Real Roman History4 Aug

Episode 73. Nero, Part One: The Quinquennium

Works Cited Primary Sources

Aurelius Victor. De Caesaribus, 5.2. The late-fourth-century source preserving the Trajanic remark about the quinquennium Neronis. The attribution is uncertain and modern scholarship treats it with appropriate skepticism.
Cassius Dio. Roman History, Book 61. Greek-language continuous narrative for the period. Preserves some details not in Tacitus and is the principal alternative for events Tacitus organizes differently.
Coinage of the period. The aurei and denarii of 54 to 58 CE are unusually informative for the image management of the early reign, particularly the depictions of Nero and Agrippina together that track the political relationship between the two.
Seneca. De Beneficiis. Treatise on patronage relationships, also from the early reign. Useful for the philosophical framework Seneca was operating within.
Seneca. De Clementia. Political treatise addressed to Nero in the first or second year of the reign, arguing for the virtues of imperial moderation. The most extensive surviving political treatise from the early imperial period directed at a sitting emperor by an active adviser.
Suetonius. Life of Nero. Biographical source for the early reign and the matricide. Less detailed than Tacitus on the political arrangements but useful for the personal material.
Tacitus. Annals, Books 13 and 14. Continuous Latin narrative covering the years 54 through the matricide in March 59 CE (Book 13) and the matricide and its aftermath (Book 14). The principal narrative source. The accession arrangements, the early reign administration, the Britannicus poisoning, the Agrippina material, and the matricide are all preserved at length.

Secondary Sources

Barrett, Anthony A. Agrippina: Sex, Power, and Politics in the Early Empire. Yale University Press, 1996. The standard treatment of Agrippina the Younger. Indispensable for the matricide and the political relationship of the early reign.
Barrett, Anthony A. Rome Is Burning: Nero and the Fire That Ended a Dynasty. Princeton University Press, 2020. Recent treatment of the broader Neronian period with particular attention to the political consequences of the Great Fire that we will reach in a later episode.
Champlin, Edward. Nero. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003. The substantially revisionist alternative to Griffin. Argues that much of the standard picture of Nero reconstructs as deliberate political performance rather than as evidence of personal corruption. Cited at the appropriate moments without being adopted as the structural anchor of the episodes.
Griffin, Miriam T. Nero: The End of a Dynasty. Yale University Press, 1984. The standard modern English-language biography. The reference for most analytical decisions across the Neronian episodes.

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