The Splendor Before the Dark

This unwieldy tome follows The Confessions of Young Nero to revisit the last years of the emperor’s life. Opening with Rome’s destruction in the great fire of 64 CE, the author remakes Nero (37–68 CE), the last of Julius Caesar’s dynasty, as a circumspect ruler in love with his second wife, Poppaea, but still enamored with his first love, the freed slave Acte, now a successful businesswoman. Nero here is a sensitive musician who agonizes over difficult decisions and longs for his better self, and George uses the events during this part of his reign—the slaughter of Christians, the plot to assassinate him, philosopher Seneca’s subsequent forced suicide, his extravagant bank-busting rebuild of Rome—as a way to suggest he was in fact an introspective leader who did not take lightly the decisions he felt forced to make for the good of Rome. Wordy, often contemporary prose—Nero goes on a diet, has a cocktail to relax, contemplates his “getaway plans”—is employed to portray the ruler sympathetically, and to cast his retreat and death by suicide as a loss for Rome. The author’s distinctive version of ancient history, a far cry from Tacitus, will either amuse or infuriate aficionados of the period. (Nov.)