ABSTRACT
Despite their disagreement over the part Nero himself played, the historians Tacitus and Cassius Dio are in accord in maintaining that Seneca and Burrus exercised the dominant influence on government in the initial years of his reign. But they differ in defining the temporal limits of their ascendancy and, more radically, over the character of the government for which they were responsible. According to Dio, Seneca and Burrus made many changes in existing institutions and caused the enactment of new legislation, thereby winning general approval. 1 For Tacitus, the key to the principles of government lay in the speech Nero delivered in the Senate house on his accession, a speech written by Seneca in which the Emperor repudiated certain abuses of the old régime and promised to share his power with the Senate. 2 Suetonius also stresses Nero’s accession speech, but he emphasizes, not so much the relations of Princeps and Senate, as the qualities of generosity, clemency and accessibility that affected all classes of society. Unlike our other two authorities, Suetonius, as we have seen, ignores the political role of Seneca and Burrus, though he mentions that both tutor and Prefect ended as Nero victims. 3
