Excerpt from A Critical Study of the Sources of the History of the Emperor Nero Our sources of the history of Nero and his reign are not very numerous. Fortunately, we have the works of three of the historians who wrote on this period at a time that was not so remote as to render their records of little value. (Chapters XII-XVI of the Annals of Tacitus (c.55-120 A. D.) cover the reign of Nero to the year 66 A. D., including his relation to Claudius during the last years of that emperor, and are so far complete. The Life of Nero by Suetonius (c.75-160 A. D.) has come down to us entire. Of the History of Nero by Dio Cassius (born 155 A. D.) in his Roman History, Books 61-63, we have only the abridgment of Xiphilinus and the extracts of Zonaras. Xiphilinus was a monk of the eleventh century who at the request of Michael VII (1071-78) wrote an epitome of Books 36-80 of the History of Dio Cassius, the last twenty of which would otherwise have been lost. Considering Dio's mode of writing, we are inclined to think that by the abridgment not much of the substance of the original work has been lost. Moreover, the work of Johannes Zonaras, a Byzantine historian of the middle of the twelfth century, in his Epitome of History (from creation to 1118 A. D.), as far as the history of Nero and other Roman emperors is concerned, consists in the main of excerpts from Dio, and thus he supplies in the passages that can be recognized as such, some of the parts that are lacking in the abridgment of Xiphilinus. There are but a few other sources, and these are all quite meager, as far at least as the history of the emperor is concerned. A few fragments of early Roman historians remain. A small number of inscriptions has been preserved, and a larger number of Roman and other coins of that period. The work of Josephus (b. 37 A. D.) on the Antiquities of the Jews extends to the twelfth year of Nero's reign; but it is, in the first place, a history of the Jewish people, and then the work was written by the Flavian courtier with the intention to create among the Greeks and Romans a higher opinion of his despised people, and, on the other hand, the author was profuse in the flattery of his patrons, among whom Poppaea, the wife of Nero, had been, and whenever there was an occasion to flatter he was not much concerned about the truth. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.