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Historical person
49–69
Sporus was a young freedman whom Nero had castrated and publicly treated as a spouse. The episode is preserved by hostile ancient writers and illustrates the theatricality, coercion and sexual politics associated with Nero’s final years.
In L. J. Trafford’s Palatine, the plot draws slaves, freedmen, courtiers and Nero’s consort Sporus into a crisis whose consequences none of its architects can control. In L. J. Trafford’s Vitellius’ Feast, Sporus is commanded to perform a degrading public role that recalls Nero, and Philo is forced to confront how much cruelty can be endured before obedience becomes complicity. Other novels featuring Sporus include Margaret George’s Emperor Nero.
Series
The Four Emperors quartet follows the collapse of Nero’s government and the successive regimes of Galba, Otho and Vitellius before Vespasian secures power. Rather than treating AD 68–69 only as a contest among generals, the novels remain close to the Palatine household: secretaries, slaves, freedmen, lovers and entertainers…
All books in this 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
