Marble bust of nero

Nero was adopted by his great-uncle Claudius to become his heir and successor. During his reign, Nero focused much of his attention on diplomacy, trade, and increasing the cultural capital of the empire. He ordered the building of theaters and promoted athletic games.

His reign included a successful war and negotiated peace with the Parthian Empire, the suppression of a revolt in Britain, and the beginning of the First Roman-Jewish War. In 64, most of Rome was destroyed in the Great Fire of Rome.

In 68, the rebellion of Vindex in Gaul and later the acclamation of Galba in Hispania drove Nero from the throne.

Facing assassination, he committed suicide on 9 June He is known for a number of executions, including those of his mother and stepbrother. Few surviving sources paint Nero in a favorable light. Some sources, though, including some mentioned above, portray him as an emperor who was popular with the common Roman people, especially in the East. This magnificent loan, from the Capitoline Museum in Rome, is probably the most famous portrait of Nero in existence.

The wide, square head, thick neck and cumbersome chin, the facetious curl of the fleshy lips: he appears immediately thuggish. The likeness is both a revelation and — supposedly — a fraud. Whereupon the British Museum presents a colour photograph of a modern recreation, in which Nero is a pocked redhead with a hideous neck beard; many removes, now, from any kind of truth.

Yet vigilant visitors will notice lineaments of the very same physiognomy throughout the exhibition, in coins, reliefs, bronze and marble heads. The rudiments are even there in a statue of Nero as a boy, arms lifted angelically. The show sustains its theatre from first to last. The imperial family tree spelled out in a parade of lifesize statues , ghostly in the gloom.

Nero with a lyre it was never a fiddle. Ceiling fragments from his golden palace, painted with gods and sphinxes. Exquisite silver horse trappings that once belonged to Pliny the Elder. The staging is superbly eventful, so that you move from pomp and circumstance straight into horrific reality — a colossal chain, looping heavily between neck rings, worn by slaves labouring for the Romans in Wales.

This assault on humanity is so displayed to hang around your own head height, casting its vicious shadow on the earth below. Five necks, strung agonisingly close together: it is the most devastating sight in the show. The scale jumps are marvellous, from muckle warrior to tiny tragic actor, shuddering in shock; from outsize Nero to miniature marble slave boy, drooping over the lantern he is supposed to hold up.

Apparently, there was a market for such kitsch, which says something about the Romans. Mortality is palpable, even among the gilded dinner plates. Here is the gleaming Roman jewellery left behind when highborn Romans tried to outrun death, fleeing Boudicca in Colchester. Here is half a human jaw lately discovered beneath the streets.

And Nero himself, with his lubricious mouth and extravagant Regency sideburns, killing his enemies until the Praetorian guard eventually come for him and he kills himself at the age of Yet it seems clear that Nero did fiddle, uselessly, for the first three days.