Revisionist History

 Seventeenth Friday after Pentecost

Friday is "anything can happen day" on the blog. Revisionist history is the seeing of things historical in different way. In many, perhaps most, cases this is a good thing to do. An obvious example is the history of the American South, which I grew up with: The ante-bellum South was glorious. The Civil War was really "the war of Northern aggression." Slavery had nothing to do with the South's seceding from the United States of America. All the influential Southern racists were great men. Etc., etc., etc. To my redit dI never bought into this myth when I was being taught it. But that's another story,

Now all of history is up for grabs. Pop historians who hope their sensationalist revisions of history will both sell books and get them tenure go to more and more outlandish revisions, Getting it published is more important than getting it right.

Then latest issue of the Smithsonian magazine had a cover article that caught my eye. "The New Nicer Nero." The article by Joshua Levine was based on a book by a University of Nottingham professor named John Drinkwater. I have read only the article, not the book. The article calls into question all we know about the Roman emperor Nero from the three ancient Roman historians who wrote extensively about him, Suetonius, Tacitus, and Dio Cassius. I have read the works of each of these ancient historians more than once and I have read fairly extensively the work of many modern historians about the three. I have also read virtually everything else in antiquity that mentions Nero. Let me hasten to add that this is not an example of how well read I am (I'm not), but that I have worked for many years on the problem of the dating of the New Testament book of Revelation. I date it to the last years of Nero (68-69) rather than the last years of Domitian (95-96). For the articles I've published and the papers I've presented at scholarly meetings I've had to know everything about Nero that can be known.

Levine/Drinkwater dismiss the Roman historians as having been highly biased against Nero. They were. But anyone trained in critical thinking can read through their biases to get to the fact. For example, all the ancient historian, including more than these three, agree that Nero arranged the murder of his mother, Agrippina II, in 59 AD. Drinkwater says that no son murders his mother; therefore, Nero could not have murdered his mother. Drinkwater admits that Nero murdered his brother, Britannicus. He admits that Agrippina II murdered her husband, the emperor Claudius, so that her son Nero could be emperor. Nero was 17 years old when he became emperor. Drinkwater admits that Agrippina ran the empire with an iron fist during Nero's early years as emperor, but he can't see any reason why he would want to kill her. The ancient Roman historians saw the reason: Power!

Levine/Drinkwater make much of a beautiful building, the Domus Aurea, built during Nero's reign, as an example of Nero's goodness. (The article does have great pictures of it). They also note that Nero was an excellent singer and wrote poetry. In big print beside one of the pictures Levine writes, "The Church chose Nero as the representation of evil. But if you see what he made here, you get a completely different idea."

As you might expect, that one sent me through the ceiling. The fact (which Levine admits) was that Nero persecuted Christians as a scapegoat in the aftermath of the 64 AD fire which burned much of Rome. We know the details of this persecution much more from Tacitus than from any Christian source, and Tacitus hated the Christians. He doesn't think they started the fire, but he doesn't feel any remorse about their persecution. He tells us that Nero crucified hundreds of them and set them afire at night light the streets of Rome. We're the Christians wrong to see Nero as evil?

The Smithsonian is a highly credible magazine. When I read articles like this and watch PBS and other network shows on things I know about, it makes me question more critically articles and shows on things I don't know about. And that's a good thing.

 

Faithfully,

Christian