A ekphrasis suetoniana da Domus Aurea

Abstract

The descriptions of the Domus Aurea provided by the historical tradition are probably ideologically biased, due to moralistic rhetoric against luxury and tyranny. Some modern authors tend to see a kind of religious motivation in the building of that palace, in order to promote a supposed theocratic power in Nero’s reign. But we must keep to the texts: the descriptions seem only to stress the aesthetic tastes and the extravagancies of the artifex, although misinterpreted by tradition in the sequence of Nero’s fall in 68 A.D.