L’Autore presenta una rilettura dei capitoli del libro XV degli Annales di Tacito, incentrati su Nerone, come figura storica e personaggio pubblico. Si esaminano le debolezze e stravaganze dell’ultimo principe della dinastia Giulio-Claudia, secondo la categoria che Nietzsche avrebbe definito “dell’umano, troppo umano” e, grazie alla testimonianza del grande storico latino, le riconduce a due cause principali: la sua fragilità psicologica, innata e mai stabilmente dominata neppure dai suoi illustri precettori, e in parte aggravata dall’onere della responsabilità imperiale che gli fu imposta quando era ancora troppo giovane e inesperto. Perciò la natura del suo potere monarchico e autocratico solo in apparenza fu istrionico, demagogico, populista. Trovano, così, una spiegazione plausibile sia la violenta contrapposizione con l’aristocrazia senatoria che, quando non fu apertamente umiliata, si dimostrò ostile al principe, sia l’invidia per grandi intellettuali e artisti, come Seneca, Petronio, Lucano, sia la sanguinaria repressione di ogni congiura, reale, o presunta, con cui Nerone si sbarazzò non solo dei propri nemici, ma anche dei servitori onesti e leali.

This paper re-reads some chapters of the 15th book of the Annales of Tacitus, which are centred on Nero as a historical figure and public personage. The weaknesses and extravagances of the last prince of the Julian Claudian dynasty are examined according to the category which Nietzsche would have defined as “human, far too human”, thanks to the evidence provided by the great Latin historian and reduces them to two main causes: his innate psychological fragility which was never permanently dominated, not even by his illustrious tutors, and which was partly burdened down by the responsibility of the Empire which was thrust upon him when he was still too young and inexperienced. For this reason his power as an autocratic monarch was only apparently histrionic, demagogic and populist. This provides a plausible explanation for the violent opposition to the senatorial aristocracy which even when it was not publicly humiliated, was hostile to the prince, and for the envy of the great intellectuals such as Seneca, Petronius and Lucan, or for the bloody repression of any conspiracy, true or presumed, with which Nero eliminated not only his enemies but also honest and loyal servants.