Nero's Heirs [Paperback]

I have enjoyed Allan Massie's novels about Augustus and Tiberius; they are well-written and provide interesting insights into his protagonists that are intelligent and thought provoking. I was looking forward to reading Nero's Heirs but I have some deep objections to the way Mr. Massie told the story of the Year of the Four Emperors.

The protagonist of the book is the fictional - M. Aemilius Scaurus who is the natural son of Narcissus and a Claudian through his mother. He is in self-imposed and is compiling his recollections of 69 CE for Tacitus. Scaurus is an exact contemporary of and playmate of Domitian. The letters to Tacitus are alternated with his own personal reflections where he often criticized the historian for his conservative moralistic views, noting that Tacitus will skew what his has written to him for his own purposes.

Massie follows the line of the "good" Titus and the "bad" Domitian of Suetonius; his protagonist is not only a friend of the sulky Domitian but a lover of Titus and, conveniently, their sister Domitilla. He makes some factual errors that I found bizarre. Flavius Sabinus was dismissed as the prefect of Rome by Galba and not confirmed in his position. Sabinus' dismissal caused Vespasian to be concerned about his own position in Judea, which is why Titus was sent to Rome in early 69 to negotiate with the new emperor. When Titus learned that Galba was dead and Otho was emperor, he broke off the journey. In Mr. Massie's novel, Titus actually arrives in Rome to sound people out for the Flavian cause and returns to Judea. Mr. Massie also has Vespasian as a kind of court fool of Nero ala Claudius when the reverse was true. Vespasian was one of the few trusted amici of Nero which is why he was among the entourage that traveled with the emperor to Greece.

Scaurus, as a good friend of the Flavian's, is summoned to meet Otho who is suspicious of the Vespasian and Titus and sends him as a spy to Judea. Naturally, Vespasian and Titus are surprised to see Scaurus who assesses the situation and returns to Rome to report back to Otho and take part in the civil war on Otho's side. I thought that given Otho had a reign of 90 days to make a journey to the East and back again was a fairly remarkable feat. Finally, in the wrap-up of events at the end of the book, Mr. Massie tells us that Domitian murdered Titus, which has been well-proven to be false. It appears that Titus might have had a brain tumor but the fact that he died a natural death is undeniable.

There were chapters that I did like among them the descriptions of Sporus lamenting Nero's death was particularly well written. Overall, I did not like the way the story was told and would have preferred a novel about the civil war of 69 from the perspective of Vespasian and Titus. I think that such a book would have had a clearer focus on events as the preparations for the Flavian revolt were made, and the love story of Queen Berenice and Titus would have made good reading. Much of the focus in Mr. Massie's book is on sex with Scaurus being desired by everyone, Galba's preference for mature men and Titus loving boys combined with a bedroom scene with Domitilla. After a while all of the sex seemed tawdry with too much emphasis on it and not one the events of the civil war. If one is interested in an historical soap opera modeled along HBOs Rome then this book should be on your reading list. For someone who has seriously read Roman history I think the book will be a disappointment. Regrettably, I found that the intelligence Mr. Massie has put into his Augustus and Tiberius is absent from this book.

A fairly graphic and in places rather off-putting rendition of the Year of Four Emperors, 69 AD, when Rome tore itself apart following the suicide of Nero. As it does not focus on one emperor, this lacks some of the flow of the others in the series and is decidedly lacking in sympathetic characters.

Seldom has historical fiction been brought to life in such an imaginative way. A remarkably informed piece of historical fiction that requires the reader to have neither patience nor a love of history in order to enjoy