As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Affiliate disclosure.
Historical person
1–62
Sextus Afranius Burrus was the Praetorian prefect who helped guide the early reign of Nero. Together with Seneca he was associated with a comparatively restrained phase of government before his death weakened the balance around the young emperor.
Agrippina the Younger secured Burrus’s appointment as Praetorian prefect in 51, placing a trusted commander at the centre of the succession that brought Nero to power three years later. Burrus and Seneca became the principal advisers associated with the more restrained opening phase of Nero’s reign. Burrus died in 62 after an illness of the throat; ancient rumours of poisoning cannot be established with certainty.
Hourly History’s Nero follows the early influence of Agrippina, Seneca and Burrus and the gradual concentration of authority around the emperor and his artistic ambitions. In Margaret George’s The Confessions of Young Nero, when Agrippina the Younger returns from exile, she uses marriage, adoption and court influence to make her son Claudius’s heir, placing him in direct rivalry with Britannicus and binding him to Claudius’s daughter Claudia Octavia. Nero enters power at sixteen under the guidance of Seneca and Burrus, yet he must also resist his mother’s expectation that she will rule through him.
Series
Margaret George’s Nero duology reconstructs the life of Rome’s last Julio-Claudian emperor, beginning with a childhood in which imperial blood makes Nero a target and ending with the collapse of his reign. Told largely through Nero’s own perspective, the series follows his passage through the courts of Caligula…
All books in this series
Non Fiction
Biographies, histories and other non-fiction are listed separately from the historical novels above.
