The topic I was given was about the madness of Roman emperor Nero. From the sources I found, I learned that Nero had called for the execution of his mother, Agrippina, and his adoptive brother. Nero was a tyrant during his reign of the Roman empire, exiling and executing all his enemies without discretion. He was also known for his extravegance, spending tax dollars for himself, in turn collapsing the Roman economy by creating a large deficit. One of the most famous events during his tenure as emperor was the Great Fire of Rome. Though he provided for displaced victims, some had speculated that he was responsible for the fire, so he used the Christians as a scapegoat. It is said that Nero was playing his lyre and singing songs as he watched Rome burn. Nero is known to be one of the earliest Roman emperors to systematically persecute the Christians.
I first started looking for a source in the library catalog, thinking that looking for one may take a longer time. I found a book entitled Reflections of Nero, by Jas Elsner and Jamie Masters, published by Chapel Hill and released in 1994.
My search on Academic Search Premiere, was much more strenuous. I used the terms "Nero" and "madness", but came up with no results. I tried to broaden my search a little bit more by typing in "Nero" and "Roman Emperor", but did not come up with important information on Nero personally. Alas, I resorted to just using "Nero" alone as a search term, and I sifted through my results. I did not find a whole article on Nero, but a review of a book about him, which described his extravegance and insanity. It was a book review by Trevelyn E. Jones for the School Library Journal .
I had a much easier time looking for a source on the World Wide Web. Using Google, I searched for "Nero", and found an article on "New Advent", a self-proclaimed Catholic encyclopedia (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10752c.htm). I believe this is a reliable source because Nero is somewhat a big part of early Christianity, being one of the first rulers to persecute Christians.
I did not know which disciplinary database to use, being that there is no specific database for ancient history.
Two complex questions I would like to ask is "Why did he use the Christians as the scapegoat for the Great Roman Fire and what reasons did he use?" and "Did Nero's artistic side (music) play a part in his popularity, given that he was poor in domestic and economic issues?"
1 comment:
I like the way you tried different techniques in Academic Search Premier, even if you didn't quite find what you wanted. That's one key element of this course - to get you to try different strategies.
As for the disciplinary database, you could have tried JSTOR or ProjectMUSE with some success.
I can't tell from your essay, but I suspect you didn't look at the "subject guide to resources and databases," a link at the top of the A-Z list of databases. If you had done that, you could have clicked on "History" and would have been given this list:
* America: History & Life
* Historical Abstracts
* Academic Search Premier
Historical Abstracts would have been the one to try.
I did some checking and found that a combined search of Academic Search Premier and Historical Abstracts gave me a result if I used the terms "Nero" and "insanity," this latter term being a synonym for madness.
Overall, you've done a good job with this. The only things missing were enough bibliographic information to find the book review (no title) and an attempt to use a disciplinary database, which you said yourself.
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