네로 황제 집권 전반기 궁중 권력 투쟁 = The Struggle for Supremacy in Court during First Half of the Emperor Nero`s Reign

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The purpose of this article is to explore the struggle for supremacy which took place in the emperor Nero`s court during his early reign. Some scholars have thought that during his early reign Nero had no real power in politics and Seneca and Burrus who were his advisers led the government. But the emperor Nero took the reins of government during the first half period, which can be proved by the fact that he took the struggle for supremacy with his mother Agrippina who had made him the emperor and exercised powerful influence over him, and eventually seized real power instead of her. In conclusions, I make three assertions which would make it possible to appraise the emperor Nero in politics correctly. First, the person who played the leading part in the struggle for supremacy were the emperor Nero and his mother Agrippina, not Seneca and Burrus. They were merely his advisers and assistants in the struggle. Second, Seneca and Burrus assisted Nero and were involved in the crimes the emperor committed in the struggle. Especially Seneca did not act so gently in politics as he wrote in his books about morality. Third, if we divide the period of the emperor Nero`s reign into two parts, we should choose as the turning point the year 59 when Agrippina was removed, not the year 62 when Burrus was dead and Seneca retired from the court politics, for, when she was removed, there was no one who can check Nero and he seized absolute political power at that time.