Anthony Everitt & Roddy Ashworth

A striking, nuanced biography of Nero—the controversial populist ruler and last of the Caesars—and a vivid portrait of ancient Rome.

“This exciting and provocative book grabs the reader while supporting its arguments with careful classical scholarship.” —Barry Strauss, author of The War That Made the Roman Empire

The Roman emperor Nero has long been the very image of a bad ruler—cruel, vain, and incompetent. He committed incest with his mother, who had schemed and killed to place him on the throne, and later murdered her. He supposedly set fire to Rome and thrummed his lyre as it burned. Afterward he cleared the charred ruins of the city center and, in their place, built a vast palace. Historians of his day despised him, and it’s their recollections that have been passed down through the ages.

But, in all of the horror, there is a mystery. For a long time after his deposition and suicide, anonymous hands laid flowers on his grave. He was loved. In this nuanced biography, Anthony Everitt, the celebrated biographer of classical Greece and Rome, reveals the contradictions inherent in the reign of Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus and offers a reappraisal of his life. Everitt also brings ancient Rome to life, showing the crowded streets, political intrigues, and vast building projects that continuously remade the city. In this politically unstable world, Nero did terrible things, but the larger empire was also well managed under his rule. He presided over a diplomatic triumph with the rival Parthian empire, and Everitt teams up with journalist Roddy Ashworth to tell the epic story of Rome’s conquest of Britain and queen Boudica’s doomed revolt against Nero’s legions. Together Everitt and Ashworth show that Nero had a vision for Rome, but, wracked by insecurity and guilt-ridden over assassinations he ordered, perhaps he never really had the stomach to rule it.

This is the bloodstained story of one of Rome’s most notorious emperors. Nero’s rule has become a byword for cruelty, decadence, and despotism, but in Everitt’s hands, his life is a cautionary tale about the mettle it takes to rule.