The story opens with Nero helping to put out the Great Fire of Rome. Here he is a benevolent ruler with concern for the poor citizens as well as the rich citizens of Rome. His political and administrative skills are top notch.
Rumors begin to circulate that Nero started the fire which wasn't true because he was out of town when it started. He brushes the rumors aside initially because all emporers have to deal with them. Nero sets about to rebuild Rome with grand public features even though some wealthy citizens will have to be displaced to make room for them. The houses will be grander and the placement of them will be organized into a beautiful city plan. The rumors become more intense that Nero started the fire so that he could rebuild the city and he decides that he can no longer ignore them. He comes up with a plan to blame the Christians for the fire.
The author presents a Nero who loved to stage plays, play music, engage in athletics and compose lyrics. He is a man who fiercely loved 2 women. Acte is the girl he grew up with and who knew him as he really was, not as an emporer. He adored his wife of 2 years, Poppaea. When she died he was devastated. This is a sensitive man, not the man of history that we have come to know, except for the part about blaming and punishing the Christians by burning, crucifixion and feeding them to beasts.
While I enjoyed the book in the beginning, it was slower reading than the first book The Confessions of Young Nero. It was a little wordy and less exciting than Confessions. It took me 6 weeks to read it! In addition, I don't remember Nero being such a nice guy in the first book. He had to become evil in order to survive his family. The family was rough. They killed each other for power. There seems to be a missing link between what Nero was like at the end of book 1 and what he was like in book 2. Am I missing something here? Did becoming emporer free him to be himself or did being the only surviving member of the family free him? I am just speculating.
Margaret George is well known for her research on the people she writes about. It is confusing to me that she gives us a nice Nero. Nero is not known historically as a nice person. She shows us Nero as a human being and explains in the Afterward that most of what we know about Nero was written by his enemies who had an agenda to destroy his reputation. However, she whitewashes the treatment he ordered against the Christians by preferring to focus on his leisure activities both before and after he made decisions to torture and kill them. This did not sit well with me. Most of the book was about Nero finding time to be an artist. If he was truly just an artist, why does she need to end the book with his successor killing everyone associated with him? He does not sound like a benevolent ruler here and it seems that she left out many of his ruthless actions as emporer.
She explains in her Afterward that she agrees with the historian Edward Champlain that Nero's actions were rational and that much of what he did resonated with contemporary social attitudes. She further stated that the Christians may have started the Great Fire in order to bring about the end times which is exactly what Nero believed and was the reason he persecuted them. However, she writes in the novel that they had no involvement in the fires but writes in the Afterward that they may have. In addition, she states that no one knows how widespread the persecution was and that the Christians may not have known about it. Ms. George has failed to read all of the historical accounts of the persecution. I find her thoughts offensive.
What is "the dark" referred to in the title? It's the last chapter where Nero is forced to commit suicide for an unknown reason. If you know history you know why he had to commit suicide. If all you know is the history presented in this book you must be confused.
The Splendor Before the Dark is thought provoking. It gives the reader a different perspective on Nero than history provided but still shows him as a ruthless killer albeit indirectly. I must state, though, that my opinion of Margaret George has changed. In historical fiction writing the reader expects the author to be true to history. In this book she wasn't. It seems to me that she and Nero have the same opinion on Christianity. Otherwise she would not have focused so much attention on how more important his leisure activities were than ordering the slaughter of a group of people.
2 out of 5 stars.
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