Peak Roman Debauchery: Nero & the Satyricon

A History of Mankind (250)

To read previous newsletters in the History of Mankind, which is pretty long, you can click here.

For a while, Emperor Nero’s anger was contained by his capable courtiers and a smooth working relationship with the senate.

In 55 AD, Seneca published “On Clemency,” a key work of stoic precepts indicating the path of virtue for a ruler, following Nero's murder of Claudius’ son Britannicus when the latter started to plot against the emperor. The book was, in a way, a message for the jittery Roman elite that such a blatant assassination would be the just an isolated event, not the start of a new round of persecutions like those under previous emperors, and it worked.

The poet Lucan (39-65), Seneca’s nephew and protegé, also born in Corduba, published at this time his “Pharsalia,” one of the last epic poems of Roman literature, and one that reinforced Seneca’s urgings to keep faith on the new regime. The book is known for multiple brilliant lines including one that seems to encapsulate the sentiments of an upper-class distraught at the sight of what the heirs of Caesar had brought upon the dying Republic: “Victrix causa deis placuit sed Victa Catoni.¹”