The cover article in the October 2020 Smithsonian magazine is a nice piece on the emperor Nero. It echoes the points that some of us have made here. Nero should never been emperor, but he was not nearly as bad as history often paints him. He was no worse than many of the people of his time, and would have been happier if he could been an entertainer. The title is, “The New Nicer Nero.”
