NERO THE MAN BEHIND THE MYTH

 

NERO THE MAN BEHIND THE MYTH

 

At the British Museum on the 29th, June 2021

 

The Roman Emperor Nero seemed destined to blur the limits of reality when his own life became a theatrical performance straight out of his mentor Seneca’s play Oedipus, itself a recasting of a Greek original by Athenian dramatist Sophocles.  The British museum’s new exhibition reveals a face behind a legend, a new quiff that travelled the length and breadth of the empire and an attempt to re-boot a failing political dynasty, the Julio-Claudians.  Nero was Roman emperor, but more people will know him as the character played by Peter Ustinov in the film Quo Vadis.  The new exhibition at the British museum failed to make much of more modern re-interpretations of Nero’s life but there were still a great many revelations.

Nero’s real name was Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, he was born near Anzio, Italy in 37 AD.  The date is significant because Nero’s reign came to be overshadowed by a new religion that initially puzzled the Romans then overwhelmed it, namely Christianity.  Nero’s family was close to Rome’s ruling families.  Indeed, Nero was the great-great grandson of the first emperor, Augustus, his mother was the emperor Caligula’s sister.  By choosing a direct descendant of Augustus who also happened to be young, handsome, and eligible, Rome’s ruling families sought to restore confidence in their rule after the years when Claudius had ruled with Julia Agrippina, Nero’s mother.  Nero’s hairstyle was important to the empire.  It was imitated and set a new style that was received from Londinium to Rome to Palmyra. 

Coinage of the era indicates that Nero initially ruled alongside his mother but subsequently, Nero sought to distance himself from Agrippina and eventually had her murdered.  The story of their relationship is told by the changing depictions on the common coinage exchanged in Nero’s time for Nero and his key advisors fully realised the importance to power of images.  Even the murder of Julia Agrippina was a comedy or errors.  Nero had a self-sinking boat constructed, indeed its lead ceiling collapsed killing one of Julia Agrippina’s servants.  However, Julia Agrippina was able to swim ashore, then being rescued by some of her friends.  She did not suspect that the ship’s sinking was part of a murder plot and so Nero sent his assassins to her to finish the job.  The exhibition uses artifacts to chart the power relationships of the elite as they fluctuated and altered.

The sources for the life of Nero are Tacitus, Suetonius, and Cassius Dio.  From Suetonius we gather that Nero sang while Rome burned, possibly the single summarising moment of ancient Rome that everyone knows.  We gather from the exhibition, however, that Nero was not even in Rome when the fire began in 18-19th July, AD 64.  Nero hurried back to Rome from his villa at Antium, organised a relief effort and even allowed the homeless to shelter in the grounds of the imperial palace.  This is according to Tacitus’s version of events.  Suetonius, and Cassius Dio both allege that Nero started the fire and Suetonius says that he did so to make room for his new palace, the Golden House or Domus Aurea.  Tacitus alleges that Nero blamed the Christians to remove suspicion from himself and thus instigated brutal murders, crucifixions, Christians fed to wild beasts and burnt to death on Nero’s orders.  Suetonius, however, is not beyond sensationalising his accounts, magnifying the contrasts between his subjects.

The main foreign policy issue of Nero’s reign was Rome’s conflict with Parthia, the other great empire that rivalled Rome in the east.  Rome’s experience with Parthia had been difficult.  Before the fall of the Republic, Marcus Crassus had invaded Parthia and been defeated at the battle of Carrhae (53 BC).  Such defeats of Roman generals were extremely unusual because of Rome’s organised, drilled, and disciplined legionaries.  Crassus was executed after the battle, the Parthians poured molten gold down his throat to symbolise Crassus’s greed and avarice.  The legion’s standards were seized.  Emperor Augustus was able to reclaim them after the fall of the Republic.  Armenia, a client kingdom of Parthia, was conquered by the Romans during Nero’s reign.  The Parthians were a so-called ‘barbarian’ kingdom meaning that they retained strongly feudal traditions and a powerful army built upon heavily armoured cavalry known as cataphracts and lightly equipped horse archers who were meant to shoot in the thundering charge of the heavier types.  The Parthians feudal traditions meant that they relied on their cataphract charge rather than actual battlefield tactics and drill, pay and discipline.  Such armies could have lucky days as at Carrhae. 

Nero had links to the Parthian kingdom and, before his suicide, thought about removing himself there to be under the protection of the Parthians or some other eastern client kingdom.  In the west the signal event was the revolt of Boudicca (or Boudica or Boudicea) and her Iceni tribe in Britain.  The rebellion was swiftly quashed for the Roman army under Paulinus had been pursuing the druids on their island of Mona (Anglesey).  The druids offered the British tribes the possibility of a fanatical mission to destroy the Romans, a mission ratified by their gods which is why Paulinus sought to destroy their power base just as the Gallic druids had earlier been annihilated by Julius Caesar for the same reason.

Nero was clearly intelligent, educated, and talented but his life was somehow overwhelmed by his own pretensions and impractical cruelty so that his life ultimately resembled a lurid rendition of one of the great Greek tragedies that he clearly adored.  He aspired to be an actor and went against the grain of what was expected of an Emperor by appearing in plays and paying large amounts of patronage to the actors, dancers, and musicians he admired.  Ultimately, he forced too many of those close to him such as Seneca into suicide and he was eventually forced to do likewise by the senate.  There were other contenders to be emperor after Nero and a period of intense instability followed Nero’s suicide in 68 AD.  Before his death he uttered the words Qualis artifex pereo (‘What an artist dies in me.’) but for many years after his suicide myths and legends appeared, especially in the east, that he was not dead and would return.  These legends persisted for 100s of years after his death and were reported by Augustine of Hippo as popular myths as late as 420.  The myth makers might have added, ‘yes he’s coming back and this time, no more Mr Nice Guy!’

Any lover of antiquity and Rome specifically will love this exhibition.  It tells a story, but it is only the beginning of the search for the identity of Nero.

Paul Murphy, British Museum, June 2021