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When Nero castrated a boy named Sporus and married him as a wife, Suetonius quoted one Roman who lived around this time who remarked that the world would have been better off if Nero's father had married someone more like the castrated boy. [9] He died of edema at Pyrgi (an ancient Etruscan city) in January AD 41. In Domitius' will, Nero ...
The ancient biographer Suetonius, who was critical of Nero's ancestors, wrote that emperor Augustus had reproached Nero's grandfather for his unseemly enjoyment of violent gladiator games. According to Jürgen Malitz, Suetonius tells that Nero's father was known to be "irascible and brutal", and that both "enjoyed chariot races and theater ...
According to Suetonius, Nero had one boy named Sporus castrated, and then had sex with him as though he were a woman. Suetonius quotes one Roman who lived around this time who remarked that the world would have been better off if Nero's father Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus had married someone more like the castrated boy.
Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus was probably born about AD 69, a date deduced from his remarks describing himself as a "young man" 20 years after Nero's death. His place of birth is disputed, but most scholars place it in Hippo Regius, a small north African town in Numidia, in modern-day Algeria. [1]
According to Suetonius, Nero moved against Britannicus, employing the same poisoner, Locusta, who had been hired to murder his father, Claudius. The first dose failed, and Nero decided to throw caution to the wind. In the account of Suetonius, he had Locusta brought to his room to mix a faster acting poison before his very eyes.
Suetonius says that Agrippina's "over-watchful" and "over-critical" eye that she kept over Nero drove him to murdering her. After months of attempting to humiliate her by depriving her of her power, honour, and bodyguards, he also expelled her from the Palatine , followed by the people he sent to "pester" her with lawsuits and "jeers and catcalls".
Church father Tertullian wrote: "We read the lives of the Cæsars: At Rome Nero was the first who stained with blood the rising faith" [17] Mary Ellen Snodgrass notes that Tertullian in this passage "used Suetonius as a source by quoting Lives of the Caesars as proof that Nero was the first Roman emperor to murder Christians", but cites not a specific passage in Suetonius's Lives as Tertullian ...
The theatre was used by Nero for rehearsals of his subsequent public singing performances in the theatre of Pompey and was large enough to satisfy his vanity when filled with people. [4] Suetonius writes that during the Neronia festival the emperor promised to exhibit himself in hortis ("in the gardens"), an indirect reference to his theatre. [5]