Yet through sculptures and architectural fragments, coins and jewels, frescoes and writing tablets, the British Museum offers an alternative narrative of a young man who became emperor when he was not yet 17 and was driven to suicide by his adversaries at 30. The charge sheet against Nero is long and familiar. Those charges are “based on manipulations and lies that are 2,000 years old and very powerful,” Opper added. In reality, Opper said, Nero was “trying very hard, and he was dealt an extremely bad hand.”The British Museum is not the first institution to revisit the Nero narrative. In 2011, Rome’s Parco Archeologico del Colosseo, which oversees the Colosseum as well as Nero’s palace, the Domus Aurea, staged an exhibition reassessing the figure of Nero and his image as a bloodthirsty pyromaniac.

Source: New York Times May 26, 2021 16:07 UTC