Download or read book NERO Power and Luxury in Rome written by Editions LeBooks and published by Lebooks Editora. This book was released on 2024-03-21 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus was one of the Caesars and ruled Rome between the years 54 to 68 AD. Like his predecessors, he wielded power with violence and a good dose of insanity. Besides seeing himself as a deity, Nero considered himself a brilliant artist and dedicated much of his energy as a musician and actor to prove this.However, Nero went down in history as a murderer, madman, and debauchee, with no limits to obtaining what he desired, which in terms of power could mean the murder of his own mother and half-brother as well as the unrestricted possession of absolutely anyone, woman or man, who crossed his path and aroused his desire.This work portrays the power struggle behind the scenes of the Roman Empire, where poisoning was one of the main strategies, as well as Nero's trajectory, from his rise to power through the cruelty and obstinacy of his mother Agrippina to the tragic outcome when he commits suicide to avoid the wrath of his people. An unforgettable read.
Download or read book The Confessions of Young Nero written by Margaret George and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-03-07 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times bestselling and legendary author of Helen of Troy and Elizabeth I now turns her gaze on Emperor Nero, one of the most notorious and misunderstood figures in history. Built on the backs of those who fell before it, Julius Caesar’s imperial dynasty is only as strong as the next person who seeks to control it. In the Roman Empire no one is safe from the sting of betrayal: man, woman—or child. As a boy, Nero’s royal heritage becomes a threat to his very life, first when the mad emperor Caligula tries to drown him, then when his great aunt attempts to secure her own son’s inheritance. Faced with shocking acts of treachery, young Nero is dealt a harsh lesson: it is better to be cruel than dead. While Nero idealizes the artistic and athletic principles of Greece, his very survival rests on his ability to navigate the sea of vipers that is Rome. The most lethal of all is his own mother, a cold-blooded woman whose singular goal is to control the empire. With cunning and poison, the obstacles fall one by one. But as Agrippina’s machinations earn her son a title he is both tempted and terrified to assume, Nero’s determination to escape her thrall will shape him into the man he was fated to become—an Emperor who became legendary. With impeccable research and captivating prose, The Confessions of Young Nero is the story of a boy’s ruthless ascension to the throne. Detailing his journey from innocent youth to infamous ruler, it is an epic tale of the lengths to which man will go in the ultimate quest for power and survival.
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Nero written by Shadi Bartsch and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-11-09 with total page 423 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A lively and accessible guide to the rich literary, philosophical and artistic achievements of the notorious age of Nero.
Download or read book The Splendor Before the Dark written by Margaret George and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-11-06 with total page 594 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nero’s ascent to the throne was only the beginning....Now Margaret George, the author of The Confessions of Young Nero, weaves a web of politics and passion, as ancient Rome’s most infamous emperor cements his place in history. With the beautiful and cunning Poppaea at his side, Nero commands the Roman empire, ushering in an unprecedented era of artistic and cultural splendor. Although he has yet to produce an heir, his power is unquestioned. But in the tenth year of his reign, a terrifying prophecy comes to pass and a fire engulfs Rome, reducing entire swaths of the city to rubble. Rumors of Nero’s complicity in the blaze start to sow unrest among the populace—and the politicians.... For better or worse, Nero knows that his fate is now tied to Rome’s—and he vows to rebuild it as a city that will stun the world. But there are those who find his rampant quest for glory dangerous. Throughout the empire, false friends and spies conspire against him, not understanding what drives him to undertake the impossible. Nero will either survive and be the first in his family to escape the web of betrayals that is the Roman court, or be ensnared and remembered as the last radiance of the greatest dynasty the world has ever known. “A resplendent novel filled with the gilt and marble of the ancient world.”—C. W. Gortner, author of The Romanov Empress
Download or read book Nero written by Edward Champlin and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2005-09-30 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Roman emperor Nero is remembered by history as the vain and immoral monster who fiddled while Rome burned. Edward Champlin reinterprets Nero's enormities on their own terms, as the self-conscious performances of an imperial actor with a formidable grasp of Roman history and mythology and a canny sense of his audience. Nero murdered his younger brother and rival to the throne, probably at his mother's prompting. He then murdered his mother, with whom he may have slept. He killed his pregnant wife in a fit of rage, then castrated and married a young freedman because he resembled her. He mounted the public stage to act a hero driven mad or a woman giving birth, and raced a ten-horse chariot in the Olympic games. He probably instigated the burning of Rome, for which he then ordered the spectacular punishment of Christians, many of whom were burned as human torches to light up his gardens at night. Without seeking to rehabilitate the historical monster, Champlin renders Nero more vividly intelligible by illuminating the motives behind his theatrical gestures, and revealing the artist who thought of himself as a heroic figure. Nero is a brilliant reconception of a historical account that extends back to Tacitus, Suetonius, and Cassius Dio. The effortless style and artful construction of the book will engage any reader drawn to its intrinsically fascinating subject.
Download or read book Nero written by Thorsten Opper and published by . This book was released on 2021-06 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Takes a fresh look at the life of Nero (r. AD 54-68), providing insight into the inner conflicts of a Roman society in transition and challenging preconceptions of a figure dismissed by a hostile source-tradition as tyrannical, deluded and ineffectual.
Download or read book Rome Is Burning written by Anthony A. Barrett and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-02-22 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Nero became Emperor in A.D 54. On the evening of July 18, 64 A. D., it seems that a lamp was left unextinguished in a stall still heaped with piles of combustible material. Whether this was accidental or deliberate we cannot now determine, and normally it would not have led to anything that would have attracted even local attention. But there was a gusty wind that night, and the flickering flame was fanned onto the flammable wares. The ensuing fire quickly spread. Before the onlookers could absorb what was happening one of the most catastrophic disasters ever to be endured by Rome was already underway. It was a disaster that brought death and misery to thousands. In Nero and the Great Fire of Rome, Anthony Barrett draws on new textual interpretations and the latest archaeological evidence, to tell the story of this pivotal moment in Rome's history and its lasting significance. Barrett argues that the Great Fire, which destroyed much of the city, changed the course of Roman History. The fire led to the collapse of Nero's regime, and his disorderly exit brought an end to Rome's first imperial dynasty, transforming from thereto, the way that emperors were selected. It also led to the first systematic persecution of the Christians, who were blamed for the blaze. Barrett provides the first comprehensive study of this dramatic event, which remains a fascination of the public imagination, and continues to be a persistent theme in the art and literature of popular culture today"--
Download or read book Nero written by J. F. Drinkwater and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-03 with total page 469 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nero was negligent, not tyrannical. This allowed others to rule, remarkably well, in his name until his negligence became insupportable.
Download or read book Roman Frugality written by Ingo Gildenhard and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-09 with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Roman Frugality offers the first-ever systematic analysis of the variants of individual and collective self-restraint that shaped ancient Rome throughout its history and had significant repercussions in post-classical times. In particular, it tries to do the complexity of a phenomenon justice that is situated at the interface of ethics and economics, self and society, the real and the imaginary, and touches upon thrift and sobriety in the material sphere, but also modes of moderation more generally, not least in the spheres of food and drink, sex and power. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach drawing on ancient history, philology, archaeology and the history of thought, the volume traces the role of frugal thought and practice within the evolving political culture and political economy of ancient Rome from the archaic age to the imperial period and concludes with a chapter that explores the reception of ancient ideas of self-restraint in early modern times.
Download or read book Dying Every Day written by James Romm and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2014-03-11 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From acclaimed classical historian, author of Ghost on the Throne (“Gripping . . . the narrative verve of a born writer and the erudition of a scholar” —Daniel Mendelsohn) and editor of The Landmark Arrian:The Campaign of Alexander (“Thrilling” —The New York Times Book Review), a high-stakes drama full of murder, madness, tyranny, perversion, with the sweep of history on the grand scale. At the center, the tumultuous life of Seneca, ancient Rome’s preeminent writer and philosopher, beginning with banishment in his fifties and subsequent appointment as tutor to twelve-year-old Nero, future emperor of Rome. Controlling them both, Nero’s mother, Julia Agrippina the Younger, Roman empress, great-granddaughter of the Emperor Augustus, sister of the Emperor Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Emperor Claudius. James Romm seamlessly weaves together the life and written words, the moral struggles, political intrigue, and bloody vengeance that enmeshed Seneca the Younger in the twisted imperial family and the perverse, paranoid regime of Emperor Nero, despot and madman. Romm writes that Seneca watched over Nero as teacher, moral guide, and surrogate father, and, at seventeen, when Nero abruptly ascended to become emperor of Rome, Seneca, a man never avid for political power became, with Nero, the ruler of the Roman Empire. We see how Seneca was able to control his young student, how, under Seneca’s influence, Nero ruled with intelligence and moderation, banned capital punishment, reduced taxes, gave slaves the right to file complaints against their owners, pardoned prisoners arrested for sedition. But with time, as Nero grew vain and disillusioned, Seneca was unable to hold sway over the emperor, and between Nero’s mother, Agrippina—thought to have poisoned her second husband, and her third, who was her uncle (Claudius), and rumored to have entered into an incestuous relationship with her son—and Nero’s father, described by Suetonius as a murderer and cheat charged with treason, adultery, and incest, how long could the young Nero have been contained? Dying Every Day is a portrait of Seneca’s moral struggle in the midst of madness and excess. In his treatises, Seneca preached a rigorous ethical creed, exalting heroes who defied danger to do what was right or embrace a noble death. As Nero’s adviser, Seneca was presented with a more complex set of choices, as the only man capable of summoning the better aspect of Nero’s nature, yet, remaining at Nero’s side and colluding in the evil regime he created. Dying Every Day is the first book to tell the compelling and nightmarish story of the philosopher-poet who was almost a king, tied to a tyrant—as Seneca, the paragon of reason, watched his student spiral into madness and whose descent saw five family murders, the Fire of Rome, and a savage purge that destroyed the supreme minds of the Senate’s golden age.
Download or read book The Emperor Nero written by Anthony A. Barrett and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2016-07-12 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nero's reign (AD 54–68) witnessed some of the most memorable events in Roman history, such as the rebellion of Boudica and the first persecution of the Christians—not to mention Nero's murder of his mother, his tyranny and extravagance, and his suicide, which plunged the empire into civil war. The Emperor Nero gathers into a single collection the major sources for Nero's life and rule, providing students of Nero and ancient Rome with the most authoritative and accessible reader there is. The Emperor Nero features clear, contemporary translations of key literary sources along with translations and explanations of representative inscriptions and coins issued under Nero. The informative introduction situates the emperor's reign within the history of the Roman Empire, and the book's concise headnotes to chapters place the source material in historical and biographical context. Passages are accompanied by detailed notes and are organized around events, such as the Great Fire of Rome, or by topic, such as Nero's relationships with his wives. Complex events like the war with Parthia—split up among several chapters in Tacitus's Annals—are brought together in continuous narratives, making this the most comprehensible and user-friendly sourcebook on Nero available. Some images inside the book are unavailable due to digital copyright restrictions.
Download or read book Domina written by Guy De la Bédoyère and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-01 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A captivating popular history that shines a light on the notorious Julio-Claudian women who forged an empire Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero--these are the names history associates with the early Roman Empire. Yet, not a single one of these emperors was the blood son of his predecessor. In this captivating history, a prominent scholar of the era documents the Julio-Claudian women whose bloodline, ambition, and ruthlessness made it possible for the emperors' line to continue. Eminent scholar Guy de la Bédoyère, author of Praetorian, asserts that the women behind the scenes--including Livia, Octavia, and the elder and younger Agrippina--were the true backbone of the dynasty. De la Bédoyère draws on the accounts of ancient Roman historians to revisit a familiar time from a completely fresh vantage point. Anyone who enjoys I, Claudius will be fascinated by this study of dynastic power and gender interplay in ancient Rome.
Download or read book Nero written by Jurgen Malitz and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2008-04-15 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this rigorously researched biography Jürgen Malitz invitesreaders to reconsider the reputation of the Roman Emperor Nero. Focuses on the growing tension between Nero’s artistictendencies and his role as emperor. Steers readers through the diverse interpretations of Nero thathave arisen through the ages. Allows readers to form a balanced judgment of this divisive andcontroversial Emperor.
Download or read book Nero Caesar Augustus written by David Shotter and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-06-03 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Propelled to power by the age of 17 by an ambitious mother, self-indulgent to the point of criminality, inadequate, paranoid and the perpetrator of heinous crimes including matricide and fratricide, and deposed and killed by 31, Nero is one of Rome’s most infamous Emperors. But has history treated him fairly? Or is the popular view of Nero as a capricious and depraved individual a travesty of the truth and a gross injustice to Rome's fifth emperor? This new biography will look at Nero’s life with fresh eyes. While showing the man 'warts and all', it also caste a critical eye on the 'libels' which were perpetrated on him, such as claiming he was a madman, many of which were most probably made up to suit the needs of the Flavians, who had overthrown his dynasty.
Download or read book Representing Agrippina written by Judith Ginsburg and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Agrippina the Younger ranks as one of the most powerful women in the history of the Roman Empire. Judith Ginsburg's book provides a fresh look at both the literary and material representations of Agrippina. Her incisive study exposes both the contrivances of the commissioned artists whose idealized portraits served to buttress the image of the regime and the contrasting designs of the historians whose rhetorical stereotypes and negative depictions aimed to undermine it.
Download or read book The Autobiography of Henry VIII written by Margaret George and published by St. Martin's Griffin. This book was released on 2010-04-01 with total page 960 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Autobiography of Henry VIII is the magnificent historical novel that established Margaret George's career. Evocatively written in the first person as Henry VIII's private journals, the novel was the product of fifteen years of meticulous research and five handwritten drafts. Much has been written about the mighty, egotistical Henry VIII: the man who dismantled the Church because it would not grant him the divorce he wanted; who married six women and beheaded two of them; who executed his friend Thomas More; who sacked the monasteries; who longed for a son and neglected his daughters, Mary and Elizabeth; who finally grew fat, disease-ridden, dissolute. Now, in her magnificent work of storytelling and imagination Margaret George bring us Henry VIII's story as he himself might have told it, in memoirs interspersed with irreverent comments from his jester and confident, Will Somers. Brilliantly combining history, wit, dramatic narrative, and an extraordinary grasp of the pleasures and perils of power, this monumental novel shows us Henry the man more vividly than he has ever been seen before.
Download or read book The Architecture of Luxury written by Annette Condello and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-16 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past century, luxury has been increasingly celebrated in the sense that it is no longer a privilege (or attitude) of the European elite or America’s leisure class. It has become more ubiquitous and now, practically everyone can experience luxury, even luxury in architecture. Focusing on various contexts within Western Europe, Latin America and the United States, this book traces the myths and application of luxury within architecture, interiors and designed landscapes. Spanning from antiquity to the modern era, it sets out six historical categories of luxury - Sybaritic, Lucullan, architectural excess, rustic, neoEuropean and modern - and relates these to the built and unbuilt environment, taking different cultural contexts and historical periods into consideration. It studies some of the ethical questions raised by the nature of luxury in architecture and discusses whether architectural luxury is an unqualified benefit or something which should only be present within strict limits. The author argues how the ideas of permissible and impermissible luxury have informed architecture and how these notions of ethical approval have changed from one context to another. Providing voluptuous settings for the nobles and the leisure class, luxury took the form of not only grand palaces, but also follies, country and suburban houses, private or public entertainment venues and ornate skyscrapers with fast lifts. The Architecture of Luxury proposes that in Western societies the growth of the leisure classes and their desire for various settings for pleasure resulted in a constantly increasing level of ’luxury’ sought within everyday architecture.
