Stoicism in power: Nero and his reflective enigmas
- Autores: Carlotta Montagna
- Localización: CADMO: revista de história antiga, ISSN 0871-9527, Nº. 30, 2021, págs. 123-139
- Idioma: inglés
- Títulos paralelos:
- Estoicismo no poder: Nero e os seus enigmas reflexivos
- Enlaces
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Resumen
Nero has always been an enigma and today he remains hard to understand. This paper reveals the philosophical and philological sense of Nero’s plans for Rome, with its enigmas.
First, it is demonstrated that it is necessary to study the Neronian Age from a philosophical and philological perspective, whereas previous scholarly references to Nero’s interest in philosophy and philology are indeed very limited. In fact, Nero was deeply influenced by his tutor Seneca and he was himself a Stoic philosopher and a philologist.
Second, this paper focuses on the solution of Nero’s enigmas. It is demonstrated that Nero burnt Rome in order to purify and to rebuild it, in line with the Stoic concept of celestial fire as a creative agent (cf.
SVF I 102; Sen. Nat. q. 3.28.7). Hence, under Nero Rome could rise again as the Phoenix, the Stoic symbol of the wise (cf. Sen. Ep. 42.1). Besides, it is clarified that the Domus Aurea was the representation of the universe. In a theatrical reality, the Imperial Palace was located at the core of the genius loci of Rome and its octagonal room stood as an Augusti machina (as the numismatic sources attest), or the Roman Empire. It is maintained that Nero believed to be on the earth in the guise of a deus ex machina, or, in greater detail, as the creative, silent, and divine Artifex, the Latin translation of the Platonic Δημιουργός, as he implicitly declared on the point of death (cf. Suet. Nero 49).
