He is known as a cruel tyrant who played his lyre while Rome burned. That’s exactly what his enemies wanted you to think, the curators of a new exhibition argue.
IN 2008 THE British Museum hosted a blockbuster exhibition about Hadrian, a Roman emperor whose reign (117-138AD) has never ceased to fascinate. Generations of historians have grappled with his personality and probed his interest in the high culture and mystical rites of Greece, his imperial projects stretching from northern Britain to the Nile and his passion for Antinous, a Greek youth. Marguerite Yourcenar, a French-American writer, claimed to have understood Hadrian better than she knew her own father; “Memoirs of Hadrian” (1951), a novel she wrote in the emperor’s voice, is gripping.
Nero another Roman ruler whose name is known to anybody with even a cursory understanding of ancient history is now the subject of a fresh artistic inquiry. In an exhibition which opens on May 27th, the British Museum encourages visitors to take a more rounded view of an emperor who is generally remembered as a vain, whimsical sadist. Like the Hadrian show, this latest offering has been put t