From Nero to zero... to hero?

Nero: The Man Behind The Myth The British Museum, London Until October 24 (booking essential)

History hasn’t been kind to the Roman emperor Nero. He ruled for little more than a decade, between 54 and 68 AD, yet is still remembered today for all sorts of unsavoury acts.

These include committing incest with his mother, before having her assassinated; playing the fiddle, wholly unconcerned, while a fire ravaged Rome around him; and killing his second wife by kicking her in the stomach, while she was pregnant.

A new exhibition at the British Museum argues that Nero (right) was nowhere near as bad as we’ve been led to believe, however. Apparently, in the years after his death (aged 30), he was slandered by elite Roman writers such as Tacitus and Suetonius, who loathed his populism – and the mud stuck. The show opens with a still from the epic 1951 film Quo Vadis, in which Peter Ustinov played Nero as deranged. After that, the exhibits offer a more positive view of the emperor – such as a piece of graffiti from a wall in Pompeii, praising his rule.

Elsewhere, there’s a marble sculpture of the newly crowned Nero from modern-day Turkey (in the Roman empire’s east), celebrating his accession. We also see the tombstone of the emperor’s loyal secretary, Epaphroditus, who’s said to have saved his master’s life in a conspiracy in 65 AD.

In truth, there isn’t quite enough evidence for us to suddenly label Nero a hero rather than a villain.

However, with 200 objects – ranging from statues and wall paintings to armour and jewellery, almost all of them dating from the 1st Century AD – this show offers a fascinating snapshot of imperial Rome.

As for the story of the fiddling, we have it confirmed that Nero wasn’t even in Rome at the time.