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The Worst First Citizen - Honors Thesis.pdf (496.85 KB)
ETD Abstract Container
Abstract Header
The Worst First Citizen
Author Info
Passannante, Sarah Nicole
ORCID® Identifier
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9128-3605
Permalink:
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=oberlin1625627942401276
Abstract Details
Year and Degree
2021, BA, Oberlin College, Classics.
Abstract
In his telling of the Life of Nero, Suetonius crafted an image of an archetypical tyrant that he then used throughout his other Lives. The princeps was Rome's premier citizen--as such, they needed to perform all aspects of citizenship as well as possible, especially in regards to successfully performing masculinity. Therefore, to be a good emperor was to embody male virtue; to be a bad emperor was to be effeminate and lack virtue. Suetonius crafted a rhetorical trope of the unmanly tyrant using his portrayal of Nero. This is seen most clearly in Nero 29, where Nero was sexually passive to a freedman, had public intercourse, and performed oral sex, among other improprieties. This trope was then used in the Lives of Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and Domitian to cast them as unqualified and tyrannical.
Committee
Andrew Wilburn (Advisor)
Benjamin Todd Lee (Committee Member)
Rebecca A. Frank (Committee Member)
Pages
51 p.
Subject Headings
Classical Studies
;
Gender
;
Gender Studies
;
History
Keywords
Nero
;
Rome
;
Suetonius
;
Lives of the Caesars
;
Imperial Rome
;
Gender
;
Anal penetration
;
Oral penetration
;
Galba
;
Otho
;
Domitian
;
Vitellius
;
Historiography
;
Biography
;
Masculinity
;
Tropes
;
Bibliography
;
Sporus
;
Pythagoras
;
Sexuality
Recommended Citations
Refworks
EndNote
RIS
Mendeley
Citations
Passannante, S. N. (2021).
The Worst First Citizen
[Undergraduate thesis, Oberlin College]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=oberlin1625627942401276
APA Style (7th edition)
Passannante, Sarah.
The Worst First Citizen.
2021. Oberlin College, Undergraduate thesis.
OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center
, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=oberlin1625627942401276.
MLA Style (8th edition)
Passannante, Sarah. "The Worst First Citizen." Undergraduate thesis, Oberlin College, 2021. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=oberlin1625627942401276
Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)
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Document number:
oberlin1625627942401276
Download Count:
859
Copyright Info
© 2021, some rights reserved.
The Worst First Citizen by Sarah Nicole Passannante is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at etd.ohiolink.edu.
This open access ETD is published by Oberlin College Honors Theses and OhioLINK.