Autour de Néron. Mélange en hommage à Yves Perrin

Autour de Néron is a tribute to Yves Perrin, professor of Roman History at the Jean-Monnet University of Saint-Etienne and international specialist of the last of the Julio-Claudians and of Ancient Rome. The book brings together contributions from colleagues and friends structured around the figure of Nero: artifex, dominus and imperator. They review these titles of the prince and draw a complex portrait of the character and his actions. He remains an “artist” in the collective memory, mainly as a singer and musician, but other aspects of his art may also be explored, such as the innovation and precision prized by Nero the engineer. Master of Caesar’s household – places, bodies and culture steeped in history when Nero took over – he made a profound mark on it in the final years of the reign by building the Domus Aurea. Caesar’s household, however, had its own history, and it was there that he lived and worked and confronted the vicissitudes of power – which, in the case of the Caesars, extended beyond domestic power – and the morality of power. Effective power over the Empire occupies the final part of the book with a series of valuable investigations that enhance the study of relations between the central power and the communities of the imperial space. They put into perspective the often egocentric history of Nero and intensify the question of the centralized nature of power.

In the spirit of Yves Perrin, Autour de Néron widens the investigations to the Roman world of a vast first century of the Empire and also examines the reception of the ruler and more generally of Roman antiquity in the modern and contemporary world.