Nero on the Disappearing Tigris

Abstract

This is the only undisputed fragment of Nero's poetry which is longer than a single line. It is preserved for us by the scholiast on Lucan 3.261, who gives us the additional piece of information that it belongs to Nero's ‘first book’. It is overwhelmingly likely that this refers to the first book of Nero‘s epic Troica, his most famous work and the only one, as far as we know, to have been comprised of several books.1 Since the fragment is the most significant surviving, but this attribution to the Troica cannot be quite certain, Morel and Büchner list it as fragment 1 with the simple heading ‘E libro primo’ and scrupulously keep it entirely separate from Servius’ two testimonia (frr. 9 and 10) on the content of the poem. This entirely sensible procedure, however, may trap the unwary reader into assuming that not a word of Nero's epic actually survives.