Review: Nero

Conn Iggulden, Nero, (‎Penguin, 2025)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/198344721-nero

The story of Nero’s origins, surviving three emperors and a horrible family

Barbo (Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus) is readying his team of horses to ride for Rome. His wife (Agrippina), though pregnant with his child, finally, after nine years of marriage, hates him.

Sejanus is before Emperor Tiberius, pleading for his life. The corrupt prefect is thrown down the Gemonian stairs. Tiberius is dying.

Gaius (Caligula) takes his sister Agrippina by the arm, a bit too roughly. He wants to reminisce about their childhood, when he was happy. He seems scarred from his years on Capreae. The last living heir to the throne, he senses enemies all around him.

Caligula becomes emperor and wants his sisters by his side, to the dismay of their husbands. His megalomania increases by the day, until finally he pushes the Praetorians too far, and they assassinate him, choosing Uncle Claudius to replace him. Eventually, Agrippina gets her hooks into Claudius, and Nero becomes the emperor’s stepson. Nero’s relationship with his mother is strained from the beginning.

The only thing I didn’t like about this novel was the title. Lucius (Nero) is a child, shoved off into adoption in the slums; he survives three emperors and doesn’t re-enter the story until page 197.

The characters, monsters to a man (except Claudius, who is at least smart), are all believable, the intricacies of relationships are handled with subtlety, and the dialogue is good. We know them from history, but here we know them personally. We see the invasion of Britain also from the British tribes’ point of view.

The women are equally vicious, though more sympathetic. Messalina, upon Claudius’s inauguration, ‘pressing her hands together over her womb, like a little girl waiting for presents’. Agrippina, upon seeing her son again after her imprisonment, ‘her hands opening and closing like flowers at her side’.

I never tire of hearing the story of Rome’s emperors, and Iggulden tells it well.