Offer Thanks To Nero

Why,one might ask, would modern civilization owe adebt of gratitude to theunpopular, infamous Roman emperor Nero, dead two thousand years ago byhis own hand? For those folks not tunedin to their own historicalroots, Nero is an important part of your culture, not just a computersoftware tool for burning compact disks. Nero gathered a magnificentcollection of classical Greek sculpture from all over the Roman Empire,most of which was lost following his downfall. Why should you careabout Nero's story?--because whathappened to him influences the way youlook at the world every day.

You may have heard the tale of howNero fiddled while Rome burned in 64 A.D. First, let us lay that storyto rest. Despite the hatred he engendered in the Roman populace for hismany atrocities, there is no evidence to support this rumor. In fact,he appears to have been rather helpful to a devastated Rome during thatperiod. No, we cannot give him credit for the burning of Rome, but Nerohad many other monstrous acts with which we can credit him--usingChristians as human torches comes first to mind.

One of Nero'schief failings was vanity. Nero considered himself to be enormouslytalented in all things: art, drama, athletics, and, of course, music, afiddler extraordinaire he claimed. Perhaps he was. We are told that hewon every single competition he entered, whether artistic orathletic,from fiddling to chariot racing and every thing in between. Weare further told that the reason he always won was because reallyunpleasant things happened to anyone who bested him.

Nero madegood use of the wide-spread destruction of Rome. The emperor's ownhouse, the Domus Transitoria, was destroyed in the fire, but free spacewas now available in the crowded city, now burned out. Nero tookadvantage of that space to build a pleasure palace, his Domus Aurea, or Golden House. TheDomus Aurea was not a place for sleeping, because Nero had other lodgings for that. Nero outfitted hisDomus Aurea with priceless treasures, including his collection of classical Greek sculpture.

Described by Pliny the Elder, Nero built the Domus Aureaof bricks and stucco, lavishly embellished it with gold-leaf decorationand ivory veneer, and he studded the ceilings with semi-previousstones. One ceiling actuallyrotated and sprinkled perfume, crankedlaboriously by slaves. The Domus Aurea covered350 acres, roughly a third of Rome, spanning fourof the SevenHills of Rome in the heart of the city. The grounds of the Domus Aurea featured villas, vineyards, forests, a sacred grove, pastures for livestock, and an artificial lake.

Nero erected a 120 foot bronze statue of himself in the center dressed as the sun god, Sol, his Colossus Neronis. The Colossus would be the sole survivor of Nero's Golden House.In 68 A.D. the Roman Senate declared Nero an enemy of the state, adeath sentence, and the emperor committed suicide to avoid execution.Following his death, the lake was drained, the Colosseum constructed in its place, and Nero's colossal head wasdecapitated from the colossal body of the Neronis, then replacedwith the heads of succeeding emperors. Said to be an embarrassment to the city, the Golden House was denuded of its decorations within tenyears, and subsequently buried beneath new construction within forty years.

That would seem to be the end of Nero's Golden House,but something strange happened to bring it back to life at the end ofthe fifteenth century. A young Roman was walking on the Aventine hillonly to fall into a hole into a subterranean wonderland. He landed inthe Domus Aurea, buried beneath the Baths of Trajan. There hesaw incredible frescoes, appearing to be freshly painted as if new. Thesite of this accident drew Italian artists from far and wide.

Raphaeland Michelangelo visited the site, and some artists of the timeinscribed their names into the walls. From the depths of Nero'spleasure palace, from the frescoes, mosaics, and sculpture, they tookinspiration, an inspiration that would be reflected in the art of theHigh Renaissance. As the Domus Aurea with its new antiquesource material was explored, one classical Greek sculpture wasunearthed on a day that Michelangelo happened to visit. It was the Laocoon, a marble work by famed Greek Hellenistic sculptors, Athanadoros, Hagesandros, and Polydoros of Rhodes.

Laocoon,a mythological subject, depicts the Trojan priest Laocoon with his twosons in a struggle against a giant sea snake, a punishment from thegods for warning the Trojans about the Trojan horse. Its powerfulemotional content and vigorous muscularity would soon be reflected inthe works of Renaissance giants Michelangelo and Raphael. This work andothers like it from Nero's private collection of classical Greeksculpture profoundly influenced Italian Renaissance art, and it is fromthis art tha{1}t we have developed our own modern aestheticsensibilities.

Had Nero not been the demented, despotic monsterthat he was, had his Golden House not been entombed, buried beneath theBaths of Trajan for two millennia,his classical Greek sculpturecollection might have been lost like so many other significant artworks of its kind. Without Nero, we might not appreciate beauty when wesee it.