ife of his uncle Claudius, then Emperor, because she saw Nero as a future rival to the throne of their son, Britannicus. After Agrippina returned to Rome, Nero fell under her domineering influence and participated in her schemes against Messalina and Britannicus.
During his early adolescence, the author says that Nero behaved himself, and, in the initial years after he became Emperor following Claudius' death, Nero acted with moderation and wisdom in a number of areas: lowering taxes, displaying acts of public and private generosity, putting on crowd-pleasing spectacles and acting deliberately and fairly as a judge. He also kept the peace on Rome's frontiers and avoided reckless foreign adventures. Suetonius then damns Nero with faint praise: "I have separated this catalogue of Nero's less atrocious acts--some deserving no criticism, some even praiseworthy--from the others, but I must begin to list his follies and crimes" (222).
Suetonius offers two basic explanations for the emergence of Nero as a monstrous figure in his early 20s, one of which is more straightforward than the other. The simple explanation was that, "gradually, Nero's vices gained the upper hand" (227). He says that "Nero practised every kind of obscenity" (228), which included sex with members of both genders and members of his own family, the rape of a Vestal Virgin, orgies and other sexually-oriented exhibitionist acts, such as his nightcrawling on the streets of Rome and his mock marriage ritual to one of his young male lovers.
Nero was vainglorious and insincere about his various talents, such as his singing ability. He would deliberately engage in musical competitions which produced in him a state of high anxiety, then ensure that the results w
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