Latest / Nero: Mad Tyrant or Misunderstood Emperor? — Fexingo History / Nero's Imperial Portraits: Image, Propaganda and Posterity
Transcript
- Lucas: We've talked a lot about Nero's actions — the fire, the persecution, the Golden House — but we haven't quite looked at how he wanted to be seen. I mean, literally seen. His portraits, his statues, his face on coins. Luna: You mean like his public image campaign? Lucas: Exactly. And it's fascinating because we have more surviving portraits of Nero than of almost any other early emperor — partly because his reign was long, partly because his image was so carefully managed, and partly because after his death, his enemies tried to destroy or deface them. So the ones that remain tell a double story. Luna: So what did Nero actually look like? The sources give us some descriptions. Lucas: Suetonius says he was about average height, his body was covered in spots and he had a potbelly, fair hair, weak blue eyes — and a thick neck. But the official portraits don't show any of that. They show a smooth-faced young man with a strong jaw, a slight double chin, and carefully layered curls. The so-called 'Nero hairstyle' — you can see it on the Munich bronze head — is very distinctive: rows of comma-shaped locks piled up like a helmet. Luna: So the statues were idealised, like Augustus's portraits. Lucas: Right, but with a twist. Augustus's portraits made him look eternally youthful and serene — a god-like leader. Nero's early portraits, from his teenage years, actually mimic Augustus's hairstyle and facial structure. They're meant to associate him with the founder of the principate. But around 60 AD, his image changes. He starts appearing with a fuller face, longer sideburns, and a more elaborate, almost theatrical hairstyle — the one that Suetonius calls 'combed forward in tiers.' It's a turn toward a more Greek, artistic look. Luna: That's when his philhellene phase really took off, right? After the quinquennial games and his artistic tours. Lucas: Exactly. And the coinage tells the same story. The denarii and aurei from the early 60s show a very specific type: Nero with a radiate crown — the sun's rays — on the sestertius, or as Apollo with a lyre on the reverse. The legend on some coins reads 'NERO CLAVD CAESAR AVG GER P M TR P IMP P P' — but it's the image that's new. The obverse bust is often shown with a globe or aegis, symbols of universal power. Luna: And the radiate crown — that's associated with Sol Invictus, right? The sun god. Lucas: Yes, and Nero was the first Roman emperor to put his own radiate portrait on a coin. It was a huge statement: he was linking himself directly to the sun god. And remember that colossal bronze statue he commissioned for the vestibule of the Domus Aurea — the Colossus of Nero? It was 120 feet tall, and it showed him as the sun god, with a radiate crown. Pliny the Elder says it was made by the Greek sculptor Zenodorus. Luna: That statue later got reworked into a statue of Sol Invictus by later emperors, didn't it? Lucas: Yes — Vespasian actually rededicated it as the Colossus of Sol, and Hadrian moved it to make room for the Temple of Venus and Roma. But Nero's original intention was clear: he wanted to be seen as a living god, and not just any god — the sun god, the source of light and life. And that's a big shift from Augustus, who was careful to present himself as first among equals, not a divine ruler. Luna: But wasn't Nero also depicted as Apollo? The citharode, the musician god? Lucas: Absolutely. In fact, many of his portraits from the late 60s show him with the attributes of Apollo Citharoedus — the lyre, the long hair, the laurel wreath. There's a famous marble statue found at Anzio, now in the Museo Nazionale Romano, that shows him as Apollo, with a very idealized face and a lyre at his side. It's a direct statement: I am the divine artist, the patron of the arts. Luna: So his image had two main strands: the sun god and the artist god. Lucas: Exactly. And both of those were a radical departure from the traditional Roman imperial image. Augustus had portrayed himself as a military victor, a priest, a father of the country. Nero dropped the military imagery almost entirely after the early 60s. On his coins, you see more reverses with the temple of Janus closed, or with the goddess Roma seated on a pile of shields. He wanted to be seen as a bringer of a new golden age — a peaceful, artistic, cosmopolitan ruler. Luna: But that image didn't survive his death, obviously. Lucas: No, it didn't. After Nero's suicide in 68 AD, the Senate declared him a public enemy, and his statues were torn down or mutilated — that's the damnatio memoriae. But it wasn't universal. In some eastern provinces, his statues were left standing because he was still popular there. And interestingly, the Colossus survived because it was so big and had already been rededicated. But many smaller portraits were systematically defaced. You can see busts where the face has been deliberately chiseled off, or where the head has been replaced with a different emperor's. Luna: So the damnatio memoriae was real, but patchy. Lucas: Very patchy. And that's what makes the surviving portraits so valuable — they give us a direct line to how Nero wanted to be seen, and how his enemies tried to erase that. But there's also a third layer: the portraits that were actually made during his lifetime by court artists like Famulus, who painted the frescoes in the Domus Aurea. Pliny tells us that Famulus worked very quickly and always in a toga, even when climbing scaffolding. His paintings were probably the most intimate likenesses of Nero, but they're all lost. Luna: So we have the official portraits, the coins, and the literary descriptions — and they don't quite match. Lucas: They don't. And that's the point. The official image was a carefully constructed fiction. Nero was probably not as handsome as his statues, not as godlike as his coins. But the gap between image and reality is exactly what we'd expect from a master propagandist. And in a sense, Nero's image campaign was successful — it's the image that survived in the sources, even the hostile ones. The stories about him singing, driving chariots, and building a giant gold palace are all part of that persona. Luna: Do you think he actually believed his own propaganda? Or was it all just cynical manipulation? Lucas: That's a great question. Some historians argue that Nero genuinely saw himself as an artist and a god — that his delusions of grandeur were sincere. Others think it was a calculated strategy to maintain power by creating a new kind of imperial charisma. The truth probably lies somewhere in between. But one thing is clear: the image he crafted was so powerful that it outlived him, and it's still the one we argue about today. Luna: It's like he was curating his own legacy in real time. Lucas: Exactly — he was. And the portrait we have of him now, in our minds, is partly his own creation. That's a pretty sophisticated thing for a Roman emperor to do. And you know, it's moments like these that make me grateful we can dive into these details and share them. If you've been coming with us through these conversations about Mediterranean history, you probably know that the show stays ad-free and available to everyone because of listeners who chip in a couple of dollars a month over at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It's not much, but it genuinely makes a difference in keeping these episodes coming. Luna: Yeah, and it's a small way to support something you actually enjoy. It keeps the whole thing sustainable. Lucas: Absolutely. So back to Nero's portraits — one of the most interesting surviving examples is the bronze head from the so-called 'Nero of the Palazzo dei Conservatori' in Rome. It was found in the 16th century and has been identified as Nero by the hairstyle and the face shape. But here's the thing: it was originally part of a full statue, and the head shows signs of having been reworked — the ears are damaged, and there are tool marks around the neck, suggesting it was deliberately mutilated and then later restored. Luna: So even the physical objects carry the trauma of his damnatio memoriae. Lucas: Exactly. And that's what makes studying these portraits so powerful — they're not just art objects. They're evidence of a political struggle that played out in stone and bronze. Every chisel mark, every re-carved feature, tells a story about how the empire tried to remember or forget its most controversial emperor. Luna: It makes you wonder what future archaeologists would make of our own leaders' statues. Lucas: No doubt they'd have plenty to say. But for now, we've got Nero's images — and they're still talking.