[close] Nero's secret police believe they have come on the first hints of a plot against the emperor's life. Once a promising and gifted friend of poets, pupil of the great Seneca, Nero has bloodied himself and grown fat on power. Crass, mediocre men--the military and the secret police--now have his ear. While he and his court give themselves to pleasures increasingly perverse and dissipated, the secret police close in on (or do they foment, or imagine?) the conspiracy of the men of letters. [close]