Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus ruled the Roman Empire for fourteen years, from 54 to 68 AD, and the historical record that survives was almost entirely written by men who despised him. Tacitus, Suetonius, Cassius Dio — the three primary ancient sources for his reign — were senators or wrote from senatorial perspectives, and Nero’s relationship with the Senate was sufficiently hostile that objectivity from that quarter was never likely. The result is an emperor whose actual governance has to be extracted from beneath layers of accumulated literary contempt, much of which is genuine but some of which is retrospective distortion by a class that had specific and personal grievances.