes sounds like a woman being deflowered when in bed with Nero. Another example of this is in verse 28 where Nero rapes the Vestal Virgin Rubria.

This information shows that the demand for what can be called gossip was present among the Roman populace and that in this case, the Roman population was not that different as people of the modern day. They still enjoyed hearing scandals about the celebrities of the time.

This shows that verses 27 to 29 of The Twelve Caesars can help with understanding of two different things. Firstly, the extract can give an insight into the personality of the Emperor Nero, his madness, his paranoia, his eccentricities. The extracts’ objectivity enables the reader to feel rather conclusively that Nero was in fact mad, without suspecting that the author has embellished the account to make you feel negatively towards the emperor.

Secondly, the extract gives us an insight into the Roman society. The extract seems to focus on private things about the emperors, rather than events or things of importance. This suggests that the demand for gossip was present in Roman society as well as modern societies.

Reflections...


My aim in this section was to ultimately explain what we can gain from the source. I thought about it for a while and tried to think if there was anything other than the obvious, that Nero was a madman, but could not think of anything. I then did some more research to try and find what other people thought that The Twelve Caesars helped us understand but could not find anything different.

I eventually thought that maybe the attention Suetonius gives is on scandalous information rather than important events the emperors were involved in. This would suggest that the target audience was for a society that demanded gossip and scandal.

I came to the conclusion that this was an accurate statement, and decided that it showed a similarity to the tabloid magazines of the modern day, though I was also sceptical because I doubt much of the population would have read it, I do not know how literate the general population was, if I was to do a more in depth investigation that would be an area to receive attention.

In the final section, I will be concluding the blog. I will look back at the previous posts, summarise them and state definitively the value of verses 27 to 29 of the Life of Nero in The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius.

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