'…one man in his time plays many parts'.

The choice of image on the dust-jacket of this book is as inspired as its contents: a graffito sketch bearing an uncanny resemblance to Nero (complete with nose-hairs) from a taberna excavated in the SW substructures of the Domus Tiberiana. Its reproduction has been stripped of the later scribbles that encroach on the neck and the back of the head; indeed, it is reproduced in splendid isolation, divorced from the hectic mass of scribbling that covered the entire wall with sketches of ships, portraits, stick-figures, animals, geometric designs, and masses and masses of writing. (n1) In a way, this can serve as a metaphor for the author’s approach to his subject: E. Champlin strips Nero of the clutter that surrounded him — the business of empire — and distills for us the pure personality in all its rational delusion (Champlin insists on “rational”, right to the end).