The descriptions of the Domus Aurea provided by the historical tradition are probably
ideologically biased, due to moralistic rhetoric against luxury and tyranny. Some modern authors
tend to see a kind of religious motivation in the building of that palace, in order to promote a
supposed theocratic power in Nero’s reign. But we must keep to the texts: the descriptions seem
only to stress the aesthetic tastes and the extravagancies of the artifex, although misinterpreted
by tradition in the sequence of Nero’s fall in 68 A.D.