Nero: History, Fiction, Or Just for Fun
WRITTEN BY SUSIE HELME
We’ve enjoyed several historical fiction novels about Nero or featuring the infamous Roman emperor as a major character: Among them Manda C. Scott’s Rome tetralogy The Emperor’s Spy (Transworld, 2010), The Coming of the King (2011), The Eagle of the Twelfth (2012), and The Art of War (2013); and Margaret George’s The Confessions of Young Nero (Berkley, 2017) and The Splendour before the Dark (2018). Here my focus is on the more recent trilogy by S. P. Somtow, including Delicatus (Diplodocus Press, 2023), Imperatrix (2023), and Damnatio (2024); Simon Scarrow’s Tyrant of Rome (Headline, 2025); and Conn Iggulden’s trilogy including Nero (Penguin UK/Pegasus, 2024), Tyrant (2025), and Inferno (2026). New histories, too, have appeared.1
How do we capture a character from so ancient a time? Certainly, the aim of fiction is to bring the reader into the protagonist’s world. In historical fiction, we usually try to tally that portrayal with the historical record. But, it’s fiction, so we get to choose whether we believe the ‘sources’ or whether we want to invent stuff.
For example, dialogue. Are our characters portrayed as people just like us, speaking in modern vernacular? Simon Scarrow fits into this camp. His dialogue is thoroughly modern. Anachronistic, OK, but it lends a feeling of intimacy. It also allows for some cleverness. In Tyrant of Rome, one of his characters lets slip the F-word, then quips, ‘Pardon my Gallic’. Or, is an attempt made to take us inside the first-century mind? One way of doing this is to use the vocabulary of the time. I like this method, although many don’t. Does the Roman swearer say, ‘futuere’? Or, an author can use antiquated-sounding language. Make it sound like Tacitus, it sounds convincing.
Secondly, fact or myth, history or rumour? The first-century mind was dominated by gods, religious rituals, magic, superstition – and gossip. A juicy rumour is more fun than a boring historical fact, and the more incendiary the better. People wrote down the spicy gossip they heard in the bathhouses or whispered among their slaves, and we’ve accepted it as ‘history’. Modern historians point out that these wild rumours originated from adversaries of Nero.
In fiction, history can be twisted to suit. Conn Iggulden invents a naumachia (staged naval battle) starring the captive Caractacus.2 Did Claudius invade Britain with war elephants? Well, it’s more fun if he did. In Manda Scott’s words, ‘As long as I don’t put Otho before Galba… or stick stirrups on the saddles of my cavalry; if . . . I commit no gross anachronistic errors . . . then I can weave my narrative amongst the many pillars of accepted “fact”.’3 Margaret George says the key is ‘never to go against a known fact’.4 If you want to go further with ‘Nero, just for fun’, there’s the humorous alternate history A Song for Nero by Thomas Holt (Abacus, 2009). What if Nero didn’t die and lived to pursue his musical career?
Fun myths about Nero:
Saved by a snake
Was saved from assassins as a baby by a snake. Probably true. He wore a bracelet set with its skin.
A lunatic and a tyrant
Almost everyone portrays Nero as a tyrant, maybe a lunatic. Suetonius calls him ‘loathsome in every respect’.5 Scarrow describes him as ‘bull-headed’, and in Tyrant of Rome he portrays Rome as descending into anarchy under the volatile rule of an emperor who surrounded himself with sycophants, a danger of which, as an American, I am very familiar. Nero’s insistence on sycophancy goes to extremes. In Iggulden’s Inferno, Nero watches his audience eagerly, in case they register a flicker of inattention to his performances; Vespasian nods off and gets sent to Judaea. George’s Nero is just weak-willed and narcissistic, an artist who would have been a musician or charioteer had his nasty mother not finagled his way to the throne. Iggulden shows what thoroughly awful people they all were, men and women of the nobilitas – cuckolding senators, torturing slaves, murdering rivals and family members. But he admits that ‘there is no way of telling whether the nastier comments on Nero’s character have any basis in truth’. He did put an end to gladiatorial fights to the death. The lower classes weren’t much nicer. They adored the gore in the Circus and ripped enemies of the state to pieces with their bare hands on the Gemonian stairs.
Was addicted to chariot racing and poetry
Serious senators and Pisonian conspirators hated that he dressed in poet’s robes, curled his hair and played female roles on stage. Nero squandered the imperial treasury constructing a ten-horse chariot which barely fit into the hippodrome. George and Scott write breathtaking accounts of a chariot race from the charioteer’s point of view.
Fiddled while Rome burned
Tacitus repeated a rumour that Nero sang a song of the Fall of Troy upon hearing the news. Surprisingly, this one has a ring of accuracy. Nero tended to respond to momentous events by composing and singing a song.6 It would have been a cithara, though; violins weren’t invented until the 16th century. In Inferno, Nero stands in his newly built theatre, the roof burning above him, playing the cithara. His own song about Troy, in which Paris is the hero, apparently historically existed but is no longer extant.
Deliberately set the Fire
The rumour was already going around at the time that he or his agents deliberately set the fire to clear land for his Domus Aurea. This one, however, is fake news. By most accounts, Nero, despite his youth, dealt with the disaster as well as he might have done. According to Tacitus, he fought the fires with his own hands, immediately opened the imperial gardens for refugees and reduced the price of grain. Scarrow’s protagonists praise his leadership.
Threw Christians to the lions
A Neronian persecution is not attested to in the early Church writings, but since Tacitus wrote that Christians were set on fire to illuminate Caesar’s gardens, others thrown to dogs, and many were crucified,7 everybody then and now has accepted it as history. Scott has the arsonist as Saulos (St Paul), and Somtow has blaming the Christians as Pontius Pilatus’ idea. In Inferno, the fire is deliberately caused by the Christians, in order to fulfil their prophecy of the End Days, and the out-of-control tyrant Nero personally sets the scapegoats alight in the arena. We meet Paul and Peter, and to give us more footage of the Christians, Iggulden makes prefect Burrus a convert.
Committed incest with his mother
It was widely believed at the time that he had Agrippina killed, and Nero made jokes about it. The more salacious critics say he committed incest with her as well,8 which might as well have been true, he was so dominated by her. She insisted on having her own throne next to her son’s while he gave audience, which was considered shocking by misogynistic Romans. Agrippina’s last words were reportedly ‘Ventre feri (strike my womb)’, and the assassins complied.
Dressed his catamite as a woman and called him Empress
Sometimes, the most salacious of rumours are actually historical. It is precisely because opponents at the time – and Nero had plenty of those – used them as negative propaganda that the traditions were preserved in record. Although homosexuality was more accepted then than it has been in recent modern times, Nero’s and other emperors’ eromenoi were vilified. Somtow’s trilogy depicts Sporus’ horrific abuse by three emperors, Nero, Otho and Vitellius. The society of Rome’s upper class in general is often portrayed as debauched. In The Splendour Before the Dark, George has Petronius (author of Satyricon) leaving a letter outlining all Nero’s sexual exploits, including diagrams.
Dying words were ‘What an artist the world loses in me’
Yes, numerous sources quote his last words as ‘Qualis artifex pereo’.
Manda Scott writes with intimate cultural detail, taking elements from Christian legend, Jewish and Roman history and crafting them into new, ever-surprising plots. Her language is so beautiful, it’s believably antique. Simon Scarrow, Margaret George, Conn Iggulden, newer additions to the canon, offer us a cast of characters less exhaustive than writers like Colleen McCullough, whose Master of Rome series is set during an earlier period. This is less realistic – ancient Roman ruling class society comprised a large set of interconnected families, continually marrying, divorcing and poisoning each other – but it’s easier for the reader to contend with. Iggulden concentrates on intricate relationships between the characters. George’s characters are the more psychological, if a more fictionalised biography. But if we are not to chortle over the sensationalist gossip, is it fun enough? If it’s to read justifications for someone whom we know was guilty of at least some of the stuff he was accused of, is it factual enough?
The new spate of novels demonstrates the continuing appeal of Nero, whatever we may say about him. The question – were these stories really true? – remains just as interesting (and fun) 2000 years on.
References:
- Thorsten Opper, Nero: The Man Behind the Myth (British Museum Press, 2021); Anthony Everitt & Roddy Ashworth, Nero: Matricide, Murder and Music in Ancient Rome (Random House, 2022); Jacob Abbot, The History of Nero (E-BOOKARAMA, 2019); John F Drinkwater, Nero: Emperor and Court (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2019).
- Iggulden, Nero, p. 192. This historical spectacle in 52 CE featured a battle between Sicilian and Rhodian fleets.
- Scott, Author’s Note in The Art of War.
- George, Afterword in The Confessions.
- Suetonius, Life of Nero, chapter 37.
- Suetonius, Life of Nero, chapter 42.
- Tacitus, Annals, Book 15, chapter 44.
- Tacitus; Suetonius; Cassius Dio. Also George, The Confessions, p. 272.
About the contributor: Susie Helme is an editor and an award-winning novelist. The Lost Wisdom of the Magi (2020) won 2021 Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Award for Best Historical. The Genizah Codex and Dreaming of Jerusalem, both Finalists for the 2022 Claymore Award for Best Historical, are coming soon. https://www.susiehelme.co.uk
Published in Historical Novels Review | Issue 116 (May 2026)
